As an Executive Coach, I work with clients to help them determine their leadership style. Of course, you don’t have to lead an organization or a department to have an interest in this and to figure out what your general style is.
Lately I’ve had several executives ask me to help them define and live their leadership style. I think it’s a good idea to understand which style you have. The styles I examine are the ones that were presented by Kurt Lewin back in 1957.
There is the Autocratic Leader, the Democratic Leader, the Transformational Leader and the Laissez Faire Leader. After learning which leadership style you use, you can begin to understand why you do what you do AND the fact that diversity in leadership styles is good.
The next step, though, is the great one. It is understanding that you must know how to use each of those styles so that you can use them for specific people and situations.
We tend to think that if we have a certain style that this is only how we know how to operate— or the one we should always use because we’ve learned it well and it comes so natural.
Leadership, though, is more than that. It is looking at the style of the person you are working with and determining what is going to be most effective in that situation. This is how you will get more done and get the desired results you had been hoping for.
Contact me for more information about learning what your style is and how to use it.