How to Identify Your Leadership Style
Leadership is a necessary skill that can help you move up the corporate ladder. Although leadership is not a prerequisite for success in today’s economy, being a leader can help you get promoted.
Today’s leaders need to make sure they’re building the right people by developing them well. Effective leadership is crucial to organizational success, too.
Companies that invest in developing good leaders are four times as likely to outperform those that don’t.
It’s essential to establish a personal style that informs how you handle demanding situations and motivate your colleagues.
You must be able to manage what is at stake and lead your team with confidence. You need to encourage your colleagues and inspire them to work hard and do their best.
Leadership is a complex topic. To help you understand it, you need to understand some of the different types of leadership styles.
What Is A Leadership Style?
A style of leadership is a set of behaviours that you use when making decisions, interacting with others, and using your time.
Three frameworks can be used to assess your leadership style:
Imprint: How you are experienced by those you work with and lead is crucial for your career. You must be able to communicate in a way that is consistent, direct and clear.
Functions: How you mobilize your colleagues and get things done, such as calling for a meeting, getting a document approved, or getting feedback from a project manager,
Motivation: To be a successful leader, you need to learn to recognize what drives you to take action.
There are many different styles of leadership, but this post seeks to describe three common approaches that may work for you.
Leadership Styles Commonly Used
The three primary groups of leadership imprints are:
1. Approachability
Approachability is about being open, sharing your real feelings with teammates, showing empathy and warmth.
This style of leadership requires that you understand how emotions work and how to control them.
Being approachable is vital to your career because it allows you to have a good relationship with your employees and the public.
Emotional intelligence is an exceptionally valued skill that can have a very positive impact on your business.
2. Credibility
Competence, the strength of character, and resolve all contribute to credibility. This type of leadership instils authority and understanding.
A credible leader should set a course and guide others in the right direction. An educated leader can set a course and guide others in the right direction.
This leadership style requires a lot of trust and collaboration. You need to trust your employees, even when it may seem like you’re the only one on the team who can make a tough decision.
You also need to be able to make quick decisions when faced with unusual situations.
3. Aspiration
Aspiration is a powerful leadership imprint. The ability to set high expectations and create a sense of belief in your team members and yourself will allow people to work harder and accomplish more.
An aspirational leader inspires employees and helps them grow personally and professionally.
By nurturing employee growth, such a leader builds a strong team that develops individually and cooperatively towards organizational goals.
What is Your Leadership Style?
It’s essential to understand and work to align with your style. Below are three ways you can broaden your knowledge and identify your style of leadership.
1. Build Self-Awareness
It’s important to know yourself to be an effective leader. Knowing your strengths and weaknesses is a good place to start, but it doesn’t end there. It would be best if you also considered what you value and what your career goals are.
It’s easy to get trapped in the day-to-day running of your business, but it’s essential to take a look at what you really want.
There’s a lot of research showing that high self-awareness can be a crucial ingredient in success.
These results suggest that a top executive with a high degree of self-awareness is more effective, leads better relationships, and has less stress.
It’s essential to be open to feedback from your colleagues. It is easier to improve when you’re open to the input of others.
2. Consider Your Core Functions
Taking time to understand your leadership functions will help you develop a more assertive, more effective persona.
It’s important to assess yourself regularly to ensure that you’re not falling on the wrong side of the spectrum. If you’re not doing self-assessment, then you’re probably making a lot of poor decisions.
If you’re drowning in self-assessment, this might be a good time to think about ways to make it stress-free to assess yourself, such as having a system in place to track your performance over time.
3. Understand What Motivates You
Understanding your motivations and your motivators will help you plan your work and motivate yourself to do the best job possible.
Take stock of your motivations as a leader when you examine your job’s purpose. What external rewards do you value most? What satisfactions, such as salary and benefits, do you find most satisfying about your job?
The importance of external rewards is relatively widespread.
In work environments where leaders exert considerable control over subordinates, the large amounts of power they exert can motivate their employees.
You can use your innate sense of what drives you to act at your best to help others achieve their potential.
Conclusion
It’s essential to identify and refine your personal leadership style. This will help you become more effective at building and leading others and giving them the support they need to accomplish their goals.
You can pick up from your own mistakes, and you can find ways to improve your leadership by experimenting with different approaches over time.
Self-awareness is crucial to being a good leader, and practices such as self-assessment will help you identify your style of leadership.
About the Author
Eugen Spivak is a multi-award-winning author, business strategist, and a business coach. Eugen is the founder of the Canadian Institute of International Business, an organization focused on a better way to learn business!
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