Are you looking to learn how to unite teams and engage stakeholders? Then it is time to take your leadership skills to the next level.
When Is Leadership Important?
Whether you are leading a team in the workplace or navigating other relationships, leadership is essential. Even established leaders can further refine their skills to boost team performance through team alignment, influence, and unity. These factors hold true for interactions in and beyond your job. To figure out the skills you should further develop, you will first need to identify your natural leadership tendencies.
Finding Your Leadership Style
Becoming a better leader starts with figuring out your leadership style. A great leader is able to move between leadership styles as a given situation requires. A few common leadership styles exist, including:
- Autocratic leadership: Autocratic leaders tend to make all the decisions without getting much input from their team. This approach may work when you need to make immediate, crucial decisions or when you truly have the most knowledge about a situation, but many of today’s employees may not appreciate this style of leading on a day-to-day basis.
- Laissez-faire leadership: At the opposite end of the spectrum of autocratic leadership sits the laissez-faire leadership style. These hands-off leaders need to find a balance to make sure their teams understand organizational goals while giving them room to work on their own terms. Laissez-faire leadership still requires you to monitor performance and provide feedback and often works best if you have skilled, experienced self-starters working for you.
- Democratic leadership: This participative leadership style means you will seek team members’ opinions and share information. Democratic leaders allow for creativity and can promote cooperation.
- Authoritative leadership: Unlike autocratic leaders, authoritative leaders explain their thinking instead of simply issuing orders. These leaders set expectations while engaging and inspiring others.
- Coaching leadership: These leaders are skilled at unlocking people’s potential. Coaching leaders give team members some direction and then enable them to tap into their own abilities.
- Pacesetting leadership: Pacesetting leaders are driven leaders who set the bar and push team members to reach the finish line. This style is effective when you need to get results but can sometimes turn off team members and create stress over the long term.
- Affiliative leadership: Affiliative leaders get the most personal with their team members. Leaders who practice this style pay attention to and support their employees’ emotional needs, smoothing conflicts and reassuring their team along the way.
Honing Your Leadership Skills
Once you have familiarized yourself with different leadership styles and understand what works best for you, you can further hone other skills to complement your natural abilities. Exploring new perspectives of leadership will give you the agility to combine approaches and tailor your leadership to changing situations.
As you practice different leadership approaches, ensure that you stay genuine. At first, changing leadership styles can fell like a challenge. You can practice new behaviors so they become natural without giving up who you are at your core.
Authenticity is key to gaining loyalty and trust, so you should lean on your natural style while enhancing your skills as you evolve. Then, you can identify and polish skills that develop your leadership repertoire.
