Whenever I meet someone who wants to advance their leadership skills one of the first things they bring up is their leadership style. I hear things like, I can’t get all soft with my team, I’m an authoritative leader. I am a coaching leader so I don’t speak first ever. Things like that. All very hard lines and definite around, it’s just not my style. As they become more self-aware, and understand how limiting it is to only focus on a single style to dictate every action, they swing the pendulum too far. The story then becomes, Well, I’m too short with my team, or, I’m too soft with my team, I need to change.
What if it didn’t have to be so all or nothing? What if rather than leaning on getting the perfect style to yield the best results, we focused on building skills around our strengths and our most dominant attributes? Then we wouldn’t need to throw out one style to start over fresh. You could build on human nature to influence the best way for the situation you’re in. Let’s learn one client’s story below. If you want to learn more about how you can leverage your strengths, attributes, and style to influence, watch the YouTube video here.
His leadership style got results but was it good?
The first client I had the privilege of working with came to me to work on his communication skills. He had gotten feedback that he was too abrasive in the past but when someone made a formal complaint to HR, he was asked to make a change. In our first meeting he said, look, I get results. They hired me to make things happen and I am. Now I’m ‘scaring people’ and they want me to change but this is how you get results! In watching recordings of his meetings it was clear he wasn’t doing anything to truly ‘scare’ anyone as he characterized it. He was loud. He was animated. Objectivity and quick action were very clearly important to him. These are all good things.
What wasn’t working?
He and I watched one video in particular, together. When it was done he said, whoa, this isn’t working. I need to change. He thought he needed to switch up his authoritarian leadership style and switch it out for a coaching style instead. Sitting on the outside looking in made it clear to him that he lacked empathy. There was no room for other ideas or opinions. It was intimidating to even listen to. He wanted to go to a coaching style. Now, you may know that this is a pretty drastic shift. If you didn’t, or if you want to learn more about different leadership styles, click here to watch the YouTube video. To be brief, switching from a strong authoritarian style to coaching doesn’t come easily and won’t happen overnight.
Instead, we focused on his strengths and leadership attributes to build his ability. Not because that will change things overnight, no true development does, but because it is working with nature instead of against it.
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When you focus on skill and strength your style follows
We leveraged his leadership attribute of Action (you can find your dominant attribute here) and his strength of Command (learn your leadership strengths with this book) to highlight where his style works best. For him, he was a great leader in times of high stress and high risk. He could take charge and get the results they needed. Because we now understood how important the final word on a topic having was for him, I could help him practice asking for input upfront. This allowed his team to have a voice and worked with his natural tendency to close the loop. Even in this small example, you can see how building skills on your natural strengths and attributes transforms your unique style. That’s because, when you add skill to attributes and strengths you get the most impactful results that feel like the perfect new wardrobe you didn’t know you needed, rather than a costume you need to put on to cover up your old self.
Is skill building different from switching your style?
Your dominant attributes and natural strengths tend to remain more constant than your leadership style. These are set during adolescence, or even childhood and rarely change. Your style however can change with new information or circumstances. That is a good thing. There is nothing wrong with your style changing. However, it is more difficult to build skills on that shifting foundation. If you build your leadership skills on more stable and consistent ground, you’ll equip yourself with skills that you can apply to each situation and to your styles as they evolve.