Developing Your Own Leadership Style

 

Developing Your Leadership Style

Since organizational change has been topical in recent history, there is much researching surrounding the factors necessary to successfully execute organizational change. One of the primary focal areas in research within the content theme is the importance of a suitable leadership style as a key driver for successful organizational change. And this is one of the most important areas where a leader needs to focus to create and design the organizational change and the culture of the organization.

There are various styles of leading an organization and a common thread that can be observed across all styles is that whilst each has a domain to which it is well suited, none of them are suited to leading the organizational change. This is because organizational change requires leadership which can take the organization from a certain status quo to a new, different status quo – the very nature of this process is to put down, with leadership making employees believe in the long- term vision and tolerate the temporary discomfort. The position is further justified when taking into consideration that there is no theory which juxtaposes these styles of leadership with organizational change.

The major leadership styles which most leaders practice are as follows:

·        Authoritarian leadership

·        Laissez faire leadership

·        Servant leadership

·        Democratic leadership

The above mentioned leadership styles cannot necessarily fit in with every leader because:

·        In authoritarian leadership, we find that employees are disengaged & disempowered under normal circumstances or situations demanding less attention.

·        In Laissez faire leadership, the hands – off approach would likely mean that the change in the organization would come as a surprise to the group making them suspicious of the move & more likely to reject the proposed changes.

·        In Servant leadership, the leaders would be averse to change given the negative impact that it has on employee engagement.

·        In case of Democratic leadership, the inability to make decisions quickly renders this leadership style inadequate for situations requiring change.

DEVELOP YOUR OWN LEADERSHIP STYLE

Leadership is about answering the question why as well as what. A manager may tell you what to do in a specific way, but a leader will explain or convey to you why as a first and important step on the road to your free & willing cooperation which is the hallmark of all true leadership. You can develop your own unique leadership style as follows:

·        Planning: Planning means building a mental bridge from where you are now to where you want to be when you have achieved the objective or task. From the leadership perspective, the key issue is how far you should share the planning function with your team. You should know what you are doing and how you are going to do it before starting the actual execution.

Power of Planning

·        Know your strengths & weaknesses: It’s important for you as a leader, to do a litmus test of your strengths and also the weaknesses. What are the areas that you are good at? What are the things that you can do better than anybody else in the world? And look for opportunities to where you can make use of your strengths to get to your desired results.

Also, don’t shy away from monitoring your weaknesses to yourself. Look for the potential weaknesses in your personal and professional life and fill the holes to become a better version of yourself.

·        Identify your Inspiration: When it comes to the dynamics of leadership like communication skills and the ability to exert influence over people, it is best to identify an inspiration for yourself. That inspiration might come from a prominent personality, your family, your associates or even from your friends. Look for different patterns in the behavior and communication of the people around you and try to learn from each of them. Sometimes, a leader does not identify their leadership style because they never go look out for someone whom they admire the most. So, look out for people who influence or inspire you and take hint from their leadership styles.

·        Know Thyself: This is probably the most important aspect of discovering your leadership style. ‘Know Thyself” is a Greek concept of knowing yourself first before trying to know other things. Socrates in Plato’s ‘Philebus’ dialogue argues the point that people look absurd when they try to know obscure things before knowing themselves. If you really want to develop a unique and original leadership style, you must first be able to get along with yourself. Most leaders keep themselves so much busy that they do not even have the time to just sit with themselves alone. To balance powerful & attractive styles of leadership, you must desire to know yourself. Look inside yourself, spend some time with yourself on a daily basis, understand what you want from your people and the organization, understand your objectives and what you want to accomplish.

CONCLUSION

From the above discussion, we conclude that there are four major leadership styles which are powerful and impact followers which are namely: Authoritarian leadership, Laissez faire leadership, Servant leadership, Democratic leadership.

To develop your own unique leadership style, you must:

·        Plan — so that you can understand your objectives and bridge the gaps between your starting point and your current position.

·        Know your strengths and weaknesses — so that you can know the areas which needs improvement.

·        Identify your Inspiration —to learn from them to lead more effectively.

·        Know Thyself — so that you don’t fall in any kind of dilemmas whilst your leadership journey.