Creating Value via Your Leadership Style

As an adjunct at the Fox School of Business (Temple U.), I have the pleasure to teach under the authors of The Value Frontier (Drs. Smith, Stein and Stein). The book and course outline how to create relevant, lasting competitive advantages in your product, service, or company. The aha for the reader is that the key is to create differentiation that your target market gives you credit for.

I started thinking about leadership and more specifically, the new styles of management that crop up. Do these styles really create lasting value to the leaders who employ them? Are their techniques really appreciated and do they create meaningful relationships with their team?

I thought about two styles that seem to be popular with leaders today- the tech savvy style and “open” relationship style. The tech savvy leader texts, tweets, DMs, and posts all day and night to their team. The open relationship leader tries to become everyone’s best friend by using “You can come to me with anything” as their credo. Both overshare what is going on in their personal and professional lives in the hopes that you do the same. They dress hip, talk a good game, and seem to be really engaged in their team’s lives. 

Do these styles create value? On the surface, being interested in your team is a good thing. It builds trust and loyalty. People want to work with people they like and will try harder to avoid making their friends look bad. 

But are these long term lasting strategies? Eventually there will make an unpopular decision that will hurt a “friend”.  How will your team react to this? Will they continue to follow you as a friend or will skepticism creep in?  Will your team see through the niceness and realize that you are keeping tabs on them? You are the modern micromanager. You want to know everything going on with your team- how they spent their work day, personal life, and down time. You need your team to be intermingled with each other to keep control. 

In the long run, you may make great friends, but you will fail as a leader. Instead the best ways to build real value in leadership are:

1.      Be Fair Not Equal. Everyone deserves to be treated fairly. Every leader should be mindful of that. Top performers need to be rewarded, laggards coached.

2.      Be Personable Not Personal. Creating friendships is a great part of the work life. But being close personally with your team means that hard conversations and lost friendships are coming. Work to keep the private part private.

3.      Tell It Like It Is. No one likes eternal optimism nor passive aggressiveness. Be direct, giving concise direction, accepting criticism and moving forward together with clear air.

By following those three simple tips, your team will respect your leadership. And earned respect is a key differentiation that everyone appreciates and is not easily replicated. Follow that with great performance and you will be the next Power Brand.