Reflecting on Leadership styles

Everyone aspires to be a leader, and every organisation seeks to hire leaders. But not everyone knows what type of leadership is right for themselves and their team.?

From the hiring organisation perspective and team managers, understanding individual leadership styles can help best develop individual potentials and optimise their teams’ performance.

Leadership is as sought after as it is complex, unique to each individual, yet blurred by years of clichés and myths.

But understanding what type of leadership is best suited for your organisation and to lead your team, is critical to attracting the right type of leader and repelling toxic managers.

Leadership empowers leaderships

Leadership can make a world of difference to talent, teams and organisations. Authentic leaders attract the right people to their side, creating efficient and diverse teams. The people working alongside authentic leaders, knowing that it’s safe and encouraged to do so, develop their own leadership skills to empower their team.

On the other hand, toxic managers act as repellent for your existing and future talent.

But to attract the right leader, companies need to move away from the myths and clichés of the authoritarian, clinically rational, unemotional and toxic homo leaderus* for more realistic and individual expectations.?

There is no such thing as A leader: interviewing individual leaders

Just like one type of employee profile shouldn’t be what you look for to fill all of your organisation’s roles, no one type of leader can work their magic across all teams and organisations.?

Authoritarian, participative, delegative, transactional, and transformational leadership, leadership has been categorised, profiled and documented, but these categories tend to be reductive.?

While they can help explore different leadership styles and technics and gain actionable awareness of one’s leadership strengths and weaknesses, they only reflect the leaders’ perspective.?

Leadership is a two-way stream: the leaders and the group or people they lead.?

Leadership cannot be thought of and sought as a one-fit-all concept.It cannot be assessed through a couple of buzzwords.?

The meaningful way of determining leadership is, therefore, the interview process to help differentiate candidates of matching skills and experience.

Here are some questions we like to ask? to capture the leadership styles of the top talent we interview on our client organisations behalf:?

• Hypothetically if we were to ask your boss to describe your leadership style what would do you think they would say??
• When you’re under pressure what style of leadership style do you revert to??
• In an Executive leadership meeting describe the role you typically like to play??
• When would you say you have led a group of people through something truly transformational??
• How do you approach difficult conversations?

There’s no leader without the situations through which they lead their teams.

Authentic leaders adapt their leadership style to the people they lead and the situations they navigate.?

In Head & Heart: The Art of Modern Leadership Kirstin Ferguson defines the ‘art’ of modern leadership as “knowing what balance of head and heart leadership attributes are needed, and when.” Leaders will adapt the skills drawing the right mix of head and heart to any given situation, context, or conversation.?

But they can only thrive in environments nurturing their values and strengths while allowing them to work on their blind spots. Kirstin Ferguson calls it “Leading with perspective.”

Organisations' role is to give leaders the heads up regarding the environment and situations in which they are expected to lead, so they can better appreciate the challenges they might be facing and see the big picture through.?

However, it can be hard for hiring organisations to balance a role’s immediate requirements and their longer-term needs and culture.

For larger organisations, the brief with your recruiters (and ideally having long-time relationships with the latter) to supports talent acquisition at all levels of the organigram. The longer a company works with recruiters, the better understanding they will have of the individual leadership qualities that perform best for this organisation, along with what is required for that specific role.?

But in light of the increasing cost, companies are increasingly bringing recruitment in-house. If that’s the case, your organisation can still convey the environment and culture in which the leaders they seek will be expected to thrive by taking an objective look within.

Remembering that there are no right or wrong; simply environmental preferences, considerations can include:?

• Values

Among the below, what values do you think best apply to you / your organisation:?

Reward, promotion and recognition

Which statement best applies to you/your organisation:?

• Reward, promotion and recognition should be based on individual performance
• Reward, promotion and recognition should be based on group achievement
• Loyalty is the best path to promotion
• Personal excellence is the best path to promotion

Accountability and responsibility

Which statement best applies to you/your organisation:?

• Individuals should be responsible for the outcomes of their work
• Teams and managers should be responsible for the outcomes of the work of their tea

Decision-making

• Decisions should be entrusted to one individual?
• Decisions should be entrusted to a group

Once you’ve identified your preferences, it’s easier to convey them to your recruiter or pool of candidate to communicate your leadership expectations

It’s time companies kill homo leaderus to attract genuine leaders. We may have made up the term, but, unfortunately, we did not make up the cliché attributes that persist to this day and hinder teams and organisations.?

Because the right leadership for a role, or the right leadership style and preferences for your team and career, are worth investing in.??