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Technical leadership: You know what needs done and how to do it. As the resident expert, your followers need only follow your instruction and direction. Your style is a particularly good fit for inexperienced followers who are eager to improve their skills and demonstrate their value to the organization. It also works well for more experienced followers who are comfortable deferring to superior knowledge and expertise. It may work less well for followers who value more autonomy and want to become experts in their own right, for those who value independence.
Motivational leadership: Although you may not be especially charismatic, even a small measure of charisma adds to followers’ attraction to you and to their desire to align. Your verbal and interpersonal presence are compelling and interject energy and “want to” as your followers coordinate their energy, interests, and aspirations with yours. This works well for motivating less engaged followers but may pull weaker and less centered followers into blindly following, with a minimal sense of consequences or personal responsibility.
Values leadership: Your strength is in showing followers why what they and you do is important, why it matters. This works well for followers whose personal views and priorities are already near alignment with yours. You have a knack for encouraging followers deeper into the fold. Alternatively, followers who are more diverse shy away from your leadership and over time, your organization tends to become more and more homogenized.
THE QUIZ:
Although a few leaders may be restricted to one or more of the six styles, most blend all, depending on the situation or particular circumstance. Even so, leaders typically find their comfort zone limited to one or perhaps two styles. They consciously shift outside their comfort zones temporarily but cannot sustain the shift. Without high and continuous self-awareness, they drift toward one dimensional leadership. This becomes especially pronounced during periods of organizational disruption, higher than usual personal stress, or when confronted with atypical or unfamiliar situations or circumstances.
What is your preferred style, your comfort zone?
What is the primary disadvantage or limitation of your preferred style?
How do you detect a mismatch between your preferred style and the immediate situation?
How do you assure you appropriately adjust your style to the current circumstance?
Why would great people choose to follow you?
Disclaimer: I found this in one of those folders we all have on our computers but seldom visit. I am not sure whether I wrote it or appropriated it from someone else. If I did write it, good for me. If not, I wish I had. If I saved it from another writer’s work, I cannot find the citation. At any rate, I think it is both thoughtful and interesting and am sharing it without attribution to me or anyone else. If you know the correct source, please let me know and I will update the post to include the citation.