People often talk about becoming a leader in a way that suggests that there is a single, agreed-upon way to do it. In fact, there are many different styles, and understanding what some of them are can help you better understand leadership in general and improve your own skills. You may find that you are a hybrid of several styles or that although you tend toward one particular one, you’d actually prefer to lead in a different manner.
Bureaucratic or Democratic
Are you more beholden to rules or to people? To get a better idea, imagine a situation in which the fleet manager at your company comes to you and says that they are struggling with staying on top of compliance issues and making sure that drivers are safe and efficient. If you have a more bureaucratic style, you might provide that manager with a list of requirements for drivers and ensure that the manager in turn reports to you regarding compliance, safety, efficiency, and costs. This stable, systematic approach can help ensure consistency, but it does have the disadvantage of disempowering employees and possibly lowering morale.
As a more democratic leader, you might sit down with your fleet manager and try to assess their needs and the needs of their drivers. Together, the two of you might decide that the best way to address this issue is by purchasing GPS fleet tracking software that can help automate many of these tasks and provide useful data. Working with people to find out what they need can mean more loyal employees although you can sometimes get bogged down in an inefficient and ultimately futile effort to achieve consensus.
Charisma and Transformation
The primary strength of some leaders is their ability to inspire others. Charisma means that you are good at motivating people while a transformational style takes that a step further and looks at ways to innovate. Both of these styles are about developing others’ abilities and careers. However, you do have to guard against getting over-focused on inspiration and transformation and losing track of the concrete day-to-day tasks. You should also be aware that some industries are more welcoming of innovation than others.
Hands Off
If you like to give your teams the tools they need to do the job and then step back, you may be a hands-off leader. Like the charismatic and transformational leader, you believe strongly in the autonomy of your employees, and value internal communication trends as a necessary tool, but you may be less given to putting yourself at the center of it. One advantage of this approach is that you can really give people a chance to shine with their own talents. The disadvantage is that under this kind of leadership, some can become directionless.
Transactional
Maybe you think about the workplace in a very concrete way, using rewards instead of words and vision to inspire and penalties to discourage undesirable behavior. This transactional approach can be straightforward and generally means employees feel that expectations are clear, but it can also mean that people are less inclined to come up with creative solutions or go the extra mile.
If you liked this article, click here for a similar article.