How to find your Leadership Style

An article on finding your leadership style from wikiHow:

Leadership has about as many definitions as it has people to define it. Once thing, however, is certain - it does not come in a one-size-fits-all package. Leadership styles vary and each is as good as the other, provided that you know your style and are able to draw on its strengths to motivate and lead your team. The ultimate aim is to both understand your own leadership leanings and to draw on the other styles as well.

Steps

1. Think about how you approach leading others. Do you jump right in and show others how it's to be done before standing back and letting them try? Do you stand back and encourage with praise and subtle correction? Or, do you like to be seen in the midst of your team working through things at the same time? Here are three distinct styles that are fairly typical (noting that everyone has overlapping shades of styles and unique approaches):

• Front end leader: This leadership style involves demonstrating how something is done and requesting others to follow the lead. It is a dominant style of leadership.
• Supporting leader: This leadership style involves patiently waiting for others to give things a go, and giving them praise for getting it right and gently redirecting any errors in the process. This is an intuitive, trusting style of leadership.
• Interactive leader: This leadership style involves mucking in with the group and learning together. You learn and err together, while you still take responsibility for showing, guiding, and supporting. This is a sharing style of leadership.

2. Relate your leadership style to your dominant personality traits. Can you see the linkages now? This is not about finding a negative relationship between your personality traits and leadership abilities; rather, it is about informing yourself as to what parts of your personality style you tend to rely on when leading. And if you feel that any of your personality traits might be holding up your full leadership potential, understanding this provides you with the opportunity for improving your leadership skills in weaker areas through training, up-skilling and focusing.

3. Match your leadership style to the job, activity, or project. It makes sense to select leadership opportunities that will benefit the most from your principal leadership style. For example, if you are excellent with a hands-on approach to leadership, you will enjoy work where structure and process matters. If you're a high achiever who stands out the front at all times, you are likely to be a great leader in situations of change and uncertainty, where vision and a thick skin are required all of the time. If you're easygoing and enjoy motivating people through support, you are likely to be better in a setting of professionals, academics, and others who already know their work inside out but need to be brought together skilfully.

4. Challenge yourself sometimes. Take time to try on some of the traits of a different leadership style to see if you can incorporate these successfully to your own leadership style. This doesn't mean suddenly changing your approach and surprising everyone mid-stream; it is simply about seeing whether you can benefit from other elements of leadership to strengthen your own qualities.

Tips

First, don't fall for the "leaders are born" adage. While some people are naturally able to lead, it is a skill that can be learned provided it interests you. Equally, some people don't like to be in a position of leadership responsibility but can still influence subtly by way of demonstrating through doing what they're best at, thereby inspiring without actively motivating. It is also important to remember that you might be excellent at leading in one thing that you're passionate about but lukewarm about any other type of leadership role; that's fine too and can still lead to an amazing role in life!

Second, keep in mind that most exceptional leaders come to a cross roads in which they discover the curse of knowledge. As you develop as a leader you will learn a great deal about the particular function that you are in within your organization. As you move up, you become more competent in that discipline. There will be an inflection point in your career where that knowledge of the discipline becomes a curse or barrier to your progress. This is because you will need to lead people in which you have know knowledge or little knowledge of what they do for the organization. If you continue to lead as you did previously, by being the expert and all knowing leader you will likely fail. At this point you should look to adapt the Just Ask Leadership strategy to your given style.

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