What’s your leadership style?
Last month Entrepreneur published an interesting article that describes six different leadership styles. The styles were described by Tor Cosantino, who assessed himself as a Pacesetter, only to find out that his peers classified him as a very different type of leader, a Visionary. By the way, I really respect leaders who publicly admit when they get something wrong. The world could use a lot more leaders like that. What’s the difference between a Pacesetter and a Visionary leader? We’ll get to that. First I want to discuss the unicorn in the room – “we are not the best to measure our own leadership skills and gaps.”
This is a hard thing to accept sometimes, especially for those of us in power roles. We’re (usually) in these positions because we’re capable and good at seeing the big picture. We have a lot of experience in our business – it helps us gain perspective. But we are human. Even if we have good perspective about our business, we often are way too close to ourselves to have any perspective about our own leadership. This lack of self awareness is the downfall of many leaders.
How do we make time to get an outside perspective about our leadership style?
One thing we know about power distance is that you are very unlikely to get an honest, outside perspective unless you ask. You have to make it safe for others to give you feedback. They must feel comfortable speaking honestly, not worried that you’ll kill the messenger.
This is the only way to truly know what is happening in your organization, especially if you want to know in time to do anything about it. And it is the only way to know what type of leader your followers think you are (versus the kind of leader you think you are). On to the assessment Tor took with his team. This assessment, conducted by The Hay Group, narrows down leadership into six styles: - Directive. The “my way or the highway” leader who “seeks to gain immediate compliance, relying on the use of 'orders' rather than providing context and direction.”
- Visionary. “The Visionary provides an authoritative perspective regarding the business’ prospects, as well as why that perspective matters and how every individual can work towards making it a reality."....
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