Can you become a better leader by changing your

leadership style?By David Kiger

Image courtesy of Leaderlab - Driving Transformational Change at Flickr.com

There are many types of leadership styles, but being able to know which one to use and when it’s necessary to change is the trait of a true leader. Understanding that we may need to improve our way of handling certain situations may come at the cost of failure. Unfortunately, we don’t always learn from our successes, but we do on the other hand learn, or at least try to cope with failures and get our heads around what needs to be changed and what we can do to change them. Out of these leadership styles that are different ones like: Autocratic, Paternalistic, Democratic, and Laissez-Faire. But there are different theories out there that explore if it is possible for leaders to adapt their leadership style based on situations occurring at their companies. Some believe that leaders are set in their ways and that it is very difficult for them to change or modify their behaviors and relationships. Others, on the other hand, don’t agree with this and state that leaders can change if they are put in the situation where they must. Can being a situational leader make you a better overall leader? Well, it can definitely help out for such a changing world.

An autocratic leader is the one that makes it known his way is the only way to get things done. In this kind of company employees will expect to receive orders and do not expect to think for themselves. Here is where this type of leader will find himself in a tight spot when trying to find a second to replace him at some point. An autocratic leader can change his or her style by looking for opportunities where they avoid giving orders and give their employees the chance to think for themselves. This opens the door to positive feedback and constructive criticism, where employees can grow professionally and find advisers, not only with superiors but all employees. By creating these spaces your company will find itself with a board that can be a soundboard for ideas and find new ways of dealing with problems and situations in the company.

A paternalistic leader will listen to his or her employees like a parent, but at the end will make all the decisions on his own. The decision is made almost dictatorially, and he will find himself with employees that don’t take risks, in a comfort zone where their “parent” makes all the decisions. They will focus all their energy on being right, instead of thinking outside the box and making decisions that may be risky, but will be well worth it. Although, they may seem a lot more pleasant and easy going than autocrats, but at the end it will be quite the same since the decision will always come down to the leader and not their team. In his case, the idea would be to get them to listen before they act, to consider the opinions and ideas of their team.

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In a bit more different leadership style, the democratic leader may seem like a great option to all the participants of the company, but it may not all be as great as people think. Here the leader will depend on a committee to make decisions, which will have a big drawback which is the time that it takes to make decisions and even may lead to not being able to make decisions at all. A democratic leader to change his or her style, will have to recognize the situations where democracy may not rule, but instead you as a leader have to make decisions and act on what you think is the best decision. Even more importantly this should be tried especially in the times of urgency, where your company may not have the luxury of waiting on a decision to be made by the committee.

The Laissez-faire leader will hand off almost all of their power to employees, which at the end will empower their employees, which is good, but also generates sometimes quite the opposite. In this case you will run across employees that are in desperate need of direction. In this kind of leadership style will find themselves with a few inconveniences like employees lacking clear objectives, all working for different goals and in this way taking the company in different directions. This will most likely take their employees to a point of indifference that will affect the company and its profits. This kind of leader will need to become part of the solution by after asking their employees to solve the problem, but they should follow up a few days or weeks later to stay involved. By staying in touch with the process they demonstrate that they are leaders of the process, not only spectators on the sidelines.

All in all, it’s important to identify your leadership style, assess your team’s needs, adjust our style based on your team’s needs, finally revisit and reassess to make sure the leadership style still agrees with the current state of the company and the team.

Image courtesy of thinkpublic at Flickr.com