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Is Your Leadership Style Right For These Times?
By Marsha Lindquist

Maybe leadership isn't a question that you want to ask yourself.  When business is healthy, it may be inertia that simply makes it go well. It may be you're your company provides the right stuff at the right time at the right price.  More likely, it was your personal influence on the direction of the organization and your style that made the difference.  If you are the kind of person who wonders why things in your organization are not going the way you want them to, perhaps it's time to look no further than yourself.  A good look in the mirror at your leadership style will give you a start at the answers. 

Simplistically, there are three types of leadership styles.  Each one of them has a place in your organization at the right time. That's the key to this discussion.  Each leadership style is useful and beneficial to your organization, but if any leadership style at the wrong time can result in disaster rather than success.  To take a fresh start, begin by understanding the differences and appreciating the right attitude for your situation.  Go grab a notepad - let's take some notes.

 Marsha Lindquist’s Three Leadership Styles: Styles For The Right Time

 1. Involver -  Engaging leadership manner requires letting go
 2. Developer  - Innovative leadership challenger with vision for the possibilities
 3. Tyrannical -  Forceful leadership approach with dramatic results

Involver
The involver leader makes the most of her engaging manner and encourages the employees to make routine decisions.  These leaders are usually team builders and want to move their organizations by building relationships and leaving the everyday decision-making to those who are best at it.  Using this leadership style involves participating in the direction of the company without making day-to-day choices.  As an involver, you make important strategic decisions that guide the company's direction. You do it based on information you receive from your employees.  You leave the implementation up to your managers.  You give free rein to the employees to "make it happen" so long as they stay within budget and attain their strategic goals.  Some have an overused word for this: empowerment - I prefer to call this mature operation.  It presumes you've hired established, quality people with the confidence to make decisions that will advance the company.

This person who uses this style emphasizes honesty and directness.   While the leader expects the group to take responsibility, they make sure the organization's expectations are achieved. She is a believer in the powerful force of the group effort.

This style can be somewhat disconcerting to some of your staff if they have neither operated under such a leadership style before, or if this is a dramatic change from what you have demonstrated before.  This style requires letting go in an operational sense but also requires you to set specific strategies. 

Developer
The developer is an innovative challenger with vision for the possibilities.  She demonstrates what is possible and works to make the environment in which the company operates a better place.  This type of leader already has an ongoing, successful operation and can devote time to change the environment or the company's impact on it.   The company can continue operating successfully within its well-defined strategic vision. 

 The leader who uses this style will find great demands on her time.  This mode defies the standard and requires the person be willing and confident to depart from what has passed before.  It requires the leader employ "outside the box" thinking and operating. This leader must apply tremendous resistance to being pulled back into the organization's operational travails.  A developer is also an innovator. These influential people are vital not only to the health of their organization but other organizations and leaders who relate to them.  They view things from a new perspective and are not bound by tradition.  Because they test other leaders' innovative thinking, they keep their own organizations from becoming endangered species.

With this leadership style, the world as well as the company sees the benefits of the leader's creative efforts.  This is where business-changing advancement happens.  Watch out for the results.  Your peers will respect you, your company employees will admire you, and the environment in which you do business will dramatically change.   These people are consummate visionaries and extremely capable of influencing others.

 Tyrannical
This leadership style is a forceful one with which, when employed, you should expect dramatic results.  Keep in mind when you exercise this leadership style, that the results will likely be shocking and can have a major impact on the people, the organization, and your competition. 

 There are several elements to keep in mind when using the tyrannical leadership style.  When you employ this powerful approach you assume the entire responsibility for your actions.  You own it all.     It is one which you use for a short period of time only and it must be used with surprise. It is an approach which can be used for turnaround situations or where drastic measures are important to changing the direction of the company.  It is the antithesis of complacency.  It will require you to make some significant business changes - potentially cutting positions, making functional changes, and operating autocratically.  It is sometimes required to stop financial bleeding or a quick downward spiral that some organizations find themselves in today.  It can be used for a business that needs to change quickly - movement may be more important rather than accuracy of the decisions.    Tyrannical leaders rely heavily on rules and orders, typically in writing.   While they tend to be fair and impartial, their style is very impersonal and can be disconcerting to those for whom the organization has run differently.  This leader typically knows a strong way to accomplish the objectives.

 Recognize that this style will arouse aggression and cause pain.  As the leader, some of the aggression will be directed at you.  It doesn't mean you should or can avoid it. Sometimes, no action can also create the same reaction, particularly when people are looking to you for a change in direction. 

 When you are trying to find out what seems to be broken in your business, it is important to first look at yourself.  Utilizing the right type of leadership style, requires a strong person who has the fortitude to look in the mirror and see what is right for the organization at that time.  What worked for you in your last company may not be the right answer. You change and so does each company's needs. What you're comfortable employing may also not be the correct choice.  Getting outside what you feel secure doing is challenging and unsettling but may be exactly what the organization needs.   Be sensitive to the demands of your environment and recognize that you may need to change to transform the company. 

 About the Author
Marsha Lindquist, a business strategist for over 15 years, draws on her proven “down in the trenches” experience, creativity, and participative manner to provide real solutions to businesses to assist them in building and growing their businesses. She is an energetic presenter and is also the Chief Executive Officer of The Management Link, Inc. As well as being the author of Why Are You Still Working Your A** Off, she has written and published several professional journal articles on business strategy and negotiations.  She can be reached by e-mail at Marsha@MarshaLindquist.com or through her website at www.StraightBusinessTalk.com.

Marsha Lindquist
Marsha@MarshaLindquist.com
www.MarshaLindquist.com
480-473-9977