Leadership

Leadership skills are critical to success. Unfortunately, however, it is easy for a leader to lose focus and end up struggling. There are many derailments that can lead a manager astray. The key is identifying the potential outcomes of complex situations and overcoming them effectively. Preventing being derailed is ensuring leadership success.

There are a few important areas that leaders need to work on when they are focusing on building their leadership skills. These include:

• Organizing (Giving attention, focus and performing problem-solving)
• Relationships (Information sharing, working with others, working as a team, being supportive, and coaching)
• Learning initiatives (Competency development and enabling the learning application)
• Emotional management (Perceiving emotional climate and the response to the emotional climate)
• Career management (Making ethical choices and performing career anchoring)

Specific Traits and Skills Needed

The line between a successful leader and a derailed leader can sometimes be very thin. Common work situations can cause a good leader to get off track. But leadership failure can fortunately be predicted and be prevented. There are a certain behaviors that can derail any leader’s career, but knowing what they are can help. There are certain traits that show the difference between a good leader and one that is derailed.

Researchers have identified the below personal traits and skills that differentiate between successful leaders and derailed leaders:

• Diversity of Experience. Having a limited range of experiences derails leaders and can create behavior challenges. A lack of experience creates issues with problem solving, working with others, learning effectively, and addressing the emotional climate of different groups. Having a diverse leadership experience brings success.
• Emotional Stability and Composure. Being emotionally volatile can derail leaders and can lead to challenges with working with others, teaming up, and having supportive coaching behaviors. Leaders need to have awareness and effective management of the emotional climate. They must be stable and calm in order to lead their team.
• Handling mistakes. Mistakes can happen, and successful leaders need to handle them with the right skills. They should not manage mistakes by blaming others, demonstrating defensiveness, and refusing to move beyond failure. Poor mistake management creates problems with working with others, learning applications, awareness of emotional issues with the team, attending to ethical challenges, and problem-solving.
• Interpersonal skills. Being insensitive to others is a large source of derailment. Manipulative and insensitive behaviors interfere with building networks, fostering cooperation, and getting the most from team members. When communicating in ways that others experience as abrasive and intimidating, the leader is unable to develop them. These behaviors affect information sharing, working relationships, coaching opportunities, feelings awareness, and emotional climate reading. Leaders must be able to have good interpersonal skills in order to ensure the team is operating effectively.
• Integrity breaches. Breaches like betraying trust, promise breaking, and being duplicitous result in behavior challenges in the ability to build and mend relationships, the ability to understand the emotional needs of others, and the ability to make choices that foster commitment from others to achieve goals. Leaders must be honest, transparent, and honorable to succeed.
• Technical and cognitive skills. While leaders often have excellent technical and intellectual abilities, if overused, these behaviors may come across as overconfident and arrogant. Overplaying behaviors can generate difficulties with problem solving, relationships, learning new skills, and career opportunities.

Learning More

Watch HRDQ’s webinar “Leadership Skills That Are Critical to Success”.  You will learn the five key behaviors that can severely limit effectiveness, what leadership skills are critical to maintain and ensure success, ways to predict and pinpoint problems that can cause career derailment, how to develop and align critical competencies, and how to create an individual personal development plan.

For more information on how to prevent leadership derailment, check out “Leadership Unlimited Profile” by HRDQ. It serves as an “early warning” leadership development tool by quickly identifying trouble spots and building the skill sets leaders and managers need to stay on track and take charge of their careers. Participants will learn how to measure key career behaviors, understand the management skills needed to maintain and ensure success, learn how to predict problems and avoid career derailment, develop and align critical competencies, and create an individual personal development plan. Click here to learn more: Leadership Unlimited Profile.

What is Leadership Style?

Leadership style is the particular way in which a person leads others. It’s best understood by measuring the extent to which a leader’s preferred behavior demonstrates assertiveness and expressiveness, which are broad categories of behavior dimensions. The combination of high/low on the assertiveness dimension and high/low on the expressiveness dimension results in four possible leadership styles: direct, spirited, systematic, and considerate.

These are the four leadership styles and their assertiveness/expressiveness levels:

1. Direct – Direct leaders have high assertiveness and low expressiveness. They tend to lead by taking charge.
2. Spirited – Spirited leaders have high assertiveness and high expressiveness. They usually lead others by inspiring them.
3. Considerate – Considerate leaders have low assertiveness and high expressiveness. They lead by building group harmony.
4. Systematic – Systematic leaders have low assertiveness and low expressiveness. They usually lead by planning carefully.

The assertiveness dimension measures the degree to which a person’s behavior is forceful or directive. Highly assertive people like to take control of situations while people with low assertiveness may be more comfortable in less visible roles. The expressiveness dimension measures the degree to which a person’s behavior is emotionally responsive or demonstrative. Highly expressive people like to show their emotions and form interpersonal relationships while less expressive people tend to keep to themselves.

Each Style’s Strengths and Weaknesses

For direct leaders, their take-charge style can pull others through. They like to compete, which may give the organization an edge over others, and they produce quick results. They are energetic, and get people moving. They also take charge no matter how challenging the situation.

The spirited leader can encourage the team when their energy begins to flag. They are big picture, vision-oriented thinkers, who are good at generating enthusiasm and rallying support. They motivate others to develop fresh, new approaches, and they are spontaneous and create a fun atmosphere.

Considerate leaders can grow team harmony with their desire to accommodate everyone. They provide others with a sense of reassurance in difficult or changing times. They are also able to build a loyal following by demonstrating their support for others. Considerate leaders recognize the importance of taking others’ views and feelings into account.

The systematic leader focuses on accuracy and objectivity. Their analytical style can be a real asset. They provide structure for activities, which usually helps tasks or projects stay on track. A systematic leader makes sure that no one overlooks the important details and makes decisions based on facts. They also have a strong orientation toward objectivity and accuracy.

Why is it Helpful to Know About Leadership Styles?

Current research shows that the most effective leaders know that their first reactions to situations may not always prove effective. They know they must make deliberate choices about their way of leading. Effective leaders first evaluate a situation, and then, depending on the specific requirements of the situation, they may deliberately choose to follow their natural inclinations, leading others in their characteristic way. Or they may choose to modify their leadership styles to suit the situation.

One leadership style isn’t necessarily better than the others, and you could have traits of more than one style. The key is to know which one you are most like, and which ones your colleagues are. If you know these things you can use your style to interact with people better.

The benefits of knowing your leadership styles include:

• Being able to work with others better
• Predicting people’s actions
• Knowing why you act the way that you do
• Seeing the bigger picture better
• Adapting to fit the situation at hand

The most effective leaders know how to make situational choices when leading, regardless of their dominant style. They may deliberately choose to follow their natural inclinations, leading others in their characteristic way, or they may choose to modify or adapt their dominant style to suit the situation. Making use of a style other than one’s dominant style is called “flexing” and is central to achieving success as a leader.

Learning More

To learn more about the benefits of leadership styles, take a look at our material HERE!

Leaders must be able to adapt to changing circumstances. Transformational leadership is an approach to leading others that causes change in individual and social systems. In its ideal form, it creates valuable and positive change with the end goal of developing followers into leaders.

Transformational leadership creates important, positive change in the workplace. It’s grounded in the belief that inspiring others to focus on the greater good produces a level of excellence that exceeds results achieved by other forms of leadership. It has many benefits, and is worth considering by everyone in a position of leadership.

Types of Leadership

Transaction leadership measures performance against set standards, focuses on short-term goals and results, enables quick decision-making offers structure and direction, and appeals to the self-interest of employees. Transformational leadership, on the other hand, builds a culture of trust and mutual respect, increases transparency and open communication, instills commitment and accountability, and propels far-reaching changes.

Individuals and organizations can be successful using transactional leadership; however, its strengths are more effective for maintaining the status quo or making incremental changes rather than creating sweeping transformations. Transformational leadership, in contrast to transactional leadership, is highly effective for accomplishing major and lasting change.

The Four Components to Transformational Leadership

James Downton originated the phrase “transformational leadership,” and James MacGregor Burns  expanded on it. He identified four core components of transformational leadership, which he called inspirational motivation, idealized influence, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration. These four components to transformational leadership are also named calling, charisma, challenge, and caring. Their definitions are below:

• Calling: Articulating a vision designed to create positive change that resonates with followers.
• Charisma: Connecting with followers through words and actions so that followers enthusiastically support the calling.
• Challenge: Encouraging followers to apply critical thinking and innovation to achieve the positive change described in the calling.
• Caring: Showing genuine concern for each individual’s needs and wants, celebrating individual accomplishments, and supporting individual growth and development.

Ways to be a Transformational Leader

In order to truly be a transformational leader, you need to carry out the four components of transformational leadership. You should identify your calling and share it with passion and purpose with others. You should be able to develop the elements of charisma and then share impactful stories with your peers and employees. You should help others engage in critical thinking and use problem solving. You should also implement ideas to encourage creativity and innovation. Finally, you should try to make personal connections with your followers and encourage their growth.

Learning More

Attend HRDQ’s webinar What Makes Great Transformational Leadership? on Sept. 12 at 2 p.m. EDT. This back-to-basics webinar focuses on the what – and the how – of effective leadership. You’ll learn to recognize the characteristics of effective leadership and behaviors that may undermine performance. More importantly, you’ll leave with a solid understanding of how best to develop both aspiring leaders and seasoned veterans.

Participants will learn how to carry out the four components of transformational leadership, identify their calling, develop the elements of charisma and share impactful stories with others, help others engage in critical thinking, implement ideas to encourage thinking outside of the box, and make personal connections with your people and encourage their growth. Watch the webinar here.

This webinar is based on research from HRDQ’s Transformational Leader, a training program that gives both newly emerging and experienced leaders and managers the tools and techniques for developing and refining their skills. This learning resource can help your organization retain employees and clients, make better decisions, and improve performance.

The Transformational Leader will walk you through the four components to transformational leadership – calling, charisma, challenge, and caring – allowing you to develop the skills and techniques required to make a real difference at your workplace and to inspire others to work toward a shared vision of positive change. View the course here!