How to Find Your Leadership Style

culled from:wikihow.com

Leadership doesn't come in a one-size-fits-all package. Leadership styles vary and each are as good as the other, provided that you know your style and draw on its strengths to motivate, enthuse, 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

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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.

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   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.
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   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.
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   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.