Learning to be a new leader is hard work. Part of leadership development is learning what kind of leadership style you will adopt. There is some trial and error and adapting as a new leader so that you do not end up with a leadership style failure. Here are my confessions as a former pacesetting leadership style of Manager.
In my first year as a leader, I settled in a a pacesetting leadership style. Read on below what these different leadership styles are all about and why this leadership style did not work well in the long run.
The different leadership styles
Democratic Leadership
The input of each individual member is considered in decision making with this leadership style. The final decision is that of the leader, but others have a voice.
The great thing about this leadership style is the level of buy-in from the rest of the team when a decision is made. The rest of the staff feel more empowered to speak up.
The downside of this leadership style is the time it can take to solicit input from your team. The rest of the team can also feel put out if you do not go with the team consensus on a decision because you do not agree that it is the best course of action.
Strategic Leadership
This position is about aligning the team with the strategic direction of the company. Decisions are made with the big picture in mind.
This leader will motivate others to also align with the company’s vision. They know their team and are able to anticipate issues and positively challenge their team.
The team perception of this leader putting the company and its interests first – rather than individual team members – is a challenge to navigate. This leader must demonstrate that they still care about the individuals, while making decisions in the best interest of the organization.
Authentic Leadership
This leader values building their team through their authenticity, which in turn buys leadership legitimacy, and builds followership. They have honest relationship with each member of the team and as a collective. This leader values everyone’s opinions. An authentic leader also has a high level of self-awareness of their own strengths and weaknesses.
Autocratic Leadership
Essentially this is the opposite for a Democratic leader. Each decision is made without the buy-in or consultation with the rest of the team. These decision makers rely on their experience and judgement alone.
The only real benefit of this authoritarian style is the speed in which decisions can be made. The downsides are numerous – but the main reason is that you are not going to have an empowered staff.
Transformational Leadership
The theory of this leadership style at its core is to turn followers in to future leaders. This is achieved by empowering the team for collaborative goal setting and transferring some power and decision making to the team.
This is amazing for developing leaders behind you. One thing that has to be carefully considered is hiring the right people so that you can develop them. You also have to be careful that others do not perceive this as favoritism.
Transactional Leadership
This is a give and take type of leadership with rewards tied to results. Incentives, such as bonuses, are a common example tied to transactional leadership.
The issue with this is that staff may not think outside of the box to pursue a new course of action, because there may be no reward tied to it.
Laissez-Faire Leadership
This leadership style places a lot of emphasis on the employees making the decision and the leader getting involved only when they need to. They trust the capabilities of their team.
There may be open working hours with this type of leader or low amounts of official company policy. For this type of leadership to be successful, the team has to already have well developed capabilities and passion for what they do.
In a large organization, this unstructured formula may not yield the team dynamics for results. It may also limit the growth opportunities on the team because it does not yield high productivity.
Coaching Leadership
This highly effective leadership style focuses on identifying the individual strengths of each member of the team and helping them grow.
A leader can be strategic when building their team in the recruitment process so that there is a great balance of skill set on their team. They also focus on creating harmony within the group to focus on teamwork. There is also the bonus of team members helping each other grow by proving feedback on what a coworker can do to improve or learn a new skill.
Bureaucratic Leadership
This type of leader does not see shades of grey, everything is black and white. If there is a novel idea, it may easily be rejected by this type of leader because it is untested. In other words, my most loathed phrase, “this is what we have always done”.
You may see this type of resistance at an older, established company that would rather stay the course. Investing in unknown strategies may not be worth the effort or money for this type of leader.
The weakness of this type of leader is that there is little room for growth, or drastically changing with the times or responding to changing customer needs.
Pace-setting Leadership
This leader sets high standards for each member of the team. There is a focus on process improvement, and expects other members of the team to keep up with their pace. “Lead by example” is the mantra, and they would not ask anyone to do what they would not do themselves
This type of leadership is great for quickly realigning teams and achieving quick results. The pace for the team is unsustainable and can lower morale on the team when people get burned out or feel like failures that cannot keep up.
The leadership style I landed on as a new manager
As a high achiever, I rose through the ranks quickly. I am constantly taking courses (you may notice this sometimes as I have a theme to a few back to back posts). This is why the pacesetting leadership style as a new Manager appealed to me.
With my desire to do well and work hard, I was able to implement process improvements that were beneficial to my team and organization.
When people ask how I am able to juggle so much activity, I respond that I have the same amount of time as everyone else in the day. It’s how I choose to use it.
This attitude has lead to me to adopt aspects of a Pace-setting leadership style. Since I rose through the ranks, I used to do the same job as my subordinates. I could meet the challenges and deadlines of that role – why can’t they?
My team was able to complete many action plans that I put in to place. I had a clear vision of where I wanted to go as a team. While I did not get a lot of push back from the rest of the team, most likely because I was supporting them to get to those goals.
I thought I was being a super Manager – look at all of the accomplishments in my first year! But this was not a leadership style for the long run.
The challenges of this Pace-setting style of leadership as a new Manager
It’s not sustainable in the long run.
You can not spend your entire job rescuing others and bringing them up to your standards. I advocate strongly for mentorship, but doing someone’s work and inspiring them to bring their work quality up are different things.
I found myself feeling very stretched to complete my own new tasks, because I had a revolving door of people coming through my office who needed support for their own action items.
Why I changed my leadership style – for the better!
I realized that I was starting to feel burned out. Yes, it was an awesome feeling to present a slide deck to the senior leadership about all of the tasks we had completed. But it couldn’t continue the way it was. This pacesetting style of leadership as a Manager couldn’t continue
Fortunately, we had completed the action items with the immediate issues and adjustments to meet the needs of our customers. We could afford to slow down.
Plus, with working closely with the each individual team member, I knew their strengths and weaknesses and could adjust the team plan going forward to take these skills in to account.
The adjusted leadership style – a happy mix!
The Pace-setting leadership style was great for the quick results that my team needed to align our team for what the customers needed. But it wasn’t sustainable for the long term.
I was able to take a step back and adjust back as an equilibrium to more of a Democratic and Coaching leadership.
The Democratic leadership felt natural as a leadership style because I value the insights of the team. It also makes them feel more empowered and in control of their own destiny by having a Manager that will act on their suggestion.
The coaching leadership helped me support others in how they could do it themselves. I knew my team well by this time and identified their strengths. Using this information, was able to figure out how I could support and encourage them to improve. I like putting thought in to the configuration of people for smaller team projects and how each of them can compliment the other for their skills set.
Read about How to Write Interview Questions to Find Great Employees sot that you can have a great team too!
Looking back, the pace-setting leadership as a new Manager allowed me to quickly learn about the strengths of each person on my team, as well as what motivated them.
I was also able to achieve quick results, which were visible to the rest of the team. This helped the team recognize me as a leader that got results.
I have also realized that not everyone works the same as I do – and it’s unfair to expect everyone to perform with the same pace and intensity that I do. There is a sustainable balance now to my leadership style.