How to modify your leadership style

“It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something”.
Franklin D Roosevelt

Leadership style is the characteristic approach that individuals apply to their leadership role – it is shaped by the leader’s personality preferences as well as the context within which he or she is working. There is no one ‘right’ leadership style, and leaders often use a mixture of styles depending on who they are trying to influence and what the situation demands. Which style to use is very much down to the leader’s judgement – based on what outcomes are being sought and whether the choice of style will help or hinder those outcomes. Feedback from others plays an important part here in determining the best approach – if you don’t know how successful the approach is it is difficult to make positive adjustments.

There are a number of different models which help leaders to understand more about their leadership style, including Hersey & Blanchard's Situational Leadership, McGregor's theory x and theory y, and Hay McBer's research which identified six leadership styles linked to emotional intelligence. The excellent website http://www.businessballs.com/ has details of a number of these models. In a sense it doesn't matter which model you choose, as long as it tells you more about yourself and can stimulate a dialogue with your staff about the medium to long-term impact of your behaviours as a leader on their motivation, commitment and performance.

1. The first step in modifying your leadership style is to identify your current predominant, or preferred, style. For example, when decision-making if you usually involve staff in the process, by giving them an opportunity to have a say and debate different options this would be more democratic (theory y) style. If you make decisions in isolation and then tell staff afterwards about the impact, this would be more autocratic (theory x). Of course, all of this is dependent upon the situation you find yourself in (it would not be sensible to do a lot of consultation when trying to get staff out of a burning building!) - but consider the style that you most frequently tend to adopt.
2. Now consider your behaviours and actions related to this style. Think of situations in your experience as a leader when this style was very effective. Note down as many situations as you can think of.

3. Now consider when your style has been least effective – perhaps when people didn’t respond to you in a way you had hoped, or you didn’t achieve what you’d set out to do. Think about other approaches that might have been more effective. Alternatively think of a leader that you greatly admire – and how he/she might have approached the situation.

4. Think about the next time a similar situation might occur, and what leadership style and behaviours you could try to generate a successful outcome. It might be that you have identified your least preferred style – the one you are least comfortable with. This may be because it doesn’t fit with your own personality - for example, if you are very people rather than task-focused (and being liked as a leader is important to you), you may find it difficult to be more authoritative/autocratic.

5. Write down the skills/strengths you have already that will help you to develop the style you are least comfortable with. For example, this might be a good knowledge of your area – as the leader, you are qualified and have the experience necessary to be able to tell people in a more directive way what you expect of them.

6. Think of an opportunity coming up to try out the different leadership style. This could be a team meeting or briefing or a one to one with a member of staff. It doesn’t need to be a big, important event - in fact, using a fairly non-critical situation just to test out the style, is a good start. Remember – this is about adapting your style, not trying to be a different person. It may just be down to the language that you use. For example, to move from autocratic to democratic rather than saying ‘this is what I need you to do – any problems come back to me’, try ‘this is our goal, one way of achieving it would be x, do you have any other suggestions?’.

7. Review again your approach – did you achieve the outcome you desired? How did others respond to your modified leadership style? What could you try next time? Get feedback from the team and discuss your approach with your manager, mentor or coach, to talk through the situation and identify other approaches you could try again.