Leadership Style

This week’s blog topic is my leadership style which I find very difficult to write about.  To me, leadership is such a broad topic that it’s hard to cover simply in a few sentences.  Let’s be honest, entire books have been written on the subject of leadership in thousands of different situations.  Where do you start?

I’m fortunate to have a unique advantage over my peers in that I am a former Army officer.  I have found this training and experience to give me a distinct advantage in many different situations, especially in complex, difficult and fast moving scenarios.  I have found that the people and organizational skills taught to us can be directly transferred to almost any situation in the business world.  I would in fact rate the Army’s leadership better than some of the world class companies that I have worked for.

But my background has also been caused me to be stereotyped.  For the record, I’m not a raving, foul-mouth lunatic or a blood thirsty killer.  I’m not a mindless robot that only follows orders.  I remember one interview where my potential future boss made the snide comment about how difficult can it be in the military when all you have to do is follow checklists.  I almost walked out of the interview.  Why would I want to work for someone who has no understanding or appreciation for what I’ve accomplished or what level of talent they may be receiving with my employment?

The best piece of leadership advice that I have received was that leadership is like a deck of cards.  You have to learn what cards to play and discard at the right time.  Also you can watch several games you get the idea of how to play, but until you are in the game you are not getting the full effect of the magnitude of the decisions/risks at hand.

In many ways this leads us to the four leadership styles listed in Figure 12.2 on page 288 of our text.  I personally flow mostly between the coaching, supporting and delegating styles, but I can easily fall into the directing style depending on the situation.  I have had several standardized test confirm this. 

The people that work or have worked for me comment that I let them do their job, that I give them what they need, that I put them in position to be successful.  To a large degree this to me is servant leadership, a topic that I am passionate about.  This is the skill I’d bring to my new business endeavor.

What I don’t think leadership is may be very different than what you will commonly see or expect, but this also fundamentally shapes my style.  I do not feel that energy and passion is equal to leadership.  It is part of leadership, but only a small part.  Without people skills, tenacity, technical competence or the ability to influence others a leader can have all the energy in the world, but never get a group focused on achieving the end goals.

Leadership is also not being part of a country club (a favorite term used by one of my past GM’s).  I don’t think leadership is being cool, having drinks after work to the point of inebriation, going fishing with your buddy or doing a round of golf on the weekends.  It’s very important that leaders separate work and play as this can lead to the perception of favoritism and erode the team work of the organization or worse it let’s their personal feelings interfere with what is ultimately a business decision.

Chris