In the last couple of posts, I have discussed the lessons I have learned over the years regarding leadership and how leadership influences consequences. The next discussion is on developing your leadership style.
You must start with knowing yourself. Big surprise, right? Not really. This goes all the way back to Sun Tzu and The Art of War, and probably further. But to be honest, how many take the time to do this? How many leaders really know what this means or what this requires? Or worse yet, even care.
To know oneself, there are several categories of exploration you must attend to. I will discuss a few that I believe to be important but in no way represent all that can be assessed.
The first category I like to look at with leaders is values, biases, and beliefs. These are factors that drive behavior. They can also be identified and examined to evaluate the impact on your decision making and behavior.
Values alignment is important. You can fake it for a while however what you value will eventually dictate your behavior. Just as the idea that watch your thoughts as they become your words, watch your words as they become your habits, watch your habits as they become your character, values will dictate your behavior.
For example, people that value money may do unethical or illegal acts to obtain money as money is the single most important value in their life. Those that value time with their families might struggle in a job that requires a great deal of time away from their family. You must have a firm understanding of what you value and how you are going to align those values with the organization in which you work.
To address biases, use critical thinking and the Socratic Method of Questioning. I use this process to identify biases I may have on any topic: Check, Evaluate, Identify, and Challenge. Why do I think about this topic the way I do? Am I open to seeing the broader implications on this topic? Is my perspective limiting my ability to consider other perspectives? Am I actively listening to other perspectives? From what perspective am I approaching this topic. Remember, you can only see one half of a ball at a time so make sure you turn the ball. Lastly, challenge assumptions, yours, theirs, the organizations. You should be comfortable answering questions, in fact, you should welcome them. And your organization should be the same way. If they do not value your voice, you are pretty much there for the pay. If you want to make a difference, go elsewhere. You will know a leader that does not want to be challenged. They will assume a defensive posture and tone. Leaders that welcome challenge will lean into the discussion by being inquisitive on why you think the way you do.
Next is assessments. Strengths, weaknesses, blind spots, emotional intelligence, and personality to name a few.
What are your strengths and weaknesses and how do you know they are? You can do self-assessments however this provides a picture of what you think about you. For example, I have taken emotional intelligence assessments and scored high on the results. When my wife takes the same assessment but evaluating me, let’s just say the results look like they are for two different people. When I was in the military we had to fix the position of the ship. To do this we would have intersection lines of position to indicate our exact position. If the lines were close, it was an estimated position. If we used less than three lines of position it was also an estimated position. Of course, this was before GPS. But the idea of multiple lines of position in getting feedback is still applicable to leader development. This is the same idea with assessments. Your self-assessment is simply a line of position, and you could be anywhere along that line in real life. So, get input from others.
Blind spots and personality. Blind spots are areas in your leadership portfolio you did not know were there. When I had command in the military one thing that I saw people get fired for is things they did not know about happening in their command which, according to the boss, they should have known about. This constitutes a blind spot and can be very problematic in an organization. My advice for uncovering blind spots is to develop open and trusting relationships and lines of communication, empower your teams to address unacceptable behavior when it happens, and get out and engage with your people. Nothing says you care like not being there.
Knowing your personality and the personality of those around you will greatly improve your ability to connect, communicate, motivate, and engage with others. There are many different personality assessment tools out there however you also want to learn how to identify the personality of others. You can do this through observed behavioral assessments because behaviors tend to identify personality preferences. I would recommend simply understanding the four dichotomies of the Myers Briggs personality type indicator. These represent four opposite preferences such as;
Introvert – Extrovert
Sensing – Intuition
Thinking – Feeling
Judging – Perceiving
These represent significant differences in how people approach life. For example, a Thinking type relies on logic and objectivity while a Feeling type relies on emotion and value so trying to make personnel decisions for your team or your organization can cause significant conflict between these two types, and this is just one example.
Well, I hope this discussion provide some points to ponder and helps you in developing as a leader. Be sure to leave any positive comments that add to this discussion.
Leadership from my perspective 