A great leader is one who knows adopt the most appropriate leadership style for each situation, each context, and each person or group of persons and for each organization.
Last weekend I had the opportunity to teach a module of leadership within a certification program executive coaching. During intense weekend lived, arose the question that has haunted me every year on my experience as a trainer in leadership: What leadership style is more effective?
To this question, I have been giving you different answers over the years. Conditioned responses by reading on the subject, the trends of the time that the top of a new leadership ethyl claimed to be the final and the business environment around me.
Each answer invited me to a new reflection and further research on the subject. The examples he saw around me were very different and there was a common pattern to give me the key to success as a leader.
Since the first studies of the University of Iowa, back in the 30s, who spoke of the authoritarian leader, democratic and liberal, we turn to the styles of leadership known as managerial, support, participative and achievement – oriented.
More recently, it begins to speak of charismatic leadership, transformational, transactional and authentic leadership. Therefore, they have appeared on stage one after another, different leadership styles, which in many cases had nothing to do with each other. Today we talk about 10 styles of leadership in organizations:
- Leadership Autocratic
- Bureaucratic Leadership
- Charismatic leadership
- Participatory and democratic Leadership
- Leadership Laissez-faire
- People – oriented Leadership
- Natural Leadership
- Task – oriented leadership
- Transactional Leadership
- Transformational Leadership
Leadership is an inexhaustible source of study and analysis due to the important weight that the performance improvement in organizations and in achieving its objectives and results. Hence, they continue to emerge new classes and types of leadership com COACH leader, mentor or leader quiet leader.
Assuming that no person is the same, they have different needs and motivations, both teams as people go through different stages of development and are immersed in a context of constant change, increasingly considered the most successful model of leadership Kenneth situational. According to him, the most effective leadership style is one that suits the collaborators in every situation, i.e. adequate leadership to the team’s needs.
Situational leadership is based on maintaining a balance between two types of behavior that exerts a leader in matching the level of development of his team.
1) Behavior management
- Define the functions and tasks of subordinates
- Notes that, how and when to perform them
- Controls the results
2) Behavior of support
- Focused on the development of the group
- Encourage participation in decision-making
- The cohesion supports and motivates the group
The leader can use both types of behavior more or less resulting in four styles of situational leadership:
Those who believe in the development of people and we want to achieve good results we know that the key to harmonizing those interests exercise proper leadership in every context, every person, and every situation. Therefore, leaders must be vigilant at all times to all that happens around us, detecting changes, movements, and emotions experienced by our partners.
The difficulty of many leaders is precisely here, in adapting your leadership, style to the situations they face in having to move from a leadership style to another and the inability to see that your leadership style that worked, now it does not work. When they reach a coaching process, what they convey me sometimes and what I perceive others is that they have role conflicts, which come from a very authoritarian organizational culture and move to a more people – oriented. They do not know when to lead and when to lead, there have been changes in equipment and know how to adapt your leadership style or have a style so assumed they believe change is to stop being themselves.
My mission as COACH in these cases is to accompany them in the search for true leadership to connect with your personal essence and purpose of leadership and help them see with other eyes around, turning their collaborators in their greatest allies. We worked on strengths and behaviors, balancing what the leader needs to do as a person and what you need to do in their leadership role, so that there is no conflict between the two dimensions and that the leader has resources and tools to solve it may arise at all times. In addition, it all begins by facilitating a process of active listening into themselves and out around them, paying particular attention to what his team needed.
It is understood that the best leader is the one who adopts different behaviors as required by each situation and that this does not mean being a different person, or lose their personal style, it just comes to play different roles directed by the person who interprets and not by the environment or by the organization or by others.
It is that, as leaders become creators of talks, conversations with themselves, conversations with colleagues and other stakeholders around him. Just talking can a leader know what the situation is, what are the needs, what it is the resources that account, which is what is required and what is the level of commitment of its people only then can draw the right direction.
The most important thing should never forget a leader is that, whatever the leadership style adopted at all times, always has to be supported on the pillars of leadership: AUTHENTICITY, INTEGRITY, CONSISTENCY, HUMILITY, EXAMPLE AND CREATION OF NEW LEADERS.
Developing the power to achieve the vision
The power is inherent in the leadership. Leadership without power is a devalued leadership. The power is the fuel of leadership. Leadership and power imply one another. Leadership and power are inextricably linked: one cannot exist without the other. Power is the foundation of any form of leadership. Without power, there is no leadership, but exercise leadership that is based on an alienated power, is dangerous and destructive; It is the negation of leadership.
For the leader power is a way to achieve the objectives and achieve the vision; a force to change the surrounding environment; a means to obtain what the leader intends to achieve or accomplish in the exercise of his leadership.
That power of the leader to change the surrounding environment is not given by the position or the organizational hierarchy, or its legal investiture. It is not a matter of charges, appointments or titles. Nor is it a matter of methodologies and tools. The exercise of power is more focused on the personality and not in the art. Power is deeply personal. It is more a matter of character and skill. It has to do with the leader’s ability to respond to the challenges of reality. It is related to the ability of the leader to face reality, decipher and transform it.
The power, then, is a leader’s ability is not a force or status that is given from the outside. About HB Karp says: “Power is an intrapersonal skill.” Said author adds: “The ability to power is internal and is not subject to external influences.”
Warren Bennis says: “Power is the basic energy needed to start and continue an action … the ability to translate intention into reality and continue”. Likewise, Manuel Barroso expressed that power “is energy moving toward defined goals.” This ability to mobilize owns energy towards personal and organizational goals and visions, is a skill that cannot miss in the exercise of leadership.
Power is energy, passion, inspiration, determination of the will, enthusiasm and belief in the leader; but that power is channeled and expressed effectively requires a way that structure and allows channeling; that way is leadership. Moreover, you also need a sense of direction that allows you to focus and achieve effectiveness; this direction is provided by the vision.
The leader’s power emanates from the vision
A leader’s power is evident in the ability to turn this vision into reality, so power needs to always have a place in the leader’s vision. Moreover, the vision empowers the leader and empowered it has the capacity to translate vision into reality. Power and vision are closely related and related to leadership. Warren Bennis illustrated with the following sentence: “The vision is the commercial product of the leaders, and power is money”.
Spitzer Dean says: “The key has always been dual leadership: direction and energy. Leadership is a vector; You must have both direction and energy.” In addition, both dimensions are needed to achieve the vision and goals of the organization. Without energy, strategy, even successful, it loses effectiveness. The address is sterile without energy, and energy is directionless chaos. The view has the virtue of producing much energy (passion, enthusiasm, inspiration) and address (a north, a compass).
Learning to use the power to lead, that is, generate influence to get results based on paths and shared objectives, requires learning to use the capacity to mobilize own energy toward a vision and defined objectives, in order to transform the environment.
Some leaders have disabled the ability of power. Often the leaders end problems, sabotaging the expression on his ability to get what they propose. One of the strongest reasons why leaders disempowered is the lack of a clear vision.
No vision cannot focus on the power, without vision it dissipates power, lacking a direction in which channeled. The power then flows from the vision. Without vision, the power is diluted, or even worse, stagnates for lack of a guide and move north to where. On the contrary, the power becomes the leading power and continues to take actions that lead to the achievement of the objectives, when there is a vision that provides direction to power and facilitates their approach. Progress in achieving the vision is the factor that measures the degree of power that a leader plays.
The power is expressed when it is extended and channels the energy of the leader towards defined objectives. The lack of vision disempowers the leader, wears it because it deprives a compass to channel development and expression of their potential: energy, talents, abilities, personality, etc., which are the basis of their power.
Without vision power is energy in power but in a static state. Without vision power is a latent force, but without the ability to generate changes and transformations. On the contrary, the vision empowers, inspires, energizes; action mobilizes all domestic remedies leader; It provides a channel for the power to express it.
Empowers the leader’s vision, because the vision focuses on the leader, and there is tremendous power in a focused life. The vision empowers the leader and empowered it has the capacity to translate vision into reality. The vision is also one of the most effective tools available to the leader to empower the organization. Joseph Quigley so aptly defines the power of a leader as “their ability to turn a vision and values that support and sustain it actually.” To the extent that the exercise of power by the leader inspires in others the scope of the vision and objectives of the organization, its leading position expands and strengthens.