What is Your Leadership Style?

Do you have a role model?

As a student of Leadership Styles, you must have a role model that is worth imitating. If you don’t, then please look for one.

You have to be very discerning about what you learn

In the luxury of retrospect, I can say that as a new manager or first level leader, you will be tempted to copy your role model. Without realizing, you may adopt the principle of parallelism – to be a replica of the leader you look up to…

I am of the view that:

You must have a role model.

You should be able to learn a lot from his leadership style.

However, there is a caveat–

The role model should be worth imitating but should not be imitated.

If you try to develop a style by imitating your manager, it might look flattering to him initially, but soon you will graduate into a constant irritant with no identity.

If you are trying to be a clone,

You will always be an inferior quality of clone. Interestingly, and at every level of hierarchy, the quality of the clones will deteriorate.

Don’t graduate from the School of Parallelism

I know there is another school of thought that promotes parallelism. However, I am of the opinion that it is not a good strategy. Your role model may have a force of personality that makes him successful in spite of the flaws in the personality. What has worked for him may not be sufficient for you.

You are unique,therefore, discover your own leadership style. When developing a unique leadership style, imitation is NOT the best strategy.

Unclog Your First Level Leadership Skills

When your direct reports are overwhelmed and think you aren’t doing enough to help them with their workload, it is an indication that you are missing a fundamental managerial skill.

Here are some more indications that you haven’t mastered this skill:

You look upon questions from your people as “interruptions.”

Instead of teaching your direct reports to work properly, you fix their mistakes.

You don’t take ownership of the success of your direct reports.

You keep away from their challenges and failures.

As a first level manager, you need to change your mental paradigm

You are no more an individual contributor. In order to help your direct reports, you have to pay close attention to what is getting done and how it is getting done. You have to ask questions to find out what’s getting in the way of completing daily tasks.

Don’t just take notes

The information gleaned out of these questions should be translated into a balanced feedback. Give a pat on the back frequently.

The simplest skill is – just being available

As an individual contributor you never valued this skill. Being available is more of an attitude rather than just keeping your door open. People can sense when you are approachable just by looking at your body language. Make yourself available physically and emotionally.

Finally,

Your actions should reflect your deep-rooted values and attitudes and not of someone else.

Follow these tips and you will be able to unclog your First Level Leadership skills.