What kind of leader are you?

Changemaker
10 March 2024

You launch a product and it fails. As a leader, how do you solve this problem?

Before you opt out of this edition of Life fully loved by saying you’re not a leader because you’re not senior enough OR you don’t have direct reports, let’s get clear on the definition of a leader.

Leaders coach, guide, and inspire others to achieve goals. It’s not a title but a way of thinking and behaving. The best leaders recognize their own power and use it to empower others.

Start with the premise today: you’re a leader.

Today’s Leadership

Leaders take many forms. You’ll find reams of information on leadership by taking only a cursory look. However, with all that information, a gap still remains: who you are informs what type of leadership style you adopt.

It’s easy to look externally at leadership trends, deciding which traits you want to emulate – or discard. Following a leadership model you like can bring comfort that you’re on the right track.

It’s harder to look within to identify what motivates you intrinsically. Saboteurs will tell you, “What if you’re ‘wrong?’ Do you think real leaders think and behave like you?” Easier to offload that internal examination, especially when those voices get loud.

Societally, I see a leadership narrative that seems narrower that human experience shows us as true. Certainly, I can report that as a former HR professional and now as a leadership coach, I have seen a spectrum of successful leadership behaviours from collaborative to independent.

Types of Leaders

I encourage spending less time fitting into a leadership mould and more time letting your natural leadership style develop, recognizing that you – and others – are perfectly adaptable. Humans are designed for adaptation, in fact!

Suppose you have an analytical stye of leadership. Returning to the topic at hand, the product launch and failure, you approach it with discipline. You are exacting in setting standards, skeptical, and calculating, so you want all the answers regarding why the product failed before taking further action. Is this the right approach to solve this problem? The answer requires further context.

Leadership Style vs. Approach

As a leader, you may need to adopt a different approach based on the nature of the product, your industry, and the people on your team.

Perhaps you need to be a scholar with a high level of technical expertise to dig deep and understand a flaw within the product itself. Or perhaps you need to be an adapter who changes the product strategy to suit the currently understood marketplace.

Now layer in your team. What are their strengths? If you have a cheerleader on your team already, perhaps you don’t need to focus on building internal morale as much after the product failure. Or, if you have guardians on your team, you know they’ll do the right thing and will follow your plan because they respect and seek direction.

Bottom Line

The world needs leadership and it comes in many forms. Find yours. Don’t get stuck in a model that doesn’t serve you. Create your own.

You are a leader in one or more aspects of your life: at work or school, as a parent or friend … even as a pet-owner.

The best way to build your leadership capacity is to feel empowered. You get it by developing self-awareness, identifying what’s important to you, and leading with your strengths. Once you feel empowered, you can empower others to find what fulfils them, to encourage them to use their talents as they were intended so they too may enjoy a meaningful life.

Header Photo by Mathias Jensen on Unsplash

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