What is your leadership style?

Posted by Mitch McCrimmon May 10, 2007

How do you lead others? The classic leadership styles are limited because they focus mainly on how decisions are made and how direction is given. When leaders are asked how they lead, many refer to example. This means working hard and showing that you will work alongside people rather than just sit in your office. Today, setting an example also means being ethical, having integrity and being environmentally considerate. Then there is the importance of being fair, equitable and ethical in how you treat people. It is essential to communicate openly and frequently, ensure that people know what is expected of them, give them regular feedback and provide the tools and resources they need to do their jobs.

You could say that all these specific behaviors are elements of the classic participative leadership style. Such actions certainly show respect for team members. In today's knowledge driven world, team leaders are closer to their teams than were old fashioned overseers. For this reason, leadership commentators have moved away from the older three classic leadership styles of being autocratic, participative and laissez-faire to a much more fine-grained analysis where it is assumed that the leader should be broadly participative most of the time when it comes to making most work decisions. Naturally, you have to reserve staffing and pay decisions to yourself.

Because of the high level of technical or professional content in today's work, those in charge like to stay closely involved in doing the work, unlike the old fashioned assembly line supervisor. Compare being the leader of an accounting, IT, legal or HR team. This makes leading by example and being participative core leadership styles.