Most leaders can describe their leadership style. But far fewer can explain its impact on the people around them...
Knowing your style is powerful because it shapes how you support and influence others every day. Many of the execs Insights works with are confidently self-aware and looking to sharpen or expand that style to get even better results with their teams.
But there’s a whole other cohort of less confident leaders who are just beginning to explore their style. These leaders may not understand how their style is experienced by others, and how to improve that experience.
Why awareness matters when it comes to leadership styles
Many workplace challenges, from disengagement and talent attrition to interpersonal conflict, can often trace back to one root cause: Leaders who don’t grasp their style or the ripple effect it creates.
The good news? Recognising these dynamics is a natural, even healthy, stage in becoming a better leader. Every leader reaches this stage at some point, regardless of seniority.
What matters is how that awareness is activated to unlock the next step in each person's leadership development.
Confident leadership starts with understanding your leadership style
Unless you’re gifted with extraordinary charm and the ability to win the support of every personality in every interaction you have, there’s plenty on this subject we can learn.
Wherever you work, your default leadership style will affect:
- How you motivate and support others: Whether colleagues feel encouraged to give their best, even on difficult days. And how supported they feel when facing challenges.
- How you handle difficult dynamics: From navigating conflict with peers and partners to creating space for others to raise hard issues and feel heard.
- How you guide work and decisions: The degree of freedom or direction you give, the trust people place in your choices. This also includes whether they believe those decisions serve them and the business.
- How you inspire commitment: Whether colleagues want to stay, contribute, and work towards your vision for the organisation.
When you understand your leadership style (which means understanding your personality preferences and communication style, but we’ll get there), you’re better placed to build trust and genuine engagement with colleagues.
That awareness also helps create the psychological safety teams need to take risks and contribute openly. It also enables you to adapt your communication so your approach connects with a variety of personalities. With this flexibility, you can manage conflict more constructively, strengthen collaboration and navigate the diverse cultural and generational work styles present in today’s workplaces.
How to learn your leadership style
Your values, preferences and communication style all influence your leadership style. Self-awareness is the key to understanding these influences and to recognising how your dominant style makes others feel. That is why every effective leadership development programme begins with self-awareness.
For instance, are you someone who values:
- Straight-talking, defining visions and goals, quick results, being in control? (‘Thinking’ style)
- Practicality, logic, attention to detail and accurate communication? (‘Thinking’ style)
- Regular opportunities for collaboration, creativity and free thinking? (‘Feeling’ style)
- Consultation and feedback, nurturing others, fairness, avoiding conflict? (‘Feeling’ style)
These preferences point to different ways of leading. When viewed through the Insights Discovery colour energy model, they align with four broad personality types: Cool Blue, Fiery Red, Sunshine Yellow and Earth Green.
While you carry all four energies within you, most people lead with one or two dominant styles. Those are the styles that shape how others experience you as a leader.
All leaders can work on adapting their behaviour to show more or less of a certain colour energy. There’s no right or wrong colour energy, and no one approach is better or more effective than another. Different situations call for different leadership. Understanding more about the colleagues we’re leading, as well as increasing our own self-awareness, is fundamental to knowing when to dial a certain behaviour and colour energy up or down.
This agility is key to building productive and collaborative working relationships, and it's critical to motivating and mobilising others.
From decades of work with leaders, we know that the most effective have the ability to switch between a myriad of different leadership styles. They assess the issues and the needs of their people and adapt their approach to the person, the situation, changing environments and shifting goal posts.
Understanding the four colour energies
The four colour energies can show up differently depending on the situation. Here’s how they might look on a good day versus a bad day:
The Insights Discovery programme helps professionals to understand their values and behavioural preferences based on this model. If professionals progress to the Leadership Effectiveness programme, they can apply what they learn about the four colour energies to various leadership situations.
Here, they can also learn whether they favour one of four types of leadership:
Results leadership
The person who leads with this style is about ‘getting things done’. These leaders sustain commitment from start to finish, driving work from initiation through to completion. They focus strongly on the ‘Thinking’ function, being objective and rigorous in rationalising problems and challenges.
Tip: remember that sharp focus, logical thinking and formality may matter more to others than to you.
Visionary leadership
This intuitive leader sees possibilities and applies creative foresight. Often a pioneer, they lead by communicating a compelling vision. They’re more likely to draw on extraverted energies and look outwards to their environment, led by the ‘Feeling’ function.
Tip: if this is you, remember that not everyone favours directness or brevity. Consider your human impact.
Relationship leadership
These leaders favour creating community, cultivating collaboration and realising the potential of individuals and groups. They draw strongly on the ‘Feeling’ function, where consideration of others is central to all interactions.
Tip: not everyone has your level of patience, compassion or desire to engage everyone at all stages.
Centred leadership
This ‘Thinking’ leader is centred and grounded in the here and now. They nurture self-worth and have strong personal values and integrity. They tend to draw on introverted energy, focusing inward on thoughts and motivations, and drawing on past experiences to make decisions.
Tip: Adapt the level of detail you give and demand from others. Don’t always expect them to read every line.
Why self-awareness defines great leadership
If the leaders in your organisation would benefit from digging deeper, they can progress to Insights Self-Aware Leader programme. Through the Insights Discovery Transformational Leadership profile, they explore eight additional dimensions of leadership, including how to lead change and communicate with impact.
Getting to grips with your leadership style is essential work. It matters as much as developing the technical and business skills that are usually emphasised in leadership programmes. At its core, great leadership rests on three foundations: self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and the ability to understand your impact on others.
“While 95% of people believe they’re self-aware, in reality, just 10 to 15% actually are.”
-Tasha Eurich, awareness expert
Seeing and valuing the differences among team members is a defining quality of effective leadership. Exploring both your own and others’ behavioural preferences can reveal striking gaps between how you see yourself and how others experience you.
To address these gaps with intent and confidence is to significantly improve how we lead with others and ultimately, how we do business.
Self-aware leaders are more effective at inspiring and motivating their teams than their less aware counterparts. That’s why our leadership programmes start with self-understanding; helping leaders see where they excel, where they struggle and where they’re just treading water. Once this awareness is established, we guide leaders in understanding others, enabling them to nurture talent, unify teams and lead innovative, dynamic organisations. Learn how the Insights approach to leadership can transform your organisation today.
