How good leaders become great with new leadership styles

According to Insights research, the best leaders have the agility 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.

Sounds logical, but how easy is it? Are you aware of your favored style? Do you feel equipped to adapt it?

You may think that someone’s leadership style is set in stone, but actually, we can adjust how we lead. It might feel like a stretch to start behaving differently or react differently to external events, but it’s entirely doable.

Two qualities to help you lead your team

At the heart of great leadership is awareness. If a leader truly understands themselves, their strengths and their blind spots, they’ll navigate intricate challenges with more ease.

The second key to being able to switch between leadership styles is empathy.  It comes more naturally to some than others, but it’s a skill that can be improved, and enlightened organizations are realising its value. In fact, it’s hard to imagine taking on a leadership role - generating results, building a credible vision, inspiring others, nurturing talent, unifying remote teams and communicating in a way that works for everyone - without strong self-awareness and empathy skills.

Leaders who lack self-awareness and empathy often struggle to connect with their teams. Many of us have known a leader like that at some point in our careers, and know that it causes low morale, decreased productivity and high turnover rates. Avoid, avoid!

Here, we look at how leaders can do more to understand their style preference and use this understanding to lead different types of people and situation with more empathy and humanity.

Recognize (and embrace) your dominant leading style

Insights Discovering Leadership Effectiveness introduces four main leadership styles.

Leaders need to become proficient in and capable of using at all four, so that they have ability to adjust.

For over 35 years we’ve worked with new and seasoned leaders to help them identify the style they’re most comfortable with, and to lean into other styles where necessary. Included in the training is the ability to recognize others’ styles so leaders can adjust to suit the situation, person and team they’re leading.

We use a profile called Insights Discovery Transformational Leadership (IDTL), a natural follow-on to completing the Insights Discovery personal profile.

Along with the knowledge that we’re all unique and have access to all four Insights color energies (Cool Blue, Fiery Red, Sunshine Yellow, Earth Green), the IDTL framework helps us realize that, in order to achieve great leadership, we must practise dialling different types of energy up or down, depending on the situation.

The four main Insights leadership manifestations

No one manifestation is better or worse than another. It’s about recognising that we have a choice.

We’re able to realize how we tend to behave – and how we could behave - when leading ourselves, our teams and our organizations. We start to see and explore how our conscious, less conscious and ‘preference flow’ come to life in a leadership setting.

A useful pre-cursor first: ‘Thinking’ types (those who lead with Cool Blue and Fiery Red energy) may instinctively cite vision and goal-setting, problem solving and decision-making qualities as being most important to them. They tend to favor Results and Centered Leadership.

For those who lead with ‘Feeling’ color energies (Sunshine Yellow and Earth Green), qualities relating to collaboration, nurturing, mentoring and showing fairness and kindness are high on the list. They tend to favor Visionary and Relationship Leadership.

It’s important to remember that all four color energies can apply themselves to all four leadership styles. No individual, however ’fixed’ they think they believe themselves to be, is tied to any one approach.

Just as the color energies are the foundation of Insights Discovery, an individual’s leadership approach is also strongly influenced by their personal preferences.

Generally speaking, most individuals tend to lead with one or two dominant styles. This model shifts us away from our dominant style to understand how we can flex our styles across different dimensions.

It helps us understand that there are other options, and that we don’t need to be uncomfortable with our opposite style, we simply need to take time to understand more about it. It means we can make the choice to use it when the situation or individual calls for it.

Using this model, we can help leaders to:

•    Develop awareness of their leadership style
•    Increase awareness of the impact they have on others
•    Improve communication and interactions with others
•    Know how to adapt their style to motivate and influence others
•    Understand the key traits of a leader and recognize their unique strengths
•    Develop their leadership skills and competence
•    Develop action plans to perform at their best

Increase awareness of the personalities and preferences of people you lead

If we become familiar with the four leadership styles and understand how they align with our own preferences, we have more of a chance to recognize and respect which working styles our colleagues are most likely to use.

While we may have a preferred style that comes naturally to us, learning about the four leadership styles and the situations where they work best allows us to appreciate (or at least acknowledge) the value of styles that are opposite to our own. This awareness helps us adapt more easily to work effectively with others, even when their approach differs from ours.

Using this gift of ‘others-awareness’ means listening to and observing your colleagues with genuine curiosity and without expectations, judgments or assumptions.

It’s also about being aware of what other people value. Depending on which of the four color energies they lead with, your colleagues may have strong attachments to certain aspects of how to do their job well.

Where one colleague might value accuracy and data, another may place speed, swift and action above all else. Some colleagues might place emphasis on involving others and brainstorming new ways of working, where others may rate helping others, making sure all activity is purpose-led.
Being able to see and value the differences among team members is an essential quality of a successful leader.

The basics of effective leadership

Whoever we’re leading, we can probably agree that they would like to:

• to be clear about what’s expected of them and what difference their contribution will make
• to understand the bigger picture of why they’re doing what they do, and why that matters to the future of the organization they’ve chosen to be part of
• to be able to trust their leaders to protect them, be decisive and solve problems with conviction and empathy, especially during times of significant change or disruption
• to be heard: to be asked how they are, appreciated for the unique skills mix they bring and what else they might need to do the job well.
• to feel inspired to work and encouraged to do well without undue pressure, threats or conflict.

The value of knowing and flexing your leadership style

In changing organizations, there’s no room for outdated, static, orthodox leadership models.

A truly transformational leader can balance and integrate all four leadership manifestations. With the right professional development, every type of leader can learn to know themselves better, understand their team better, actively listen to others’ needs and find a way to meet them. 
What’s more, they’ll be better equipped to cultivate innovation, productivity and employee engagement. A goal well worth investing in. 

Self-aware leaders are more effective at inspiring and motivating their teams than their less aware counterparts. That’s why our leadership programs 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 organizations.