Leadership is for Everyone, even for you!
A lot of people think Leadership is meant for special people but I believe that Leadership for everyone, even for you. I know that Leadership is usually related to a position, an authority, a designation or a person who is the head of a small/big team. This definition was true a decade ago, but no more.
In our age Leadership means the power to achieve something extraordinary out of anything that looks ordinary. As they say “if your actions Inspire others to Dream more, Learn more, Do more and Become more, you are a Leader”. Leaders follow the right path, in the right manner and mark their footprints, which are later followed by others. They execute their talent creatively, think out of the box and work on innovative ideas to reach to their objectives.
I truly believe in the leadership theory of Tom Peter who states “the best leaders don’t create followers, they create more leaders”. Because true leaders create more leaders because they understand that leadership is for everyone, even for you.
In my Leadership Workshops I share the following simple steps which you can use to practice different leadership styles:
Ken Blanchard & Paul Hersey created a concept called Situational Leadership where they say that we must change our leadership styles with different situations and people. Sometimes situations & people needs visionary or special guidance, sometimes a warm hug proves to be more effective, sometimes a commanding hand and sometimes having simple faith in people, what style you need to use depends on the situations and the people you are dealing with. A great leader chooses his leadership style like a great Golf Player chooses his golf stick as per situations. Similarly Leaders needs to analyze, which style fits to a particular situation or person.
To uncover the skills and capabilities of a leader there are six leadership styles:
Commanding Leadership Style:
This style is best practiced when you are dealing with people who are low on skills & motivation both. When a person is not just lacking skills but also the motivation to learn then commanding leadership helps them to take action and create results.
I remember once my Boss had used this style with me when I did not want to deliver a client presentation. But because he left with no choice, I was compelled to prepare for the client presentation and to my surprise I did a good job at it. I was extremely uncomfortable during preparation as I knew I was not good at presentations and I hated my Boss for commanding me to do something I did not want to. But later I realized that if it was not for his commanding leadership style, I would have never learnt to be good at presentations.
Thus Robin Sharma, the author of Lead Without A Title says “You can look good or you can show some Leadership” as sometimes for the good of others we must use the commanding leadership style.
Coaching Leadership Style:
This style is best practiced when you are dealing with people who are high on motivation but lack the skills to do something. For an e.g. once a trainer working in my organization was high on motivation but lacked the skill to conduct a Team Building Workshop, this is when I needed to coach him to build his skills in that area. Once he had enough coaching to help him build his skills he was happily ready to do the team building workshop.
Participating Leadership Style:
This style is best practiced when you are dealing with people who are high on skills but low on motivation. I still remember this experience when I was good at ironing my own clothes and yet I was always lazy to not do it. My Dad realized that it was simply a matter of giving me motivation so he decided to participate with me in ironing clothes every-day. Watching him ironing clothes with a lot of enthusiasm soon made me realize that if it was ok for him to do that, then it was ok for me too. I started seeing that task differently and since then I am never lazy ironing my own clothes if I need to. When people need motivation, participating leadership style is a great way to support them.
Delegation Leadership Style:
This style is best practiced when you are dealing with people who are high on skills & motivation both. If your team member is skilled at doing something and is also highly motivated then all you need to do is Delegate the task to them, trust them fully and let them handle it.
The trick is to use the right leadership style with the right person in the right situation. And we all face different people & situation challenges everyday, thus I said that Leadership is for everyone, even for you.
If you want to learn more, you can find more articles related to Leadership on my blog https://www.miteshkhatri.com/blog/
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Happy Leading!
Mitesh Khatri
