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How authentic are you as a leader?
Much is made of the term "authentic leadership" these days, but to truly be authentic, you must first be crystal clear on your leadership style. Who are you as a leader, and how do you want to lead?
In my leadership coaching, a client’s leadership style is a topic that frequently crops up. Some clients have an excellent understanding of their style, some of a bit of an idea but struggle to articulate it, and others don’t really know where to start!
Knowing your leadership style is important for a number of reasons, but here are just a few:
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It helps you when you face a leadership dilemma. Leaders frequently face difficult decisions. It may be dealing with an underperforming colleague, overcoming setbacks when leading a project or choosing between two courses of action. Knowing how you want to lead gives you something to measure your decision against. Ask yourself - “If I was totally embodying this leadership style, what would I do?”
It allows you to understand your strengths as a leader, how you naturally inspire and motivate others and where there may be gaps. In understanding your strengths, you can get a sense of when you could utilise them more in a role. By noticing gaps, you can build a team around you that can complement your leadership style.
It enables you to articulate how you lead clearly and consistently. This helps new team members understand how you can best work together but is also worth reiterating with all your team on a regular basis - perhaps you can each share your leadership style. Communicating how you lead is also invaluable when going for a promotion or new role.
It gives you a different measure of success. You will be explicitly and implicitly measured on many factors at work - whether quantitative metrics or more subjective markers such as organisational values. An internal sense of how you are trying to show up is a vital way of measuring your success as a leader. Your organisation may not consider it, but reflecting on whether you consistently live up to your leadership style can give you confidence that you are leading in the right way.
So how do you find your leadership style? Each person’s style is unique and based on your strengths, values and beliefs about what makes a good leader. To get there, you will need to do quite a bit of thinking and self-reflection, but here are some ideas to get started:
Look at the feedback from your direct reports and others in the organisation. What do they say about how you lead? Do you agree? How do you distil that into the core features of your style?
What do you feel are the hallmarks of a good leader? How you like to be led is likely to give you an indication as to how you would want to lead.
How you operate outside of your leadership role may also give you some sense of your leadership style. Ask people (including those who know you outside of work) to describe you in three words.
What are your deep-held beliefs about people? For example, “All people are capable of change”, or “Two heads are better than one”. If you genuinely believed that, how would you lead?
Our leadership occurs in the context of our values. What is it that really matters to you? How do you demonstrate those values in your leadership?
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Once you’ve done this thinking, you may want to summarise everything in a leadership statement. I’ll be including a framework to help you shape this in my next edition of the Evolving Executive (you can subscribe here)
Don’t worry if you don’t live up to your leadership style every day. It's okay to be a bit aspirational as long as it's a direction you know you are travelling in and can lead that way when you are performing at your best.
One final thought - there is no right or wrong leadership style (putting aside clearly toxic techniques that involve bullying etc!). In my experience, leaders of many types have flourished and succeeded. However, if you cannot lead in your preferred style in your current organisation, it may be time to look for a new role.
If you want some support in figuring out your leadership style, a coaching programme with me can help. Get in touch to find out more.