Knowing what leadership style works best for you is part of being a good leader. Developing a signature style with the ability to stretch into other styles as the situation warrants may help enhance your leadership effectiveness.
Here are 4 steps you can take to become a better leader:
1. Know yourself.
Start by raising your awareness of your dominant leadership style. You can do this by asking trusted colleagues to describe the strengths of your leadership style. You can also take a leadership style assessment.
2. Understand the different styles.
Get familiar with the repertoire of leadership styles that can work best for a given situation. What new skills do you need to develop?
3. Practice makes a leader.
Be genuine with any approach you use. Moving from a dominant leadership style to a different one may be challenging at first. Practice the new behaviors until they become natural. In other words, don’t use a different leadership style as a “point-and-click” approach. People can smell a fake leadership style a mile away—authenticity rules.
4. Develop your leadership agility.
Traditional leadership styles are still relevant in today’s workplace, but they may need to be combined with new approaches in line with how leadership is defined for the 21st century.
