Along with our genetics, the experiences that we have had in life from a very young age through to the current time have developed us into the person we are right now and how we go about leading people.

We are all very individual and have our own personality that is completely unique to us. Understanding our own preferences and tendencies helps us understand ourselves and critically how we may be alike or different from other people. This is absolutely critical when it comes to communicating and leading others. To help understand this psychologists have over time developed some models of personality.

There are 2 critical points about looking at these traits. Firstly, it is not that we are absolutely one or either of them. We are all a bit of everything. Secondly, we can perform all of these styles if we chose to, but some are more natural for us. It is not an excuse for a behaviour or for a lack of a behaviour.

The widely recognised Big Five personality traits are as follows:

Openness to experience (inventive/curious vs. consistent/cautious)
Conscientiousness (efficient/organised vs. extravagant/careless)
Extraversion (outgoing/energetic vs. solitary/reserved)
Agreeableness (friendly/compassionate vs. challenging/callous)
Neuroticism (sensitive/nervous vs. resilient/confident)

Where do you sit on these different traits and how does this affect the amount with which you use different styles of leadership?

There are many different personality profiling tests that you can take which will give you different ways to look at your personality. Some of the most used are MBTI®, DiSC® & Insights®. I use Everything DiSC® as I believe it provides a simple structure that is relatively easy to apply and use. At the same time it also has good research and data to support its methodologies and adaptive testing which means that it tends to be pretty accurate. Taking a personality profiling test really helps you reflect on your natural preferences and tendencies and how these may differ from your team members and the people you lead. It can also really help you understand that the majority of the time when we have difficulties communicating with others, it is not personal, simply that we all have very different ways of doing things. When you understand your style you can then reflect on how these behaviours specifically relate to leadership. How do these behaviours influence your leadership style?

There are many different ways in which people have looked at leadership style. In an article called Leadership Gets Results in the Harvard Business Review in 2000 Goleman states that there are 6 different styles of leadership:

Coercive – do what I say
Authoritative (visionary) – come with me approach which creates a vision of the future and asks people to follow them to it
Affiliative – people come first attitude with a focus on building harmonius teams
Democratic – gives team members a voice in decisions
Pace-setting – sets high performance standards and exemplifies them
Coaching – focuses on the personal development of team members

Which of these styles do you use most frequently?

In the research Goleman speaks about the impact the leadership had on the climate of the team that those leaders lead. Better climate lead to better results.

The impact of authoritative, affiliative, democratic and coaching styles were all strongly positive, versus the negative impact of the coercive and pacesetting styles. That said the research showed that no one leadership style should be relied on exclusively and all have at least short term uses.

The research from this paper and others shows that the most effective leaders are those who can employ multiple different styles and easily switch between different styles in different situations.

I think that in general we all lean to one specific style primarily that sits most comfortably with our personality. This comes naturally to us and as a result is relatively easy to do.

What elements of your personality lend themselves to one of these particular styles? What would you say is your primary leadership style? As an example part of your personality maybe to be very friendly and compassionate. Do you tend to use the affiliative style a high percentage of the time? Or perhaps part of your style is being very efficient and organised. Do you tend to be more coercive a high percentage of the time?

Be truly honest with yourself. What is the make up of your style? You may not like the descriptor of the style, such as coercive, but do you tend to tell people what to do? In which case that is more of a coercive style by Goleman’s definition.

Identifying and doing your ‘natural’ style is the easy bit. However, it is clear from this paper and other research that the most effective leaders adapt their style to different situations. Goleman’s paper specifically noted that leaders who effectively employed four of the six different styles were by far the highest performing. So, however you look at the different styles the key is being agile and adaptable in your use of those styles.

What other styles do you employ currently? What other styles could you employ more often? What is the most unnatural style for you? When would be an appropriate situation to employ that style? In what situations are the other styles more appropriate and how can you actually go about employing those styles?

Going back to the example of being an affiliative leader, when is it better to be more authoritative?

Continually reflect on your different approaches in different situations to fully understand your leadership style makeup.

Is this really the leader you want to be?

Do you want to change who you are as a leader?