To be a leader in today’s world is a little more complicated. The demands are many, complex, and some are obscured. You are expected to perform in the workplace where you have people with all kinds of backgrounds, skills, experiences, and interests. So you need a multitude of skills. Also, make better use of different styles of a leader to fit the demands of different situations.
Why are Different Leadership Styles Important?
Leaders have their unique ways of leading employees. However, it does not mean that such ways provide all-out leadership that is required by today’s modern workforce.
Using different styles of leadership is the only path to become a total leader. It means that leaders have to adapt to different styles of good leadership traits — and use them when and where necessary to fulfill workplace demands.
So, let us look at what these compelling styles of a leader are about:
Here is the Nine Unique Styles of a Leader
1. Open-minded
Open-minded leaders are curious, so they question everything. They do not believe in the status quo. Their ability to remain open to new ideas is what sets them apart from many other leaders.
For this type of leader, every situation is unique, so they keep an open mindset. They tend to be creative and find ways to discover new possibilities to do new things.
Open-minded leaders maturely handle their frustrations and emotions. It is done to maintain a positive image of themselves. They do not want anything that can demotivate their team members.
Challenges: Their leadership style is democratic. So, they tend to listen to everyone’s opinions and ideas. That can make it hard for open-minded leaders to form their views to make even the most straightforward decision.
Being open to everything sometimes makes it too difficult for them to take sides and decide.
2. Passionate
Many leaders have good traits, but they lack passion. Employees always get energized to deliver exceptional results when the leaders are passionate about the outcomes.
That means the leaders have to show their passion for the goals, work, products, and successes. If the leaders do not convey any emotion, it creates a gloomy working environment.
Passionate leaders lead with imagination and passion. They encourage, uplift, and inspires their people with positive attitudes, ideas, and possibilities. Most passionate leaders are usually efficient, disciplined, and goal results-oriented. These leaders instill a lot of beliefs and enthusiasm into team members — and uplift their desires to do well for the team.
Challenges: Leaders with a passionate leadership style can be workaholics. Also, they sometimes end up burning out as they try hard to achieve their objectives.
They often avoid dealing with conflicts and do not want giving negative feedback for fear of upsetting their employees. When giving feedback, they fluff it with false praises that do not help anyone to improve.
3. Adaptive
Adaptive leaders have wisdom and are wise. They can see the big picture and use it to make a sound judgment. To put it another way, adaptive leaders are quick-witted.
It means they are intelligent and can quickly adapt to any change of environment in the workplace. New things come, and old ones always change in the workplace.
By being quick-witted, these leaders use their mental speed to respond to the changes. Adaptive leaders can take quick actions whenever something happens suddenly.
An adaptive leader is usually very agile and can think faster than the other type of leader.
Challenges: Adaptive leaders are very good at solving problems. But, they do not typically settle down in one place. This is because they find it easy to switch to a different environment.
This also can make adaptive leaders struggle to plan long term or to paint a picture for the future. Also, they tend to ignore others who may not be as smart as they are.
4. Inspiring
Inspiring leaders create conditions for the team members to use their initiatives and judgment to do their work. In return, team members act with loyalty and discipline. It is a two-way process that creates mutual respect and trust.
These leaders do not have selfish motives. They are very passionate about helping their people grow and become leaders themselves.
Inspiring leaders usually deliver more than they promise. Also, they do not do hype, but creates enthusiasm and excitement that transcend to the employees.
Challenges: Inspiration leaders usually have many ambitions and ideas. They tend to end up with much competing for work demands. So they can lose focus on the most critical tasks.
So the challenge for inspirational leaders is to prioritizing first the work that matters. If they do not, it can lead to poor quality of finished work. Also, employees can struggle to keep up with competing for work demands.
5. Diplomatic
Diplomatic style leaders can be assertive, talkative, energetic, and cordial. They are good listeners and are comfortable exchanging opinions with others.
Diplomatic leaders have a calm temperament. That is why they are the best handling complicated issues in any workplace environment.
Diplomatic leaders can stay calm during turbulent times. Moreover, that is always necessary to maintain positive attitudes in the workplace. Their leadership style always reassures employees of a better future even when things are not going according to plan.
They are not closed-minded leaders. So, their open mentality allows them to listen to employee concerns.
Challenges: Most leaders with a diplomatic style of leadership are excellent short-term planning. However, they can struggle with taking a risk or putting together a long-term plan.
Also, diplomatic leaders sometimes fail to deal with disciplinary issues appropriately. Their strong desire to keep harmony within the team allows specific individuals to overstep the boundaries.
6. Charismatic
Charismatic leaders are exciting and very inspiring to work under their leadership. Usually, employees want to connect with them because they trust them. Also, they often lead team members with compassion. Their leadership style allows them to arouse the emotions of the employees.
One thing about charismatic leaders is the way they explain things. They communicate in a way that removes ambiguity. They are good at building a meaningful picture of future success.
In the end, this motivates the employees and lifts their morale to work hard toward the goal. When making tough decisions, they always make sure that the outcome is realistic.
Challenges: The enthusiasm of charismatic leaders sometimes makes them ignore critical things. For example, every team has its strengths and weaknesses.
This means that before assigning a project to the team, you make sure that they all resources to deliver it.
However, charismatic leaders are excited about a new project, and they will commit to it regardless of whether the team has the resources to achieve it.
7. Visionary
A visionary leadership style is about the ability of a leader to see a distanced goal. Being visionary means having the capacity to paint a picture of what they need to do and how to do it.
Visionary leaders have a demeanor that makes them strategic and flexible planners. They train their minds to think about both the short-term and long-term.
They tend not to be fearful of any challenges and making tough decisions. These leaders have a strong determination to achieve whatever goal that has been planned – their style of leadership is value-based.
Challenges: Visionary Leaders can get entrenched in their vision. So they can ignore other essential things. Their leadership style can create difficulties in engaging with their teams.
They are very dominant, objective, intuitive, and tend to be a bit distant. So, this can make it hard to explain the vision. Employees usually struggle to buy into the vision if it not appropriately defined.
8. Detail-Oriented
Detailed leaders are very cautious and analytical. They always demand facts and details to make plans and decisions. These leaders also make sure that all team members have a clear understanding of what they need to do.
So leaders usually cross-check to ensure that the plans are executable. It makes it easy for team members to focus on the tasks rather than looking for clarity. Detail-oriented leaders rarely make mistakes.
Challenges: They are obsessed with data and facts. What is more, detail-oriented leaders tend to be rigid, narrow-minded, and not flexible.
All of which prevent them from seeing the bigger picture. If there is not enough supporting information to make a decision, they do not decide.
Sometimes they forget that the plans are time-based. So spending too long on analyzing data causes delays, and can make the teams unproductive.
9. Decisive
Decisive leaders are always full of confidence. These leaders do not want to be bogged down by anything. They always want to keep the job moving forward. They make decisions, even when there is not any supporting information.
Decisive leaders are quick thinkers, and they enjoy to solve any problems. They are not timid and always take a risk without care much about the consequences.
Challenges: Decisive leaders rely heavily on their gut feelings and usually ignore other people’s views and ideas. They can be reluctant to accept other people’s contributions, even when they do not have clear solutions to issues. They can also be authoritarian and micro-manage their teams.
Also, they can ignore the standards, procedures, rules, and sometimes do not stick to the plans. Decisive leaders can also make hasty decisions without thinking of their broader impact.
In conclusion, most leaders are a combination of these nine leadership styles. Having more positive styles of a leader is important because leadership is a multifunctional responsibility.
Most leaders gravitate to functions they feel comfortable to do well and neglect others. But many great leaders use a combination of these leadership styles to engage challenges in functional areas where they feel strong or weak.
How many styles of a leader do you know? Please leave your thoughts in the comment box below.