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Discover Your Leadership Style: Prepare For the Next Step in Your Career
Identifying your leadership style is a critical first step in preparing for the next phase of your career.
A good leader understands their strengths and weaknesses, making sure to address any skills gaps they may have that could hinder their ability to do their job well. As such, it’s important soon-to-be leaders know and understand their leadership style.
What are leadership styles?
A leadership style is how someone chooses to carry out key responsibilities while in a position of power. Core actions and considerations such as:
- How you communicate with people
- How you delegate work
- What type of feedback you provide (if any at all)
- Collaboration and guidance efforts
All affect how you lead and how your co-workers perceive your leadership.
As every style is unique to its owner, it’s important to know which one you naturally fall into to better choose your next step. Find out which leadership style you naturally lean towards by taking our leadership style quiz.
Should you be a manager or a leader in the workplace to get results?
Leadership style quiz
Your strengths and weaknesses according to your leadership style
Democratic leadership style
Democratic leaders welcome the input of their whole team, encouraging each employee to work together to reach an agreement on how to move forward. A leader with a democratic style will ultimately have the final say when it comes to business decisions. However, each employee has equal input on the direction of the decision.
This style of leadership is heavily invested in the future well-being of the organisation. It aims to give every employee the chance to understand and participate in an organisation’s larger long-term goals and values.
Strengths
- Employees can develop critical leadership skills required for future roles
- Employees and management come to an understanding of long-term organisation together
- Motivates the team to work together towards a common goal and future
Weaknesses
- Masked favouritism (consistently placing more weight on one employee’s opinion)
- Unproductive passivity (when decision making drags on due to inability to come to a decision)
- People-pleasing (not knowing when to draw the line for the good of the business in fear of offending an employee/s)
How to address these skills gaps
To minimise the possible weaknesses that come with a democratic leadership style, leaders need to develop:
- People management skills
- Negotiation communication
- Ability to direct discussions
This is to avoid circular conversations due to the leader’ fence-sitting during more complicated discussions.
- Self-awareness
- Emotion control
- Objective thinking
This is to avoid any favouritism (purposeful or not) or ‘people-pleasing that may occur under the intention of ‘fairness’.
Laissez-faire leadership style
A laissez-faire style of leadership is the most hands-off of the leadership styles. Employees are often left to make their own decisions concerning projects, deadlines and policies, while the leader focuses on the major business procedures.
This style of leadership encourages employee autonomy and innovation, as this leadership style gives minimal direction. How often a laissez-faire style leader chooses to guide, give feedback or direction to their employees varies depending on the person and the competency of their team.
Strengths
- Fosters creativity and employee autonomy
- Quick results – (when matched with a very competent team)
- High levels of motivation (if employees thrive off of responsibility)
Weaknesses
- Missed critical business growth opportunities
- Employees feel unsupported
- Can come across as passive
How to address these skills gaps
A laissez-faire style leader needs to develop analytical and judgement skills to avoid possible weaknesses common to this leadership style. Skills such as:
- Critical thinking
- Observation
- Judge of character
All of these skills are required to avoid missed details and withdrawn or uninspired employees. Furthermore, these skills will help laissez-faire style leaders to better comprehend to what extent they can be ‘hands off’ with their current team of employees.
Coaching leadership style
Similar to a democratic style of leadership, coach-style leaders focus on team cohesiveness and participation. However, they do this by focusing on the professional development of the individual team members rather than the team as a whole.
This leadership style is very feedback orientated, as each employee is encouraged to reach their maximum potential. This type of leader works very well one-on-one with their employees and invests a lot of time and care into each person. They also have excellent observation skills to identify where each employee fits into the overall cohesiveness of the team.
Strengths
- Encourages employees to focus and extend their strengths
- Employees feel supported and highly motivated
- Clear expectations are communicated and (usually) met
Weaknesses
- It’s time-consuming
- Requires high levels of patience to be effective
- Hard to prioritise who receives your attention and how much
How to address these skills gaps
If you adopt a coaching leadership style, you must have good time management and analytical thinking skills. By developing these core skills, you’ll be able to better allocate your efforts and manage your time while coaching your team members.
Transformational leadership style
A transformational leadership style is categorised by high levels of inspiration, motivation and positive reinforcement. Leaders with this leadership style focus less on the smaller repetitive responsibilities of the organisation and more on the bigger picture goals. These leaders will push their employees to step out of their comfort zone and will always push for bigger, brighter and better from their team.
Strengths
- Inspires motivation and confidence in their employees
- Keeps the team highly engaged throughout a project’s timeline
- Employees feel inspired to work harder, leading to higher frequencies of work outputs
Weaknesses
- Less detail-orientated, which can cause issues in the future
- They can be unrealistic in their optimism when faced with severe problems
- Inspiration can be misdirected if not monitored
How to address these skills gaps
Transformational-style leaders need to develop their objective thinking and self-awareness skills. They need to identify when their inspiration tactics may be verging into the territory of manipulation, while also becoming more detail-orientated to ensure minimal missed opportunities.
Pace-setting leadership style
This leadership style is very results-orientated and demands fast-paced work while maintaining high quality. This type of leader is heavily involved with the going-ons of their team and often asks for updates to ensure no unexpected roadblocks will affect a project’s deadline.
Strengths
- Encourages employees to feel confident in their own capabilities
- When utilised correctly, it leads to a quick work turnover rate
Weaknesses
- Unrealistic employee expectations, leading to employee burnout
- Over-inspiration can build a toxic work culture based on unrealistic work expectations
- Micromanagement can occur
How to address these skills gaps
To overcome these weaknesses, leaders of this style should develop some important soft skills such as their:
- Communication skills
- Ability to understand and empathise with employees
- Foreplanned time management
These skills minimise the risk of fostering a toxic work environment for your employees while encouraging them to maintain focus on their work.
Authoritative leadership style
This leadership style moves forward with firm confidence, choosing to lead by example to inspire their team to follow their ideas and procedures. In times of uncertainty, this leadership style brings an anchor of direction and clarity within a workplace. In addition, a form of mentorship often grows between leader and employee with this leadership style.
Strengths
- Mentorship-like relationships can develop between a leader and their employee
- Gives clear direction to their teams
- High levels of motivation as inspired by the leader
Weaknesses
- Can come across as overbearing or rude
- Can cause friction with employees who are used to more freedom
- Can hinder growth opportunities due to lack of employee input
How to address these skills gaps
To avoid incorporating these weaknesses into their leadership style, authoritative leaders need to develop some critical soft skills. These include:
- Empathy
- Accountability
- Communication
These skills help the leader understand the needs of their employees while guiding them to produce their best work.
Autocratic leadership style
Often considered to be the opposite of democratic leadership, autocratic leaders rarely incorporate input from other employees when making business decisions. Out-of-the-box thinking and creative methods are often discouraged when this leadership style is in place. Leaders who lean towards this style prefer rigid structure and strict operational procedures.
Strengths
- Allows for decisions to be made more quickly
- Causes employees to feel discouraged
- Decisions are made quickly and efficiently
Weaknesses
- Leaves the team feeling put down and not trustworthy
- Fosters a toxic and fearful work environment
- Often leads to narrow-minded thinking and missed growth opportunity
How to address these skills gaps
People who tend to adopt an autocratic leadership style need to develop their:
- Empathy
- Communication skills
- Creative thinking
These skills will help build a well-structured but satisfied team.
Your next step
Now that you’ve identified which style you naturally refer to, it’s time to address which critical skills you need to develop to become the best leader you can be.
Leadership and management courses are a great way to address any gaps in your skills that may cause stress or trouble in your future leadership role. By partaking in focused learning that aims to build great leaders, you can enter the next step in your career with more confidence in your abilities.
With courses ranging from certificates to postgraduate MBAs, there’s a course suitable for anyone, no matter your educational background. Furthermore, with most courses now being offered online, self-paced learning allows you to continue working towards your other commitments while still investing in your personal career development.
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