Peer to Peer Magazine

Exploring Your Leadership Style First, Know Thyself • Are you extroverted? • Does making small talk come naturally to you? • Do you find yourself so focused on the tasks at hand that you forget about the human being with whom you’re dealing? • Alternatively, do you find yourself very concerned with your staff liking you? (Possibly to the detriment of your effectiveness?) Don’t worry that your personality or degree of extroversion will hold you back. If you’ve reached a position of management, you’ve already demonstrated that you have sufficient communication skills to be successful. Don’t feel obligated to be outgoing. Don’t worry that you’re not touchy-feely enough. Successful leaders have ranged from soft-spoken to bold. You can find your own comfort zone and establish your own ground rules for being a leader. But you have to take the time to honestly assess your personality, your skill set, and your degree of extroversion. The key to being a successful leader involves building goodwill with your staff. Stephen Covey calls this the “emotional bank account” that you build up against the days you need to make withdrawals. This is the goodwill you’ll need to overcome the inevitable business challenges. Part of knowing how to build up this goodwill involves understanding your own personal leadership style, and finding one that suits your personality and degree of extroversion or introversion. Establish a Friendly Working Relationship Obviously, and ideally, you want to build a good rapport with your staff. This doesn’t mean you have to be buddies outside of work — although I believe you can be, without risk to your effectiveness and without compromising your authority. It doesn’t even mean that you must “like” every member of your staff. That said, if you find yourself not liking someone on your staff, try to determine what the root of that dislike might be. Is it something inside you? If so, try to pin it down and get to the root of it. If not, is it something that person did? If so, is it because of a single incident? Or is there a pattern of behavior or temperament that might be affecting the individual’s working relationships with others at your firm, besides you? If this type of exploration doesn’t come naturally to you, it’s something you’ll need to practice because it is an important aspect of being a leader. The inability to answer these questions may unconsciously influence your actions or your treatment of that staff member. Far better to understand the cause and proactively address it if necessary. Exhibit Personal Integrity Do the right thing — whether your behavior is observable, traceable, auditable or not. Should it come out later that you exhibited less than flawless integrity, you will lose the respect of your staff and the conviction of your authority, not to mention all or most of the goodwill you may have accumulated. The road to restoring such a loss of respect and confidence is a long and difficult one, and it may never be fully regained. Delegate Leaders know that their true strength is in their team and that they cannot do everything themselves. Attracting, hiring and retaining competent staff is key, of course, as is “managing out” any underperforming staff who do not contribute to the department’s success. But if you’ve got the right staff on hand, then each individual should be encouraged to operate with maximum independence. 54 www.iltanet.org Peer to Peer

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