Great leaders should inspire followers to become successful leaders, creating an incubator for future organizational leaders and beyond. Leadership styles factor into what makes leaders inspiring. It isn’t enough to achieve success in your unit or group, there has to be a personal connection between leaders and followers to create transformative leadership. This personal connection can relate to the Employee Orientation described in the University of Michigan Study (The Pennsylvania State University, 2020). The relationship aspect of leading and managing is often overlooked, with most of the focus on client services or goal obtainment. However, relationship building is as important from the standpoint of leader and follower as it is to growing a relationship with a valuable client.
I’ve worked in sales for my entire career of almost fifteen years. I have been a follower, manager and leader in my organization. I have learned a lot about the type of leader I wanted to be by the leaders I’ve served. Great leaders are able to foster an atmosphere that is focused and collaborative. Organizations tend to focus on achieving sales goals above all else, but a great leader is able to filter the bottom-line results or expectations to their followers in a way that isn’t authoritative. I have worked for authority-compliance style leaders and the feeling is as the style is defined, result driven with people regarded as tools (Northouse, 2016). Usually the atmosphere is tense and unforgiving, focusing only on the sale and never celebrating success. While this usually led to achievements and goal obtainment the team was in constant flux with high turnover and low morale, resulting in poor customer service and few repeat clients. There were no relationships being formed in any capacity. This was obviously the opposite of what I wanted to become as a leader.
It took several organizations before I landed in a leadership role for a company that inspired instead of demanded. My way or the highway was replaced with supportive leaders that encouraged individuals to focus on their styles and skills that they excelled in. It wasn’t micromanagement and it wasn’t the country-club management that was only focused on interpersonal relationships without accomplishment (Northouse, 2020). This organization brought together the positive aspects of the style approach along with the directive and supportive dimensions present in the situational approach (The Pennsylvania State University, 2020). The situational approach focuses on different leadership styles that can adapt to scenarios or followers depending on what leads to the best outcome (Northouse, 2016). This approach contains both a directive and supportive aspect determined by the leader depending on the particular situation that arises (Northouse, 2016). I think this allows for more leadership creativity and more collaboration between leader and follower. Followers are complex and should be managed based on their competencies.
Followers respond to individual development plans based on their skillsets and not a one size fits all approach. In order to develop future leaders individual coaching plans are important steps in building a trustful relationship with a direct report. If the focus is solely on completing tasks the follower won’t feel valued. I have been in this scenario as a follower and left organizations because of feeling undervalued. Since task oriented authoritative leaders are only concerned with obtaining goals or completing tasks there is never a sense of satisfaction even when a job was done above and beyond expectation. Something as simple as acknowledging when a task is done well or a major sale is closed goas a long way in boosting morale. Celebrating success can be an incentive to obtain goals and can be a part of an important element in building strong relationships with a group.
In closing working under various leadership styles helped me develop my approach as a leader, and most importantly showed me what type of leader I didn’t want to be. Working my way through three different organizations I was able to see what made a successful leader and organization. I feel fortunate to have landed at an organization that values their leaders and followers and empowers them to use their skills to maximize their success, instead of trying to force an organizational style on each individual leader.
References
Northouse, P. G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and practice (7th ed.). Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications.
The Pennsylvania State University. (2020). Leadership in work: PSYCH 485 [Online course lesson]. Retrieved at: https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2045005/modules/items/28166514
It seems that many of the leaders you had in the past had self-defeating behaviors such as the inability to build relationships and the inability to lead and build a team. I’ve discussed these behaviors in my blog post as I also have come across leaders within the company I have worked in different department for almost 16 years that are about the tasks or goals being complete and not about the relationship with their followers. As you mentioned, it really does lower morale and can cause a higher turnover rate. A few years ago I applied for another position within the company hoping that I would have a manager that would have relationship building skills with their employees but bot so much luck. As mentioned in the lesson, Ohio State conducted a study that found two types of leaders: Initiating structure and consideration. Initiating structure behaviors were basically task behaviors, including organizing work, giving structure to the work context, defining role responsibilities, and scheduling work activities (PSU WC, 2020). On the other hand, consideration behaviors are building respect and trust between leaders and their followers.
It is nice to see that you have found a company that inspires its employees and you are absolutely right about coaching leaders in order to build trust with their direct reports or else employees will feel undervalued which is exactly what I had run into in my past experiences. Our company has awards that anyone, even employees, can recognize someone for doing a good job. The problem with this is that most don’t do this and it seems that you need to be doing a task for the person who does recognize for good work or else it just goes unnoticed.
References
Pennsylvania State University World Campus (2020). PSYCH485 lesson 5: Style and Situational Approaches. https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2045005/modules/items/28166561