Leadership Styles are Like Golf Clubs

I  recognize that different leadership styles are required for different situations. No one style is adequate for different people, groups or situations.  On the golf course, you pull a different club from your golf bag depending on your lie and distance needed, an effective leader should have a set of leadership styles in his leadership bag to most effectively lead in different situations.  A recent review of some work by author Daniel Goleman validated my thinking.  
Daniel Goleman is best known for his books on Emotional Intelligence.  His best selling work defined a set of skills and competencies that defines how people manage feelings, interact, and communicate on their way to success.
In his book Leadership: The Power of Emotional Intelligence, Goleman cites the leadership research of the consulting firm Hay/McBer that identified six distinct styles employed by leaders.  The best leaders do no rely on a single leadership style but use multiple styles and are able to move between them seamlessly and in different measure depending on the situation and people. 
He conveniently summarizes the six leadership styles and their application in a chart that I have reconstructed below.

Leadership Style	The leader’s approach	In a phrase	Best used when…	Impact on Climate
Coercive	Demands immediate compliance	"Do what I tell you."	In a crisis to kick start a turnaround	Negative
Authoritative	Mobilizes people toward a vision	"Come with me."	When changes require a new vision, or when a clear direction is needed	Most strongly positive
Affiliative	Creates harmony and builds emotional bonds	"People come first."	To heal rifts in a team or to motivate people during stressful circumstances	Positive
Democratic	Forges consensus through participation	“What do you think?”	To build buy in or consensus or to get input from valuable employees	Positive
Pacesetting	Sets high standards for performance	“Do as I do, now.”	To get quick results from a highly motivated and competent team	Negative
Coaching	Develops people for the future	“Try this.”	To help an employee improve performance or develop long-term strengths	Positive

You can access Goleman’s full description of the styles in the book, on in the original Harvard Business Review article Leadership that Get Results.  Please remember that you can access HBR articles from your local library’s online database. 

The Lead Quietly Takeaway

My takeaway from the article is that just like I have clubs in my golf bag that I avoid because I need more practice, there are leadership styles that require honing on my part to become the Phil Mickelson of the Leadership Tour.  Are you able to move and adjust your style as needed?
Thanks for reading.  Please lead quietly.
don 

The Balance of L3 Leadership

Readers of this blog might recognize my interest in balance. I am a strong believer that effective leadership requires balance between ideas, actions, opinions, decisions, and more.

This week I want to give a tip of the hat to the "balanced" leadership model of Marc Michaelson and John Anderson as proposed in their L3 Leadership manifesto that you can read on the ChangeThis site.

In The L3 Leadership “State of Being”: A Holistic Approach, Michaelson and Anderson hooked me on the first page of their manifesto with a very "lead quietly" invitation. They write,

L3 Leadership is more about who you are than what position you hold, what training you have had, or what personality traits you bring to work and other life situations. L3 is based on the fact that personal leadership is a “state of being.” It is who you are, what you believe, and how you behave.

Their balanced "L3" leadership model is based on a three pronged model where effective leadership is based on three attributes:

• L1—Leading Self: Total Life Leadership. Achieving personal mastery and work/life integration.

• L2—Leading With Others: Creating and sustaining Collaborative Advantage.

• L3—Cultivating The Best Place To Work: A culture of high engagement, retention, performance and productivity.

When you link these three elements together with integrity, authenticity, and balance you end up with a holistic model that is not dependent on title, position, heroism or charisma, the traditional attributes often associated with leadership. It is very balanced.

I recommend the manifesto for it's leadership insight and the thought-provoking assessment questions that will get you thinking about your approach and abilities.

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly and stay balanced.
Don

The Leadership Dance Requires Balance

Do you do the leadership dance? Do you keep your balance?

Leaders who share leadership with other leaders under a shared leadership model end of doing a bit of a leadership dance. Leaders who do it best try to keep the dance balanced and try to stay nimble.



The picture of a dance came to me after reviewing the work of Deborah Ancona and and William Issacs on the The 4-Player Model: A Framework for Healthy Teams. In this research and study, they provide a mechanistic view of the work of teams. They suggest that team effort is compromised of four core acts:

Move — This act establishes a direction and sets the team in motion.
Example: “Let's build Product X. Product X is the best idea out there.”

Follow — The follow act provides support for the move and serves the function of completion.
Example: “I agree with the arguments you've made. Product X is the way to go.”

Oppose — The oppose act questions the move that has been initiated.
Example: “The data don't support your claims. We'll be in real trouble if we go with Product X.”

Bystand — Bystanding provides perspective and invites the team to be more reflective. A bystander might bring in data from another team, an historic perspective, or some insight about the operations of the team itself.
Example: “We tried some of these same ideas two years ago and they didn't work. What do we think has changed?”

As a leader who is sharing leadership with multiple team members, you will find that there are times when you will lead, but then other times when someone else is leading and you will follow. You might have to oppose if you don't agree with another leader's actions. There are other times when you need to take a break and study and gain other insight. The shift in activities as this occurs in team efforts makes up the leadership dance.


The work of Ancona and Issaacs goes on to suggest that balance and flexibility in the dance activities are keys to healthy, creative and productive teams. If any one activity dominates, dysfunction can occur.

Please review this work at the MIT Leadership center for more insight. But more importantly, leaders should watch their dance steps. It needs to be balanced and nimble.

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly and keep dancing.

Don

The Art of Balance, the Art of Leadership.

In leadership, balance is critical,
but balance is hard.

Balance is an art,
perhaps art aids balance.

I've written previously about the importance of balance in leadership. Lead Quietly's carnival of balance includes the following posts from our archive:

Keep it balanced, in 3D where I implore leaders to strike a three dimensional balance between Business, Leadership, and Personal Dimensions.

The Maturity and Balance of Quiet Leadership that describes the role of maturity as you strive to maintain balance.

Balance like Obama - A Lesson in Leadership Balance. Although, not a political endorsement, in this post I admire the statements made by Barrack Obama about balance and the challenge of balance, a challenge that exists in politics, business, and life. Balance is hard.

This past week a friend sent me an article that appears in the Academy of Management Learning & Education, December 2006 entitled, The Arts & Leadership: Now That We Can Do Anything, What Will We Do?

In the article, author Nancy Adler of McGill University proposes that the positive influence of the arts on leadership and business is significant and critical. Here are some citations that I found insightful.

The time is right for the cross-fertilization of the arts and leadership.

The scarce resource is innovative designers, not financial analysts.

Constant, intuition-based innovation is required to respond to discontinuous change; without it, no business can succeed in the 21st century....Actors, dancers, and musicians—performing as ensembles—have developed team-based collaborative skills to a much greater extent than have most managers.

As the business environment more frequently calls upon managers to respond to unpredicted and unpredictable threats and opportunities, the ability to improvise increasingly determines organizations’ effectiveness. "Managers and management students don’t understand how to create on cue, how to innovate reliably on a deadline. . . . artists are much better at this

The arguments that Adler makes are pretty compelling.

OK, let me confess, I am a student of the arts. My undergraduate degree is in Music Education, I was a music teacher in my first career. Despite the fact that currently I am pretty inactive musically, I have always thought that my music background brought creativity, dimension and balance to my thinking and work. Adler's article drew additional links between arts and leadership and management. It gives me cause to embrace the impact that music has had in my life.

It also causes me to value what my artistic coworkers and teammates bring to my team and organization.

It reminds me of a phrase I used to tell the parents of my music students, "It's never too late to learn music."

And finally, this insight motivates me to continue the reminders that I have to make to my children to practice their music.

Art adds wonderful balance to leadership and business.

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly.

Don

Balance like Obama - A Lesson in Leadership Balance

I don't intend to use this blog as a political platform. My mission has not changed since my first post when I wrote, "I am writing this blog to start conversation and sustain study about quiet leadership."


Nevertheless, I was enlightened this past week as I listened to Barack Obama talk about balance in his book The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream.


Balance is one of the key elements of quiet leadership. As I write in Keep it balanced, in 3D:

The concept of Quiet Leadership includes the the notion of "balance." My vision of balance is multifaceted where balance applies to many elements of life, work and leadership. This includes, for example, the balance of work and personal life, the balance between individual needs and organizational needs, the balance of opinions that need to occur within teams, the balance required to moderate disagreement. A quiet leader strives to keep it balanced.

In his book, Obama describes balance in the same light. Search the book and you will find 15 references to "balance." Often his discussion describes the challenge of "finding the right balance." He describes that ordinary citizens are "waiting for a politics with the maturity to balance idealism and realism." He talks about finding the right balance between national security and individual rights. He recognizes that it is not easy, "finding the right balance in our competing values is difficult."

Perhaps the most insightful statement about balance and leadership is the leadership action of "maintaining within himself the balance between two contradictory ideas that we must talk and reach for common understandings."

On the other extreme,the opposite of balance, is absolutism. Obama cites the negative impact that absolutism, i.e. a lack of balance, has had in our current politics. Absolutism suggests that values combined with power, don't allow balance or compromise. Balance is lost when "ideological minorities seek to impose their own version of absolute truth"

What is balance? Somewhere between balance and absolutism is the place where both passion and reason exist. As a leader, you need to make sure that you hear and recognize the passion of the people around you and encourage reason in order to foster the moderation that can bring balance to your team's actions.

I find that the words of Khalil Gibran in The Prophet nicely emphasize the importance of balance between passion and reason.

Your reason and your passion are the rudder.. and the sails of your seafaring soul. If either be broken, you can but toss and drift, or else be held at a standstill in mid-seas. For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to it’s own destruction.

Once you recognize this place where passion and reason mingle, the real work begins for leaders. Often there is no easy answer. Balance is hard but the first step is to recognize the importance of balance. This may be the primary principle that I gleaned from Obama's book. That is not a political statement.

Comments are always welcome.

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly.
Don

The Maturity and Balance of Quiet Leadership

I describe balance as one of the key attributes of quiet leadership. As I wrote in Keep it balanced in 3D,

My vision of balance is multifaceted where balance applies to many elements of life, work and leadership. This includes, for example, the balance of work and personal life, the balance between individual needs and organizational needs, the balance of opinions that needs to occur within teams, the balance required to moderate disagreement.

I feel that maturity is also part of this vision of balance. This notion came clear this past week in reading Do You Recognize the 7 Ingredients of Maturity on the Dumb Little Man blog.

Lifestyle mentor, author and educator, David B. Bohl of Slow Down Fast, identifies the seven ingredients of maturity as:

• Maturity is the ability to control anger and settle differences without violence or destruction.
• Maturity is patience.
• Maturity is the capacity to face unpleasantness and frustration, discomfort and defeat, without complaint or collapse.
• Maturity is humility.
• Maturity is the ability to make a decision and follow through.
• Maturity means dependability and coming through in a crisis.
• Maturity is the art of living in peace.

The list resonated with me. Although you could probably add and adjust the ingredients as evidenced by some of the blog's comments, my takeaway thought after the reading the post, related to the value that employers and organizations place on maturity. I suspect that maturity is undervalued and under appreciated

Maturity as a personal attribute seems difficult to sell. Picture a hiring process where there are two candidates where the only difference between the two is that one candidate exudes energy and charisma and the other maturity and balance. Who gets hired?

Let me know that you think? How can we quiet leaders sell our balance and maturity?

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly.
Don

Keep it balanced, in 3D

The concept of Quiet Leadership includes the the notion of "balance." My vision of balance is multifaceted where balance applies to many elements of life, work and leadership. This includes, for example, the balance of work and personal life, the balance between individual needs and organizational needs, the balance of opinions that needs to occur within teams, the balance required to moderate disagreement. A quiet leader strives to keep it balanced.

Jim Bolt recently wrote about balance on the Fast Company site. The article, Developing The 3-Dimensional Leader, describes the common absence of balance in leaders and the need for three dimensional leaders. As he writes, "Too many leaders today are one-dimensional, narrowly focused on business results."

Bolt's three dimensional leadership implores leaders to strike a balance between business needs, leadership, and personal needs. Here is his description of the three dimensions:

The three-dimensional framework calls for the development of an individual’s business, leadership, and personal effectiveness skills:

• Business Dimension: Mind-sets and capabilities needed to identify and address critical business challenges
• Leadership Dimension: Fully developed leadership capacity needed to lead the organization confidently into the future
• Personal Dimension: Personal effectiveness skills needed to achieve excellence, balance and ongoing renewal

This three dimensional framework perfectly depicts the balance required of quiet leaders. Please read Bolt's article.

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly.

Don

Building Community with Giving

One of the principles of quiet leadership focuses on the need for leaders to build community. I've suggested in an earlier post that community building can start simply, with thanks, and smiles. One of my favorite Tom Peters pleadings, "It begets it." Smiles begets smiles, thanks begets thanks.

What follows after the simple start? I'd propose giving and service.

Consultant Michelle Kunz writes extensively about giving in her Power Energy Leadership blog. In Excellence is Giving she talks about the benefits of giving and quotes the creed of BNI, the global business networking group that "Givers Gain."

Consider these returns cited by Kunz in her post:

• Trust -- people trust those who have their interests truly at the center of all they do
• Admiration -- people admire those who commit their energies to advancing the common good
• Respect -- people respect those who dedicate their time to helping others win
• Wisdom -- when we listen deeply to what others need we learn more about ourselves and the world around us
• Humility -- giving to others shines a mirror back on all that we have and helps us feel grateful
• Authenticity -- giving deeply of ourselves removes the filters we keep in place when we withhold, requiring our true selves to come into focus
• Integrity -- aligning our values with principles which do not change greatly simplifies the challenge of walking our talk

This represents huge returns for the simple act of giving and serving. Maybe building community doesn't have to be hard. Start with smiles, thanks, and add a little giving.

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly.
Don