- flexible leadership
One of the first things that new leaders need to realize is that not all team members respond to direction in the same way.
Leading a team to superior performance requires leaders to flex their natural leadership style to fit the individual and the situation.
Some situations call for task-oriented instruction and specific direction; others require the leader to involve the entire team in building and executing the best possible solution.
For example, when decisions need to be made under strict time constraints, a leader must be comfortable being decisive, moving quickly, and providing clear, precise directions on how the team needs to proceed.
In contrast, leaders will have the luxury of taking a more collaborative approach when there is time to involve others in the decision-making and action-planning process and build long-term support for a new initiative.
Increasing your flexibility as a leader will allow you to be more effective when working with diverse individuals and responding to a variety of situations.
In today’s fast-paced, rapidly changing, globally diverse business environment, flexibility is an absolute necessity.
Leaders must be able to respond nimbly and with great speed in an increasingly complex work environment.
While being able to assess the best leadership approach for every situation takes some time and experience, everyone operates with some degree of flexibility, and some leaders are naturally more flexible than others.
However, through self-awareness and hard work, leaders of all stripes can increase their level of flexibility, regardless of their natural style.
A leader’s ability to be flexible is primarily related to the personal relationships that he or she has with others.
Flexible leaders are able to draw people into the conversation and ensure that everyone is given the opportunity to share their views.
The leader is comfortable facilitating and contributing to the conversation rather than dominating it.
He or she is also willing to accept input and doesn’t get defensive when people offer alternative perspectives or disagree with the leader’s views.
Here are ten ways to increase your personal level of flexibility:
- Diagnose Before You Respond – Make sure you take the time to examine the task, the needs of the situation, and the capabilities of the individuals involved. Then, choose the best way to respond to each one.
- Take Time Out – During the day, step back from your work and assess your approach to leading your team. Do you believe that you are using your time well and that people are committed to your mission? If the answer is “no,” stop and make some adjustments to your methods.
- Plan Ahead – Schedule time in your calendar to create your plan and share your vision with the team. Assess which areas would benefit from your team members assuming greater responsibility, and then help them set specific goals related to their areas of contribution.
- Clarify Expectations – Periodically review expectations with your team members. Be
clear about what you expect from them in terms of performance and behavior, and ask them what they need from you.
- Select the Best People – Build a team of talented individuals who are trustworthy and reliable. Understand their knowledge, abilities, and talents, and then put those assets to work.
- Ask for Feedback – Ask your team members if they feel that their talents and abilities are being put to good use and what you could do differently to enable them to perform at their peak.
- Build Allies Within the Business – Identify others in the organization who are affected by the work of your team. Build strong relationships with those who can help, mentor, and support you in your efforts.
- Sharpen Your Facilitation Skills – Develop your ability to manage conflict and reach consensus in a group setting. Learn how to focus the group’s attention on the topics at hand and lead them to a mutually acceptable agreement.
- Manage Your Time Effectively – Anticipate likely scenarios and start working on projects early. Allow enough time for you and your team to learn, experiment, and solve problems together.
- Help Others Set Effective Goals – Ensure that your team’s individual goals clearly support the overall vision. All goals should be SMART: specific, measurable, aligned, realistic, and time-bound.
CMOE has been coaching leaders since 1978, and we have developed situational guidelines to help leaders improve their flexibility and the performance of their team in any situation.
Visit our page on Flexible Leadership for more information.
Improvement in anything takes time. To move from beginner to better to best requires a firm grasp of the fundamentals that define your job requirements as well as the know-how and judgment for when to change course, get things done, and keep moving along.
More often than not, though, the latter only comes from retrospective learning. Let’s be honest, nobody really learns from their successes as they do from their failures, so what happens is this: gaps are created amongst an employee’s tenure that don’t set him or her up for success because there is no proactive succession planning, so the only way for that employee to learn is after the fact.
Here’s what I mean.
As a new employee, Matt (a fictional character) is promoted based on the competence he displays from the time he entered the organization up through promotion boards. This metric for advancement lasts approximately up to the director/VP level. Once Matt arrives at the C-suite, his ability to deliver and execute (i.e. competence) is no longer the metric for success but rather the expectation.
Instead, Matt is now measured on his character and how well he navigates relationships to work and achieve results collaboratively. Matt’s success now depends less on functional expertise and more on general knowledge. However, he never received the “memo” on how to bridge this promotion gap, what leadership would entail and how it would differ from his role as a director (or previous one).
Even worse, he wasn’t even aware that such a gap existed in the first place. Now, Matt must stay current with not only the tangible skills of his job function (the expectation) but also learn the intangibles such as presence, communication, and leadership associated with his promotion.
The key to success in the above scenario is to recognize that different leadership—and hence,
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learning styles—exist. Here is a four-step process for how to change your leadership style and adapt to the right situation:
Detect. The first step to any sort of change is to identify the imperative to change. In the military, before we set out to plan our next mission we first needed to understand the environment in which we operated. Specifically, we needed to discern between two types of unknowns. The first is known unknowns, such as our capabilities, enemy pattern of life and likely or unlikely responses. The second type is unknown unknowns, and these are indicated by the weather, terrain, and—again—enemy behavior. The degree to which we could anticipate an enemy’s response dictated our approach, much like understanding the relationship dynamics, interests, and vested resources amongst stakeholders in a meeting.
The point is, don’t be that guy or gal to enter into a new situation assuming you know everything, because once you do, there’s no turning back. First impressions are lasting impressions. Instead, you want to calibrate the most effective way to deliver results, so take the time to let every situation unravel to better understand the situational dynamics.
Adapt. The reason detection is so important is because it affords space to maneuver—not in the physical sense of trying to escape another seemingly wasteful meeting, but the mental space that allows you to adjust mid-course based on new information or perspectives, and this is where adapt-ability comes in.
To adapt in this sense is to have a flexible mindset; to be prepared to put aside the functional expertise and instead improvise based on the intent of the situation and the best fit for its purpose.
Of course, a flexible mindset is easier said than done. We all know people who are anything but flexible in their ways.
Choose. Choosing the right leadership style depends on a number of factors. Here are a few questions to consider before choosing the best leadership style to employ:
- What does “right” look like? Is my definition of winning the same as everybody else’s?
- What objective am I trying to achieve? What objective are we trying to achieve? Why the discrepancy? (if applicable)
- What and who will be impacted the most? Is this impact in accordance with our intent?
Adopt. Once you’ve detected the right leadership style to employ, adapted your mindset and behavior to that style, and effectively chosen to implement it into practice, it’s time to actually do it. Adopting a new leadership style into your repertoire allows you to call upon that style and its associated skills at any time and under any circumstance.
The DACA approach can help you slow down your thought process and settle into the situation before diving in too deep. Take the time to let the situation unravel and then apply the right leadership style to the right situation.
