Every leader is different, so are your employees
Of the seven keys to building high performance teams, the first key is leadership. For a very good reason.
You can’t expect your team to transform your business by themselves, after all, can you?
Your team needs someone to back them up and guide them as they deliver on the business objectives.
Now, this isn’t about controlling your team, or dictating every move. It’s not about who shouts the loudest. Rather it’s about demonstrating quality leadership.
If you want to improve your leadership skills, it always helps to have a look at your own leadership style.
To understand a leader’s style, we typically look at their task behaviour – how they get involved with team members, how they tell them what to do, when and where.
And we then look at their relationship behaviour – this is more to do with how they explain to their team, listen, encourage and facilitate team members as they go about their tasks.
Some managers will concentrate more on task related behaviour while others will lean more towards relationship behaviour. Some will be a more even blend of the two.
And there is place in business for all styles. For example if you have an employee who is reliable and experienced, self-sufficient, you won’t need to oversee and encourage too much at all. So, you would apply a leadership style with a low focus on task AND relationship support.
But with a new team member you may need to provide a high level of task focused support while they grow their confidence in the role. Then once they are more competent in the tasks and start to require more emotional support and encouragement to flourish further, you could add in more of the relationship focused leadership behaviours to meet this need.
There is no one preferred leadership style, what is important though is how you adapt your style to suit certain situations and evolve it as things change within your business.
Learn more about our Executive Coaching programme here.
And why not take our quick 3 minute Next Level Assessment Quiz and find out if team really is your challenge at the moment – Level Up Your Business
