Leadership Approaches, Styles and Leadership Development

There’s no doubting the importance of leadership in companies.  Leadership makes the difference between a firm that bumbles along and one that excels.  It makes the difference between a firm that exists for today and one that invests in the future.

The Nature of Leadership

There are many definitions of leadership.  Some say it’s a process of making sense of business situations so that staff can see goals clearly.  Others say that leadership is about influencing staff to achieve collective goals.  But there’s a difference between managers and leaders.  Managers try to create predictability and order while leaders try to get staff to agree with their ideas for change.

Traditionally there’s the vision of a central actor doing the leading, like the military stereotype, out front leading the charge.  There’s more interest today though on distributed leadership where all staff take the role from time to time – like the engineer who steps forward to lead the tender response and bid production or the product manager who sees his or her product to market prominence.  Though not hierarchical leaders, both exhibit necessary situational leadership.

Leadership Approaches

Leadership works at the interpersonal, group and organisational levels.  The way leaders work should differ with context and level.  Managers in firms make choices about the form of leadership they use.  Classically there’s transactional leadership, trading favours to get things done.  Then there’s transformational leadership with its charismatic leader providing intellectual stimulus to the staff.  Professional leadership fits schools and law firms while moral leadership applies when the firms on a mission.  And managerial leadership fits when there are processes to build and day-to-day tasks to do.

Developing  Leaders

Leadership can be learned.  Leaders can be developed.  Leaders need interpersonal skills to work with staff.  They need conceptual skills to perceive the way forward.  And they need technical skills to understand the processes, techniques and methods to make the company fly.  Traits like stress tolerance, inquisitiveness and open-mindedness can be developed.  TimelessTime’s leadership training programmes use a mix of training methods including active practice of skills, action learning, use of feedback, executive coaching and mentoring, each developed to fit the leaders and the leadership scenario.

on 01825 724179 for a free assessment of how well your chosen leadership styles and approaches fit with your goals and company environment.  We’ll advise on how successful your chosen forms of leadership are likely to be.