Do you ever wonder why leaders do what they do? The plans, decisions and actions of a leader are strongly influenced by three powerful factors:
- Their personality style (also known as social style)
- The culture where they operate
- Past or present role models
Our style consists of traits we were born with…how we are “wired” to see and prefer things. We also acquired preferences as we grew through interactions with others, much of this occurring in our youth. Our traits continue to be influenced by our culture and the imprint of our role models as well.
If you’ve taken a personality profile such as the DISC or MBTI assessments, you have seen a summary of your preferences. These preferences will influence how we lead. For example, our natural wiring may make us likely to either prefer managing in a supportive team environment or being hands-off and staying to ourselves; avoiding conflict at all costs, or welcoming (even instigating) debate; or working on many open projects at once versus doing one thing at a time.
The culture in which we work can influence our leadership as well. In fact, it can cause us to behave in ways we otherwise would not. If you were a senior leader at Volkswagen in the last few years, the culture may have influenced you to overlook shortcuts taken with emissions tests. However, if you operate in a values-aligned culture, you might publicly admit a mistake like Red Hat so you can serve your customers better.
Our role models (past and present) are also powerful influences. If a former boss yelled to get their way, it’s likely I’m going to yell at my team. If a past boss gently but firmly held team members accountable, and we achieved great thing together, I’m likely going to model that for my team. Our parents, coaches, teachers, friends, enemies and public figures also help shape what we do or do not want to be like. A truly effective leader extracts the positive and uplifting influences and absorbs that into his or her character and behavior, while avoiding the negative influences.
Your team is also going to be affected by your style, the culture you all work in, and the role models you follow and may point out to them. I remember one of my clients telling me that a manager recently announced values he expected his team to follow going forward. However, his demands were not credible for two reasons. One was that he didn’t include the team in the creation of the expected values (a topic for another post) but the other was that he did not model them himself. Whether it was because of his natural personality style, or the role models he followed, his demands weren’t going to create the right culture. As you might guess, the team is frustrated, and so is the leader, so things were not going well.
Don’t assume you’re an effective leader. Give some thought to your natural style, the culture you work in, and the role models you follow (whether intentionally or not.) What do you learn from examining these three things, and what changes do you need to make?
