Being situational in today’s environment - Why effective leaders flex their style.

Kirsty Brooks
A recent HBR article, “Finding the right balance – and flexibility – in your leadership style”, caught my attention because I see the conflicting challenges for leaders in our coaching practice.

Particularly as leaders seek to shift their style in response to the changing environment and challenges within it.  

The article challenges “the out with the old” statement commonly heard, referring to the more traditional, command and control leadership styles and suggests a balance between traditional and emerging leader archetypes, developing the flexibility between the two to be effective in today’s environment.

It encourages leaders to broaden their sweet range rather than perfect a sweet spot to become more versatile and effective in their roles today.  

Their survey conducted with over 1000 leaders worldwide uncovered 7 core tensions between traditional and emerging styles and sought to identify the balance between the two styles. 

You can view the article by clicking HERE

Broaden the range of leadership capabilities.

Offering an excellent overview of stages to developing a leadership style that I would urge any leader to consider.

But as a summary, suggesting leaders should seek to broaden the range of leadership capabilities by focusing on the following three distinct stages:  

  1. Understand yourself through cognitive self-awareness by interpreting the environment
  2. Understand your environment, consider situational awareness alongside Inter- and intrapersonal emotional awareness
  3. Broaden your range by identifying and practising micro-behaviours rather than a grand move to shift behaviour radically.  

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From a coaching perspective, this sits very comfortably. As often, leaders (and their sponsors) can get hung up on micro focusing on just one or two leadership behaviours that they seek to strengthen and make a radical shift.

The three stages refreshingly articulate the coaching journey for leaders, beginning with the self-awareness to the small stepped changes that can be made using practice and reflection to understand the effectiveness of these changes.  

Here at People Perform we specialise in leadership coaching along with a range of practical yet innovation solutions for Organisations, Leaders & Teams.

You can read more about our coaching faculty, our coaching vision and our wider delivery methods and options by clicking HERE.

Fancy a chat? Email us at hello@peopleperform.co.uk. 
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