It is appropriate for employees to look to their leaders for encouragement and inspiration in times of difficulty. Even when they not directly engaging with every staff member's day-to-day management, your way of managing affects the organization's culture.
Understanding your type of leadership's strengths and weaknesses ensure you will become the role model your employees require.
Understand how you lead
The first thing is unpacking your leadership style. Do you quickly assume command and give confident instructions? Therefore, you may be an authoritative leader. Are you always driving your employees to achieve new standards, the hallmark of a goal-setting leader? Or do you take a more idiosyncratic approach, delegate expeditiously, and trust your team to fulfill their own goals? Likely, you are an affiliative leader, working with your team's strengths and weaknesses to get the most from them.
You may find you have a combination of diverse leadership styles or even pivot your style depending on the situation. Moreover, understanding yourself and your organic leadership style, the more you can distinguish areas to strengthen.
Unpack the strengths and weaknesses of your style
Once you have reflected on your leadership style, you can use it to identify areas where you can improve. Authoritative leaders are reassuring in crisis times because they give clear instructions and present a strong feeling of being in the driver's seat. They may overlook insights and innovative solutions from other team members. If this is you, examine how you can introduce changes for collaborating free of losing your composed influence's reassurance.
Goal-setting leaders inspire their team by establishing an atmosphere of constant progress and enthusiasm. Despite this, the need to innovate incessantly may leave employees feeling exhausted or dis-stressed.
Keep in mind to always praise previous achievements and celebrate your team's contributions to tackle burn-out.
An individualistic leadership style lets your staff know that they are trusted to manage their workload for that their decisions won't be second-guessed.
However, be cautious that your employees don't end up feeling overwhelmed or lack firm leadership. When asked to decide, be transparent, consider, and confident in your decisions to reassure staff that you are still comfortably in command.
Lastly, affiliative leaders always maintain their team's backs. Their collaborators feel secure in the knowledge that they will be given opportunities to grow. An affiliative leader's risk is that they will be so focused on staff's personal needs that they ignore the prodigious picture. Carve out time to focus on your overall strategy and inspire your team by demonstrating to them how their work intersects with the business as a whole.