Adapting Leadership Style Pt. 1

Are you a leader who's confident in their style, or do you often question if your approach is the most effective? Stepping into this nuanced dialogue, we question the merits and detriments of authoritarian leadership, and the impact it can potentially have on not just the work environment, but also on individual employees. Drawing from our personal experiences in leadership roles, we delve into the possible pitfalls of a rigid leadership approach, and the critical importance of flexibility and adaptability.

Unravel the fascinating correlation between leadership style and employee productivity and happiness as we further our discussion. We bring to light the dark side of authoritarian leadership - the fear it instills, the mistrust it breeds, and the negative working environment it fosters. Listen in as we discuss how a leader can adapt their style to the team's needs and how recognizing when a leadership style is ineffective could be a game-changer. All this and more as we explore the profound impact leadership styles have on an organization's overall health and productivity. Infused with intriguing discussions and insightful observations, this is one conversation you won't want to miss!

Chapters

• 0:01 Exploring Leadership Styles
• 8:09 The Negative Consequences of Authoritarian Leadership
• 15:28 Leadership's Impact on Employee Happiness & Productivity

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Team one stand by Copy. Team one stand by Breach, breach, breach. There you guys, welcome back. So last week I wrote an article or a post or a blog post whatever you want to call it where I discussed the death of leadership. Now, I admit that the title itself was ominous and, more likely than not, I chose to use that title as an attention grabber you know, not exactly click baits, I don't say that but as a way of getting people's attention to how important it is to have a, you know, wider variety of leadership styles, as opposed to just always kind of back down like a dictator.

Speaker 1: 1:18

You know that particular type of leaderships for those that are curious is called authoritarian. A lot of times it's what those of us that grew up in the 80s and 90s and even earlier, you know it's. It was the parenting style we were used to. You know do this or suffer the consequences, and that's changed a lot over time. But when you're talking about leadership styles, you need to be able to have a wider variety in terms of styles of leaderships than just the go to authoritarian. Don't get me wrong. Authoritarian definitely has its place. There are definitely times when you need an authoritarian style of leadership. Not only can it save lives and, you know, prevent a lot of legal issues, but you know, there are times when it's needed just because you've, you know, you've got a subordinate, you've got an employee or what have you that you really are, you know, nothing else has seemed to have worked. Nothing else with that particular employee has worked and the other leadership styles has, you know, affected anything and in turn it's kind of left with it. You know, because if the other employees start to see that this one employee is, you know, allowed to do things, or the subordinate is allowed to do things that are contradictory to rules and regulations that everybody else is expected to follow, well, then they start to do the same thing and then, before you know it, the whole ship has run amok. So by no means am I saying that an authoritarian style of leadership is ineffective, because it is not.

Speaker 1: 3:23

It is most certainly an effective form of leadership and if that's the type of leadership that someone chooses, you know they will find that, at least in the initial, it is effective, that accomplishes things, it gets things done, because the subordinate or the employee understands that by not doing whatever it is, they're going to suffer some kind of you know, more harsh, more harsh punishments in order to do their job or not to do their job. But if you know, in order to maintain their job they're going to have to go through some pretty harsh things and it can also lead to, you know, a pretty rough work environment for them Should they choose not to comply. I'd say it's sharp. If they choose not to comply, they could, you know, obviously suffer, you know, a poor working experience, and that's through no fault of the employer or the superior or supervisor or what have. You Should just simply be that you know they're a problem employee. That's the only way to get things across to them, because you know they seem to think that they can do whatever they want or do it however they want, and that's not the case a lot of the times.

Speaker 1: 4:57

And to go one step further and capitalize on what I was saying about that, then listen into an audiobook. Those that don't know. I don't like to read. I have a hard time reading because I get bored and I fall asleep, not off, whatever. Oh, but it's not that way. If you find a book that you like and you're interested in I'm interested in a lot of things and just because I'm interested in it doesn't mean that I'm going to read it. So thank you for audiobooks.

Speaker 1: 5:36

But getting back on it, I have been listening to an audiobook by an artist, say an artist by an author by the name of Greg Hartley, and those of you who know anything about Greg Hartley he is, you know, he has made quite the name for himself, both in the military aspect of his life and then also in the personal and professional aspect of his life, because that's one of the things that he talks about is human interaction. Most notably, you'll find things on Greg referring to behaviors of the body, so what somebody's mannerisms are when they're talking. But in this particular audiobook of his that I was listening to, he talks about leadership styles and how he doesn't believe that there is any one type of leadership style that is better than the others. And I can see that I can. I can completely subscribe to that theory for the sheer fact of that. You know, while I may have never run a big company and had, you know, a lot of employees or any employees, honestly, well, I may not have had that I have worked in supervisory roles and been in leadership positions, and being in those positions has afforded me the opportunity to learn how to be a leader and in doing so I have found that not every leadership style works with every individual, and I know one leadership style is going to work for one person the same as it's going to work for the other and in that, using that guiding principle, that means that the authoritarian, authoritarian style of leadership is not always the best one, not only the best, always the best one, but it's not always the way that's going to accomplish the most optimum output, the most optimum results.

Speaker 1: 8:09

You know you'll get some immediate results from it. Some of them can be positive, some of them can be negative. But if you only use an authoritarian style of leadership, I promise you that the negative results are ultimately going to outweigh the positives. You may get whatever you're wanting, but you're going to lose a few things in the process. One of those things are people. You're going to lose your subordinates, your employees, if they're constantly living fear of suffering some kind of negative aspect of their professional job. You know, if they're constantly worried about. Well, if I come in, or when I go in today I could be fired. When I come in today I could be written up.

Speaker 1: 9:10

You know, making sure that they try to abide by everything and still constantly having to be fearful that they're going to lose their jobs or suffer some kind of punishment for something that they didn't realize they were doing wrong. You know which? We've all felt victim of it. You know, oh well, you knew what the rules were. You knew what the this, that and the other were. You still did it. So it doesn't matter whether you knew you did it or not at the time, it's still in there. You're still responsible for it. It's kind of a kind of a bullcrap way of doing things.

Speaker 1: 9:49

You know everything has to be done in perspective. You know what's, what are the circumstances that led to this violation, what are the circumstances that you know prevented this abordinate or employee from adhering to a rule or the rules or whatever the case is? You know sustenance matters, substance matters. You know you have to have context. That's what I meant. I say context matters. You have to have context into what's going on, not just simply well, broke the rules, time for punishment.

Speaker 1: 10:29

You know now saying that ultimately you can't move to the authoritarian, no, sometimes it's needed. However, if you have an environment in which your employees constantly fear and yes, I meant I said that fear, they constantly fear that they're going to suffer some kind of punishment for some minor mistake then your style of leadership has now become ineffective. Your style of leadership is no longer effective when your team and that's what, in my personal opinion, we need to start using your team, because it's a team effort you're not out there doing the job. But when your team starts to get the perspective that you know, for minor rule violations or violating policy, you know some minor things again we're talking minor, okay. For some minor violation, they're gonna, you know, pay some huge consequence you got. If your work environment has gotten to that point, your style of leadership has failed.

Speaker 1: 11:54

And what can compound failed leadership style is when a leader can see, or has seen, the signs that their leadership style has failed and does nothing to change it. If you're a leader and you've seen the signs that your type of leadership, your style of leadership, is starting to become ineffective and ineffective in terms of you know it's starting to negatively affect the lives of your subordinate, your employee, your team. If you see those differences, if you see that your leadership style has become less effective and you, as a leader, have done absolutely nothing to change that, well, you've become a failed leader, and I'm not saying that lightly, because we're not perfect, those of us that are in leadership positions. It's not always an easy job. You're dealing with multiple individuals and multiple different personality types, personality styles, and as such, you have to be adaptable. It's not just about what you think, but it's about what your team thinks. So it's not an easy job. But as a person in a leadership position, as a leader, you have to be able to look for these signs and then adapt your style of leadership to what's needed. And if you know this, you see these signs and you do absolutely nothing to change it because you are so ego driven to have it your way.

Speaker 1: 14:13

You're a failed and ineffective leader, because real leaders realize that the value of their business, the value of their company whatever they're a leader over comes from their team. That's where the value is. As a leader, you have to keep the company's bottom line in mind. That's your job Make sure that what the company is trying to accomplish gets accomplished. But you're not the company, you're not the business. You're an individual and you're responsible, as a leader, to those that you manage, that you supervise, that you employ. And when you see that things are not going the way they should and you do nothing about it. That makes you complicit. It makes you complicit in what's going on. It makes you just as much responsible for the lack of reaching your goals.

Speaker 1: 15:28

Now, if your company, your business or whatever, is it reaching those benchmarks that you set for yourselves and there's a problem with the leadership style and you've done nothing to do anything about it, and it's not just your team that has failed to do that, it is you, as the leader, that has failed to do that, because you have a direct role in the output of your subordinates, your employees of your team. A direct role. It was said to me once before that, as a leader, your attitude will dictate the attitude of your subordinates, and in part I agree with that. In part I agree with that, because if your team trusts you, if your team likes you, if your team has faith in you that you're going to do the right thing, that you're going to lead them in the right way, then, yes, your attitude as a leader will be directly represented by those that you supervise, those you manage, those you employ. It will be directly resembled or modified by them. So, yeah, I agree with that in theory. But if you're a failed leader and you're somebody who only thinks about the bottom line, I can promise you your team is not going to emulate that same attitude, that same go out and get it, that same intent to accomplish whatever goal, task, whatever it is that you are, because they care absolutely nothing about you. They care absolutely nothing about what you think, but more so about how you've made them feel, and that's a big thing.

Speaker 1: 17:46

So when I was in the Air Force and this was one of the things that surprised me, because you know it was the military, I don't want to hear any crap about cheer force. Okay, those of you that were in other branches you can say it, I don't want to hear anyone else. I don't want to hear it. But while I was in the Air Force, one of the things that got said to me by my supervision at the time because I was just a, you know, a freshly budding E3, was that they had found that when their airmen had happier lives, they had a better product, they saw more productivity, saw better results at work when their employees or their airmen had happier home lives. And this was back in 2000, 2001.

Speaker 1: 18:48

The Air Force is saying this to me 2000, 2001,. They're saying look, we found out that when our airmen have happier home lives, we get more out of them. You know, now is that the company making sure that the company accomplishes what they're trying to accomplish 100%, 100%. Now does it matter whether they really truly care on how your home life is? Because you believe they did, and even if you didn't believe they really did, you knew that they were going to try to make sure that your home life was good. And who doesn't want to happy your home life? Who doesn't want a good home life? Now, that's your solitude, that's your place of rest. So, whether they actually cared or not, you knew they were going to make sure that you had a happier home life. By having a happier home life, they knew they were going to get a better product and more productivity out of you.