Defining your Leadership Style

What We Are Up to Today

❧ A Few Words About Change and
Leadership
❧ Leadership Styles
❧ A Word or Two About Trust
❧ Change Stories
❧ The Challenge
❧ How Are We Going to Show Up
Differently as Leaders in the Future
Change……..
❧ “If the rate of change inside an organization
is less than the rate of change outside the
organization, the end is in sight.”
» Jack Welch

❧ “I’m sorry, but the future has been

cancelled.”
» Barry Oshry

❧ “Giraffes didn’t get those necks overnight!”

» Louis Leakey
Leadership…..

❧The art of tapping the wellsprings

of human motivation in order to
mobilize them toward a shared
aspiration.
– With apologies to Kouzes and Posner
 Let’s Start by Defining Other
Terms!
❧ Leader
● The one who goes first.
● Someone credible
focused on the future.
● Establishes “True
North”
● Something we become
over time.
● The one who articulates
the direction for others
to go.
In the end, does the definition really matter?
❧ Leadership
● Service
● The relationship
between the leader and
her constituents
● A practice, a struggle,
and a feud.
● Caring
● Self-development
How Do Leaders Show up?
Leaders Managers
The Qualities of an Effective
Leader

❧ Honesty
❧ Forward-Looking
❧ Inspiring
❧ Competent
The Practices of an Effective
Leader
❧ They Challenge Everything
❧ They Inspire Shared Vision and Action
❧ They Enable Others to Act
❧ They Model the Way
❧ They Encourage and Speak from the
Heart
 Change Process Model
Urgency

Coalition

Vision

Communication Change

Empowerment

Wins

Reinforcement
The Competencies of an
Effective Leader
❧ Identifying the Pain of Current Vs Ideal
❧ Pursuit of Excellence
❧ Accountability/Focus
❧ Business Acumen
❧ Problem Solving/Conceptual Thinking
❧ Interpersonal Skills/Emotional Intelligence
❧ Supporting Teamwork
❧ Commitment
❧ Develops Others
❧ Develops Self
Leadership Styles
❧ Four Styles
● A. Command and Control
● B. Bureaucratic/Participative
● C. Expert/Democratic
● D. Self-Managing/Team
❧ Three P’s (Cross Check Scales)
● Pitfalls (P1 Scale)
● Practices (P2 Scale)
● Principles (P3 Scale)
Leadership Styles
❧ All styles are valid depending on your
organizational context, the effective
experience level of your staff, and your
personal leadership principles
❧ Subscale 1 vs 2 is simply the healthy vs. the
average version of the style.
❧ Everyone has a dominant style
Trust - An Important Topic for
the Times
❧ Trust Destroyers
● unhealthy levels of ambition, power, need for recognition
● volatile personalities/Class A jerks/inconsistent emotional reactions
● personal vs. organizational agendas at odds
● under-performance
● misplacing benevolence on others
● false or no feedback to others
● non-confrontational/paralyzed
● scapegoating others or failing to trust others
● taking away the everyday!/excessively strict or inflexible
● Bait and switchers
● inconsistent communicators
● complicated situations/always in crisis or chaos/rapidly changing life
Here’s a given: a starting
assumption:
In every organization,
no matter how flat,
Tops there are tops,
middles, and bottoms.

Middles

Bottoms
Exercise
❧ In small groups of 5 to 7 people:
● Tell each other a story of a time when you personally

experienced a major change in an organization. (Take 5

minutes per person!)
• Where were you in the organization at the time of
the change (a top, middle, or a bottom)
• Focus on how you felt during the change effort
• Relate your feelings to the style of the leadership
team
● Make a List of What Was Done Well, etc. for each

group
The collective intelligence and
experience exists in this room
today to lead a masterful change.
The question is….will you take the
time, gather the experience, and
communicate in a way that takes
advantage of the collective?
Exercise: How Will We Show Up?
❧ Change is experienced differently for tops,
middles, and bottoms
❧ Drawing on your change stories, and given
your particular challenge
• What do you need to do differently for each group
in the coming change you need to implement?
• How are you going to ensure the discipline required
to implement this?
“It’s not so much that we’re afraid of change,
or so in love with the old ways, but it’s the
place in between that we fear…it’s like being
between trapezes. It’s Linus when his blanket
is in the dryer. There’s nothing to hold on to.”
—M. Ferguson
In order for us personally to
change…..
❧ We need…..
● Coaching, instruction or mentoring
● The attitude of the beginner
● A supportive environment(people)
● A transitional object (Linus’ blanket)
● A safe environment where risk-taking is OK
● A place where you can experiment with
different strategies (rehearsal or practice)
● A way of rewriting your autobiography!
Leadership is about creating the
conversation to focus priorities
-Steve Williamson
 Magellan
By Mary Oliver
Like Magellan, let us find our islands
To die in, far from home, from anywhere
Familiar. Let us risk the wildest places,
Lest we go down in comfort and despair.
For years we have labored over common roads,
Dreaming of ships that sail into the night.
Let us be heroes, or, if that’s not in us,
Let us find men to follow, honor bright.
For what is life but reaching for an answer?
And what is death but a refusal to grow?
Magellan had a dream he had to follow.
The sea was big, his ships were awkward, slow.
And when the fever would not set him free,
To his thin crew, “Sail on, Sail on!” he cried.
And so they did, carried the frail dream forward.
And thus Magellan lives, although he died.