What Kind of Leader Are You?
What kind of leaders are you?
What will you answer if someone asks you that question?
Maybe some of you already know what types of leadership you have. Or maybe some of you are clueless or even don’t even care about it.
“Oh, I am not a leader so I don’t really care about it”
Guys, every one of us is a leader. Even if you don’t want to.
You are a leader.
Leader for your own self.
You lead yourself. You decide what kind of life you want to experience. What kind of path you want to choose. You can’t deny and you can’t run away from that responsibility.
I just learned about types of leadership before I deliver this speech. Actually I have no choice. I should learn to pass this “Understanding Your Leadership” challenge and move to the next step.
Let me share what I learned.
Effective leaders empower others to accomplish personal goals and contribute to the successful completion of group objectives.
They provide guidance and feedback to help others to improve.
A good leader is the one who can serve and help others.
As for myself, my type of leadership is Altruistic leadership. Which means I serve others naturally. This sounds ideal right? But actually there is a time when this type of leadership is ineffective. This style can be ineffective if not given sufficient time to apply a long-term perspective. So this type is not effective for a short-term project.
Then what type of leadership is the best?
None.
We need to adapt our leadership style based on the situation and the people being led. Since our behaviors and leadership styles may impact those whom we lead and our desired outcomes.
For example, I can’t use my Altruistic style if I lead a team consisting of people who don’t have a growth mindset and don’t have willingness to improve themselves. They work simply only to get a salary and survive. Maybe the Bureaucratic and Authoritarian types will be more suitable for them.
Then again, this led to the question.
“If there is no best leadership style, then how can there be a good leader out there? What defines a good leader?”
Simon Sinek, in his TED Talk titled “How Great Leader Inspire Action” told us that: Great leaders know the “Why” of every action they made.
No matter what types of your leadership are. If you adapt it with the situation and the people you led, and the most importantly, you know WHY and what your motives are on every step you took. Successfully make others believe what you believe. Then you are a good leader.
In his talk, Simon told us about the invention of airplanes.
Before they invented the airplane, a man named Samuel Pierpont Langley was given 50,000 dollars by the War Department to figure out this flying machine. Money was no problem. He held a seat at Harvard and worked at the Smithsonian and was extremely well-connected; he knew all the big minds of the day. He hired the best minds money could find and the market conditions were fantastic. The New York Times followed him around everywhere, and everyone was rooting for Langley. Then how come we’ve never heard of Samuel Pierpont Langley?
Then let’s see, Wright brothers, they had none of what we consider to be the recipe for success. They had no money; they paid for their dream with the proceeds from their bicycle shop. Not a single person on the Wright brothers’ team had a college education, not even Orville or Wilbur.
The difference was, Orville and Wilbur were driven by a cause, by a purpose, by a belief. They believed that if they could figure out this flying machine, it’ll change the course of the world. Samuel Pierpont Langley was different. He wanted to be rich, and he wanted to be famous. He was in pursuit of the result. He was in pursuit of the riches. And lo and behold, look what happened. The people who believed in the Wright brothers’ dream worked with them with blood and sweat and tears.
And, eventually, on December 17th, 1903, the Wright brothers took flight. What happened to Langley and the team? Langley was motivated by the wrong thing: the day the Wright brothers took flight, he quit. The team disbanded. He wasn’t first, he didn’t get rich, he didn’t get famous, so he quit.
Leaders are those who inspire us. Whether they’re individuals or organizations, we follow those who lead, not because we have to, but because we want to. We follow those who lead, not for them, but for ourselves. And it’s those who start with “why” that have the ability to inspire those around them or find others who inspire them.
