Leadership the moving target

Being a leader means we need to adopt to the situation and use the right style at the right time.

Imagine you're at work and the boss hands out that special horrid job. How would you react and act in a positve way to lead the team through the job.

Now Imagine you're at the same work place and your workmate walks out behind the forklift, I bet this is much easier to determine the right way to lead.

And lastly Imagine you're still in the same place and the new guy is struggling with a complicated procedure.

So what can we take away from this, Great leaders can and do change their styles to suit the situation. Are you comfortable and prepared to switch from the co-operative leader for the first example acting as one in the team to share the burden and get on with getting the job done. Can you switch in a blink of an eye to adopt an authoritarian leadership mode and yell instructions in the face of a potential accident in the second example. Thirdly will you slow down to take the mentor and coaching leadership role for our final scenario.

The tough part of this is, is that there is no right way or perfect way to be great leader. Good leadership demands us to be capable in a number of roles. If we look into ourselves we can see that we are more comfortable with some styles than we are with others. This is the challenge for us to work and develop our weaker styles so they can be used as part of our arsonal of leadership skills.