How to Determine Your Own Personal Leadership Style

People are filling leadership positions every day. We can’t say that all leaders are created equal, though. Unfortunately, there are lacking leaders in every industry — but the most successful ones have something significant in common: they adopted a personal leadership style, actively develop it, and leverage it to build better teams. 

A personal leadership style can help you play to your and your team’s strengths, inspiring the utmost productivity and loyalty. Your personality, goals, values, and team must be at the forefront of your leadership style choice if you want to be the best leader you can be. 

Tips on how to determine your personal leadership style are coming up, but first, let’s explore a few common leadership styles and the benefits of deciding yours. 

The Benefits of Determining Your Own Personal Leadership Style 

One of the main benefits of determining your own personal leadership style is how much easier it is to adapt to change and guide your team through it. Of course, it’s difficult for any individual, let alone an entire team, to transform when the time calls for it. However, it’s indispensable if you want to survive in an ever-changing world. 

One of the most recent changes leaders faced is the transition into remote and hybrid work models. Welcoming new team members and ensuring effective collaboration in this new work environment is integral to success. The leaders most able to pull off a seamless transition leaned into their specific leadership style to ensure their teams were adequately supported. 

Determining your leadership style can also help you grow as an individual. You get to dig into where you are now as a leader and define what kind of leader you want to be in the future. Most importantly, you get to develop the inner parts of you that will help you better motivate your team.

Three Common Leadership Styles 

There are plenty of leadership styles out there to learn, try, and adopt as your own. Here are three of the most common: 

Autocratic leadership 

An autocratic leader concentrates on results and efficiency. They expect their teams to follow suit without pushback. In addition, their routines are rigid, and they are firm on the techniques they use to manage their teams. 

Teams lacking experience can benefit from constant supervision and guidance — but autocratic leaders may not allow for too much innovation. They also make most of the decisions themselves, so they’re prone to persistent stress. 

Hands-off leadership 

Someone who is a hands-off leader does the opposite of an autocratic one. They’re all for delegation and giving their teams space to work without a whole lot of supervision. Instead of micro-managing their employees as autocratic leaders do, they’re more inclined to let people work in whatever way inspires them to perform their best. 

This leadership style may work if you’ve got a highly-experienced team that doesn’t need you to motivate and guide them every day. 

Participative leadership 

Participative leadership is a nice blend of autocratic and hands-off leadership. These leaders welcome feedback from their teams and move forward with a decision only when they have that input. They value, listen to, and motivate their teams to incite happiness and satisfaction in the workplace. 

This leadership style is best for teams with creativity as a core value. If you can get past how much time and effort it takes to manage a team with so much freedom, this may be the right leadership style for you. 

How to Determine Your Personal Leadership Style 

Defining your personal leadership style first requires self-awareness. If you aren’t self-aware, you won’t be able to identify your strengths and weaknesses, both of which are integral to success with any leadership style. Then, you can narrow down your leadership styles to those that help bring out your strengths while simultaneously working on your weaknesses. 

It’s also an excellent idea to conduct a self-evaluation. A self-evaluation will help you review what you’re great at, what you want to be better at, your professional achievements, and future goals in much detail. Then, draw meaningful insights from this document once you’re done and use them to get closer to a specific leadership style. 

After taking some time to explore who you are, take just as much time analyzing your team. Your leadership style must fit the unique needs of your team and the personalities that fill it. The last thing you want to do is choose a leadership style that you like but doesn’t support your team. Don’t be afraid to ask your team for direct feedback on your leadership abilities, their expectations, and if there are any gaps between the two. 

When you understand who you are and what your team needs regarding leadership, look back at the various leadership styles and choose yours. It’s okay to use a combination of leadership styles if that works better for you and your team. 

Conclusion 

Determining your personal leadership style means nothing if you don’t use it. So, be sure you’re implementing your leadership style daily. 

Start with a few specific actions you can be consistent with that solidify your leadership style with your team. Then, see how they react and if their productivity improves. Finally, make adjustments if your team isn’t taking to your leadership style or you find it isn’t a good fit for you as you thought it would be. 

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