In this age, where technology is constantly progressing, culture shifts constantly, and professional development is critical, it takes work to stand out as a true leader.

This blog briefly covers the common benefits and blindspots of different Leadership styles and gives five simple tips to level up your leadership skills today.

Our Four Favourite Styles of Leadership

There are many leadership styles, and each has its pros, cons, and impacts. However, we have chosen our four favourite leadership styles to focus on.

• Directive

• Supportive

• Affiliative

• Coaching

Directive Leadership

The Directive Leadership style focuses on the tasks and outcomes that need accomplishment. This leadership style is most useful when a situation needs to be dealt with quickly and effectively. The main goal of the directive style is to set clear goals and tasks that need completing. Next, the Leader decides the order or operation and then tells the team what to do to get the job done.

The Benefit of a Directive Leader

Decisive: They are direct communicators who leave little space for guessing or confusion. Their decisions come quickly and without hesitation or second-guessing.

The Blindspot of a Directive Leader

Controlling: They often can exhibit too much control and do not create space for risks and mistakes. Consequently, this control can sap an organization of creative energy when adapting to a changing market.

Supportive Leadership

Supportive Leaders focus on developing people and helping them to reach their full potential. This type of Leader creates a supportive environment for the people they lead. Supportive leaders help their teams to work together to achieve common goals. They foster open and honest communication within the team and encourage all members to share ideas and provide feedback. They also encourage their team members to try new things and learn from their mistakes.

The Benefit of a Supportive Leader

Relationships: They quickly build and develop connections with people and innately understand their people’s needs. As a result, they produce well-rounded teams and inspire their organizations to follow their vision.

The Blindspot of a Supportive Leader

Analysis Paralysis: Waiting to have all the facts is usually beneficial. However, Leaders must keep pace with the market around them, meaning slowing down the decision-making process to review unlimited data or have another committee meeting puts an organization at risk of being left behind.

Affiliative Leadership

Affiliative Leaders focus on the individual needs of their team members rather than just their performance and results. This type of Leader seeks to meet the needs of each team member. They ensure that the people they lead are happy and content in their work. They foster an environment where people feel valued and appreciated for their contributions. This approach helps build a strong team with trust and openness between its members.

The Benefit of an Affiliative Leadership

Wellbeing: Affiliative Leaders want to ensure that their people find work a positive experience. Therefore, they prioritize people feeling appreciated and want people to know that their contributions are valued.

The Blindspot of an Affiliative Leadership

Avoid conflict: These Leaders avoid disputes because they focus on relationship-building within their team. If a person is underperforming, the affiliative Leader will likely overlook the performance.

Coaching Leadership

A Coaching Leader helps their employees learn and grow from their work. An effective coach creates an environment that empowers employees to make decisions by developing a strong sense of ownership in their job. Effective coaches also set clear expectations for the team and help them to identify areas where improvement is needed. This direct feedback ensures that employees do the best job possible and as they have clear expectations on where to focus.

The Benefit of a Coaching Leadership

Mentorship: Coaching goes hand in hand with mentorship. Each person directly impacted by this hands-on learning and development will pass on what they learn to their subordinates. This coaching has a positive ripple effect throughout the organization.

The Blindspot of a Coaching Leadership

Time: There are only 24 hours a day and not enough time to coach every person in an organization. Therefore, coaches often are up to an overwhelming task that can derail other priorities.

5 Simple Traits to Level Up Your Leadership

Whatever your leadership style, becoming an outstanding leader is possible if you focus on building certain universal traits into your personality.

🥇 Recognize and Reward Excellent Work

Everyone wants to feel appreciated and recognized for their contributions in the workplace. Often, people put in long hours and extra effort behind the scene. When this endeavour is recognized and appreciated, it validates and encourages more hard work. Without it, it slowly builds resentment, which leads to disengaged people and higher turnover.

Remember to say, “thank you”! A good leader is always quick to recognize a job well done and share praise. A thank you is free and means so much more than you realize.

Pro Tip: Make recognition part of your daily routine. Ask your mid-level managers for stories of hard work and exceptional contributions, and make it a point to thank the employee. A simple “thank you and your work is appreciated” email will brighten someone’s day and validate why the extra effort is worth it.

💡 Create Opportunities

Provide opportunities for others to develop within the company to reach their full potential and earn promotion. It is your job to help your people reach their next level. According to Guide Spark, 73% of actively disengaged employees seek new jobs or opportunities outside their organization. Leaders can avoid great resignation if their people feel they are a partner in their career development.

Pro Tip: Start a mentorship program at work for people to learn from senior staff. Mentoring helps knowledge transfer and upskilling in a way that follows people’s genuine interests.

🏳️ Understand and Accept Mistakes

As a Leader, it is vital to make errors as part of the learning process. Mistakes will happen. Leaders must learn from their mistakes, share them with their people, and use that knowledge to help improve the organization. An organization will benefit when a Leader encourages their people to take risks, ultimately leading to new ideas and wins. Unfortunately, by promoting a culture of fear, we are not only inhibiting creativity but also holding people back from their potential.

Without errors, society would be without such marvellous inventions as penicillin, pacemakers, chocolate chip cookies, and the slinky — all equally critical contemporary marvels.

Pro Tip: Host a company-wide retrospective where you encourage sharing stories of success and failures. Focus on something other than the monetary wins or losses. For example, Speak on the value of crucial learnings from experience. Praise both equally wins and losses equally.

Get the designACE Go To Market Strategic Review Planner for a ready-to-go group review for in-person, online, or hybrid.

⛰️ Lead by Example

Good leaders know the importance of putting themselves as model employees for others to follow. Don’t just tell your team to do something; go and do it first. This concept will establish the Leader as a boss and a role model people will work to replicate.

Pro Tip: Respect the established organizational structure so that people know who to inform if there are challenges in a particular team. If a leader fails to follow these chains of command, there will be disorder in the organization, and the people will be demoralized. On the other hand, when Leaders respect the chain of command, people see it as necessary and follow suit.

🫶 Create Clear Boundaries

Extraordinary Leaders understand that when they call (or email), employees will jump at the opportunity to reply promptly. Consequently, email after hours and on weekends means that people feel obliged to work after hours and prioritize work on personal time. Set people free after work to live their lives and recover from a hard day of work. Building healthy work/life boundaries is key to avoiding burnout and is a cultural movement that starts at the top of the hierarchy.

Pro Tip: Use the “send later” feature on your email when working after hours. We know that flexible and demanding work environments mean people are working odd hours. When working outside the regular 9–5, consider what the recipient of your communication is doing before you click send. For example, if you know they’re off for the evening, don’t steal their focus back to work with an email from the boss. Instead, schedule the note to go out before they next start work. This way, it’s at the top of their inbox when they are fresh and ready to tackle the day’s work.

We hope these tips help you level up your Leadership skills and make you the type of person people want to follow. Let us know what Leadership skills you value in the comments below.