Your Leadership Style has a direct impact on business results
According to the CIPD: “…before people can become successful leaders, they do need certain attributes… Self-knowledge, to understand their own strengths and weaknesses… these attributes will help to develop trust, without which, leaders will not command loyalty”
It is widely accepted that if you want to improve your Leadership capability and your business, a hugely important aspect to improve is yourself. When we are coaching leaders or working with teams, we often find that improving a leaders self awareness, through a Talent Dynamics Profile debrief or one of our 360 measurement tools, will have a dramatic impact on their and the team’s performance. Whether that be something as obvious as improving relationships with clients, understanding what motivates your team, or less direct blocks such as improving productivity or creating more efficient systems.
Sometimes leaders are trying to carry out a role in a leadership style that isn’t their most natural, which makes it harder to do. Other times, they are using their most natural style but finding it isn’t having the same ‘natural effect ‘ on their team as it’s a style the team don’t enjoy being led with…
Aware of your leadership style?...
Take the Creator Profile, we have been working with, who has been trying to lead the team as a Supporter. He has been so out of flow and finding it so challenging, not in the least bit enjoyable and guess what, neither has his team! Increasing his self-awareness is allowing him to start to play a very different role in the business, in a much more effective way and is allowing members of the team to do the same.
How can I improve my self-awareness?
There are a variety of ways you can gather feedback and increase your self-awareness… It’s not the tool you choose, it’s what you do with the feedback that's important!
Talent Dynamics Profile
We always start with the Talent Dynamics Profile Test , debrief and report, which gives you very specific self awareness and can be used in conjunction with Coaching to really drive your performance. It has a very specific strategy related to each of the profile's and so is extremely practical. Recently a leader told me as a result of, understanding his profile, becoming more aware and implementing some strategies, he saw a 20% increase in turnover…
360 degree feedback
Gathering some feedback from those you work with can be incredibly powerful. Why not try and ask your colleagues some specific questions like:
1. How am I doing right now?
2. What do you enjoy about my leadership style?
3. What do you find challenging about my style?
4. What should I stop/start/continue doing?
5. Where does my style create the best results for the business?
6. How does my style inhibit the growth of the business?
7. How can I enable you to be even more effective?
Even just asking these basic 360 questions will be a great start and you may get some very interesting feedback. You can add some specific questions of your own as well.
When you ask the questions, ask at least 5 or 6 people. Encourage peers, direct reports and leaders to give you feedback. Always ask one person who you know will give you some challenging feedback – remember, there’s a reason why they will be challenging and perhaps increasing your self awareness with that person could drastically improve that relationship!
Click here to see a short video on the benefit of Talent Dynamics Profiles
