I have seen many Leaders who thrive only on their Authority and not really display Leadership Qualities. These Leaders typically want to be the author of every success around them. Somehow they would feel insecure when someone from their team comes up with a suggestion that is not thought out by themselves.
The characteristics of these Leaders are:
- They have a misconception that as Leaders they have to bear the responsibility for every success of their team and only they have to do it.
- These Leaders feel they are losing out when their team members are actually stepping up and starting to flower.
- As they feel they have to come up with the Best ideas, they do not think any idea of their team member is a good one.
- They try to look for ways to appropriate the credit for the good work of their team members as they feel as Leaders, only they should be coming up with all great ideas.
- They would like to get rid of all those who are not ‘falling in line’ with their thinking as they feel these team members are disturbing the ‘team work’.
- These Leaders typically complain that their Team members are not stepping up and they are passing on everything to the Leader..
The effects of this type of Leadership are:
- Team members will be endorsing every idea of the Leader.
- Those Team members who feel uncomfortable will leave the team.
- The progress of this company gets limited by its’ y leader. Over a period of time, only those who are better than the Leader, leave the Company. Even those who stay ‘learn’ how to not mess with the Leader.
A good proportion of the Leaders that I see fall in to this category. This is generally a ‘Disabling Leadership’. There are very few leaders who can scale up / scale down their own Leadership based on the situation on the ground.
I heard one definition of Leadership from my ex- Boss which stuck to my mind. ‘A Leader should be like a missing piece in a puzzle. Any piece can be missing at a given point of time. A Leader has to constantly modify himself to become that missing piece of puzzle’. So that the team always succeeds.
A Leader needs guts to adapt this Leadership Style.
This Leadership Style is defined by the following:
01. Longer Term Objectives: This Leader is not worried about the short-term results and he is always looking to achieve the longer-term objective. This Leader is not worried about his own contribution. He wants whatever is required to achieve the longer- term objectives to be done. He looks at himself as an enabler of these actions and not necessarily as a person who has to do everything. This is a higher point of view.
02. Tolerance to Diversity: This Leader is tolerant to diverse opinions. His only Objective is to ensure progress towards goals. He is so Goal focused that he can ignore himself in the process. He gets alerted when he hears drastically different ideas. He looks at them as opportunities to find new ways to the goals of the organisation.
03. Confidence in own abilities: This Leader is absolutely confident of his own abilities. He knows he can raise over anything to give a good direction to his team. He knows he can transform himself in to that missing puzzle piece to complete the puzzle.
04. Ability to learn on his feet: One very important quality of this type of Leader is that he can learn very actively on his feet. He is capable of Learning continuously towards the Goals of the Company.
05. Basic trust in Human ability: This type of Leader adapts a Growth Mindset. He believes that People around him are capable and if they do not know something they can learn. He enables them to learn and succeed. As he believes in their abilities, they deliver with their abilities.
I call this an ‘Enabling Leadership’ style. Leaders need to raise up to this Leadership Style. Leaders normally evolve in to this type of Leadership Style over a period of time.
For the journey to begin, one has to know and accept that this higher plane of Leadership that exists. Then the creative tension may set in.
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