My fitness trainer used to say, "be the animal you are born to be." A lion with its loud roar, large body and powerful presence gathers food and avoids harm in a different way than a rabbit with its acute sight and hearing, quiet movement, quickness and small body. So it is with leadership.
Certain personality styles may better suit specific employee groups and boards; for example, introverts may be more effective at leading proactive teams, while extroverts may be more effective at leading passive teams, but there is no one right personality type to motivate group action. Effective leaders may be unassuming or dynamic, operational geniuses or talent management superstars. But the most important characteristic in leadership effectiveness may be knowing your natural style and using it to its best advantage.
In addition to effectiveness, there are other advantages to leading in your natural style:
- It's less exhausting for the leader. Acting like somebody else is exhausting. Behaving as different characters at home, work and in the virtual world is exhausting.
- It's less exhausting for colleagues.
- It's time saving. An authentic leader takes into consideration input from others, but does not have to revisit a decision wondering what several someone-elses would have done. As one of my training partners said to me, "it's hard enough to make a difficult decision once. Do not torture yourself by making the same decision over and over again."
To unearth your authentic leadership style, consider the questions on page four of Discovering Your Authentic Leadership.
And here are some additional resources to ponder:
Emotional intelligence quiz
Personality test
Personal engagement profile
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