Tag: open leadership

Different Types of Leadership Styles

Leadership Theories:

  • Chapman and Sisodia (2015) define leadership as the value they bring to people. The author’s primary guiding value is that “We measure success by the way we touch the lives of people.” This type of leadership practice stems from treating their followers the similarly to how someone would like their kids to be treated in the work environment. This type of leadership relies on coaching the leader’s followers to build on the follower’s greatness. Then recognition is done that shake employees to the core by involving the employee’s family, so that the employee’s family could be proud of their spouse or parent. The goal of this type of leadership is to have the employee seen, valued, and heard such that they want to be their best and do their best not just for the company but for their coworkers as well.
  • Cashman (2010) defines leadership from an inside-out approach of personal mastery. This type of leadership style is focused on self-awareness of the leader’s conscious beliefs and shadow beliefs to grow and deepen the leader’s authenticity. Cashman pushes the leader to identify, reflect and recognize their core talents, values and purpose. With the purpose of any leadership is understanding “How am I going to make a difference?” and “How am I going to enhance other people’s lives?” Working from the leader’s core purpose releases more of that untapped leader’s energy to do more meaning work that frees the leader and opens leaders up to different possibilities, more so than just working towards a leader’s goals.
  • Open Leadership: Has five rules, which allow for respect and empowerment of the customers and employees, to consistently build trust, nurtures curiosity and humility, holding openness accountable, and allows for forgiving failures (Li, 2010).  These leaders must let go of the old mentality of micromanaging, because once they do let go of micromanagement, these leaders are now open to grow into new opportunities. This thought process is shares commonalities with knowledge sharing, if people were to share the knowledge that they accumulated, these people would be able to let go of your current tasks, such that these people can focus on new and better opportunities. Li stated that open Leadership allows for leaders to build, deepen, and nurture relationships with the customers and employees.  Open leadership is a theory of leadership that is customer and employee centered.
  • Values based leadership requires four principles: self-reflection, balance, humble, and self-confidence (Kraemer, 2015). Through self-reflection, leaders identify their core beliefs and values that matters to the leader. Leaders that view situations from multiple perspectives to gain a deeper understanding of the situation is considered balanced. Humility in leaders refers to not forgetting who the leader is and where the leaders come from to gain appreciation for each person. Finally, self-confidence is the leader accepting themselves as they are, warts and all.

Parts of these leadership theories that resonates

Each of these leadership theories above have a few concepts in common. Most of the leadership theories agree with each other because each leadership theory has a focus on growing the leader’s followers (Cashman, 2010; Chapman & Sisodia, 2015; Li, 2010; Kraemer, 2015). Cashman and Kraemer focuses on self-reflection, so that the leader can understand personal values, strengths, and weaknesses. For Cashman, self-reflection focuses on purpose, which is where there is an unbound level of energy. Whereas Kraemer, self-reflection focuses on defining the leader’s values and constant assessment and realigning the leader’s roles towards the leader’s value.

Resources:

  • Cashman, K. (2010) Leadership from the inside out: Becoming a leader for life. (2nd ed.). San Francisco, Berrett-Koehler Publishing, Inc.
  • Chapman, B. & Sisodia, R. (2015) Everybody matters: The extraordinary power of caring for your people like family. New York, Penguin.
  • Li, C. (2010). Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead, (1st ed.). Vitalbook file.
  • Kraemer, H. M. J. (2015). Becoming the best. (1st ed.). New Jersey, Wiley.

Additional research is needed for social media technologies

Additional research that is recommended for leaders implementing social media in their companies is an introspective research. To implement a corporate strategy for social media, it is advisable for leaders to be collaborative with other leaders (Zhu, 2013). Leaders should practice open leadership, which has about five rules, which allow for respect and empowerment of the customers and employees, to consistently build trust, nurtures curiosity and humility, holding openness accountable, and allows for forgiving failures (Li, 2010).

Leaders should work with others to understand how their business meets the needs and customer pain.  That is because, open leadership allows for one to build and nurture relationships with the customers and employees (Li, 2010).  Leaders should work with others to gain ideas on how they should implement social media technologies, either internally or externally that will support their current business strategy. If the social business strategy does not align with the business strategy then why is the company pursuing it?  It will be a waste of the company resources if there is a misalignment.  Once a company has a social business strategy, they should first experiment with different social media technologies and platforms that meet their goals and objectives.  Once the experimental process is completed, those technologies that had the most return on investment it should be pursued (Mathaisel, 2011; Wollan, Smith, & Zhou, 2010).  These should be data-driven decisions based on metrics and key performance indicators.

Shortly, there doesn’t seem to be any major impacts to current business processes that are stemming from the continued proliferation of social media, like rumors of e-mail disappearing. Each social media platform has its customer base, customer segment, different purposes, and different uses. E-mail is safe from extinction as long as another social media platform or technology cannot fill the needs and purposes that e-mail fulfills.  Even if a social media platform or technology can fulfill the needs and purposes of e-mail, it has to become prolific enough to replace e-mail altogether, i.e. meeting a critical mass of users.

References

Resources needed for a social business strategy

Social media helps shine a light exposing: hypocritical business policies, functions of a product/service, marketing, and sales; these issues must be solved relatively quickly, and that requires a social business strategy and resources (Wollan, Smith, and Zhou, 2010).  Thus, there are a significant amount of resources that are needed to achieve any new social business strategies.  These resources should be accessible, such as training resources, best practice guidelines, in-house subject matter experts, and direct managers by all employees (Li, 2010). Wollan et al. (2010), stated that a sponsor is needed to be devoted to the social business strategy because they can remove obstacles and provide the resources abovementioned. Having open leadership allows for a business to use all of their resources to help solve problems (Li, 2010). Thus, the sponsor should then gain additional sponsors or social media champion from the following departments: outside sales, customer service, marketing, product development, information technology, human resources, etc. (Wollan et al., 2010). Having all these teams as a champion or co-sponsor as key human resources adds more credibility and objectivity to the social business strategy.  Then, Li (2010) said that ideally a suggestion box for improving current strategies should be placed in plain sight so that everyone’s input for improving the current social business strategy is heard.

One consideration to make about using in-house resources, outsourced resources or a combination of the two is whether or not a social business strategy is vital to the operations or just contextual.  Li (2010), states that open leadership on social media strategies tends to add more work on employees, with little additional financial resources to be thrown their way. Craig (2013), states that some of the upsides of outsourcing are leveraging external expertise whiling building internal expertise, saving time and fiscal capital.  If a company thinks its core to their current business strategy, human capital strategy, and human resource strategy, then it should keep it in-house.  If they just think its core for just customer relations, but not core to the business strategy then it could consider to outsourcing it to a managed services company that is adept at implementing social business strategies.  However, caution should be thrown when outsourcing the social business strategy because any post becomes the voice of the company and the outsourced company won’t do the business’ voice justice (Craig, 2013). At the end of the day using in-house resources, outsourced resources, or a combination of the two is dependent on the social business strategy, current company resources, and finally the social strategist sponsor’s belief that this is either core or contextual to the business.

References

  • Craig, D. (2013). Pros and cons of outsourcing social media. Retrieved from http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/tech-decision-maker/pros-and-cons-of-outsourcing-social-media/
  • Li, C. (2010). Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead, (1st). Vital book file.
  • Wollan, R., Smith, N., & Zhou, C. (2010). The Social Media Management Handbook: Everything You Need To Know To Get Social Media Working In Your Business. John Wiley & Sons P&T. VitalBook file.

Leadership styles

Below will follow a quick discussion of some of these leadership styles:

  • Open Leadership: Has five rules, which allow for respect and empowerment of the customers and employees, to consistently build trust, nurtures curiosity and humility, holding openness accountable, and allows for forgiving failures (Li, 2010).  It is not easy to “let it go,” but to grow into new opportunities one must “let it go.”  This thought process is similar to knowledge sharing, if you share your knowledge, you will be able to “let it go” of your current tasks, such that you can focus on new and better opportunities. Open Leadership allows for one to build and nurture relationships with the customers and employees (Li, 2010).  It is customer and employee centered.
  • Situational Leadership: Is a style of leadership where the leader must continuously change their personal leadership style to meet the situation and needs of the employees/followers (Anthony, n.d.). The input of the employees/followers must come first regardless if the leader is a micro-manager, supervisor, coach, supportive, developer, or delegator. The leader would use: micro-manage if employees just need to do exactly what they are told; supervisor methods if employees are inexperienced; coaching if employees lack confidence/motivation; delegation if employees need little supervision; and developmental when the employees have high needs and little experience (Anthony, n.d.).
  • Autocratic Leadership: Is also known as authoritarian leadership, where the leader takes over everything and makes all decision with no input from the group (Cherry, 2016a). These leaders what to do it all themselves, and could maintain power through force, threats, punishment, and rewards (Community Tool Box, n.d.). This feeling is felt and creates the illusion of the classic “control freak,” “bossy,” etc. trope on the leader. But, this negative view on this style could be offset by a charismatic personality, leading to the leader being loved and respected (Community Tool Box, n.d.). This is great for when quick decisions are needed, but it comes at a cost to the followers. That is because of Cherry (2016a), stated that decisions made in this style of leadership are absolute and the followers/employees are not trusted. Autocrats create an organizational culture of fear and mistrust other people’s motives and aim to prioritize protecting themselves (Community Tool Box, n.d.).
  • Democratic Leadership: Is also known as participative leadership, where the employees/followers are a vital part of making the key decisions (Cherry, 2016b). This is the direct opposite of the Autocratic Leader.  These leaders recognize that it is the “we” that built and sustain the organization, not the “me” (Community Tool Box, n.d.). Here, participatory ideas and opinions are championed, even if the leader remains the final arbitrator (Cherry, 2016b; Community Tool Box, n.d.). Unfortunately, this style can be quite a time intensive and create a lack of “buy-in of ideas,” but this style could provide better results due to a diversity of thought. Though the diversity of thought provides a whole suite of possibilities to an organization and provides good relationships for all team members (Community Tool Box, n.d.).
  • Transactional Leadership: Is when a leader only views relationships with their team as a form or set of transactions (Community Tool Box, n.d.). Status quo is kept in this style (Raza, n.d.). Therefore, it is not uncommon to see a rewards and consequences stemming from this style (Community Tool Box, n.d.; Raza, n.d.).  This is more akin to the boss, that states “I pay your salary, you must do as I say.”
  • Transformational Leadership: Helps their team see the values and hopes that they have for them and for the organization, such as to empower them to pursue their goals (Community Tool Box, n.d.). Raza (n.d.) stated that this style leads to initiating a motivational change in an organization, team, oneself, or others. This style models the Mahatma Gandi’s overarching message of being the change you want to see in the world, even if it’s a small change in themselves or their team. This style tends to have the most engaged and empowered followers (Raza, n.d.).
  • Servant Leadership: The leader is considered a servant first to their employees/followers to allow them to grow, become healthier, wiser, freer, autonomous, and become servants themselves (Center for Servant Leadership, n.d.). The focus is on the growth of the employees/followers.  This is done by putting the needs of the team ahead of the Thus the team benefits the most from this style (Johannsen, 2014). One way to accomplish growth is a leader sharing their power to help people develop, synonymous to caring for each other (Center for Servant Leadership, n.d.). Servant leaders uplift their team (Johannsen, 2014).
  • Laissez-faire Leadership: leaders allow employees/followers make their decisions, also known as delegation leaderships (Cherry, 2016c; Raza, n.d.). There is low control over the team compared to the high control over the team in autocratic styles (Johannsen, 2014). Unfortunately, Cherry (2016c) points out that there is little guidance from leaders when it is most needed, or when there is a lack of knowledge. But, it does allow for the autonomy of the employees/followers and promotes problem-solving from them. Johannsen (2014), suggested this style for highly motived and trained team members.  However, this style is known to create low satisfaction (Raza, n.d.).

Open leadership differs because it is not fully a democratic leadership nor laissez-faire leadership, but has qualities of it, due to its centering itself against other customers and employers. It is similar to the situational leadership because open leadership must be met based on the situation the organization is faced with at that time.  If the organization cannot be transparency and authenticity, then it must meet its situation and shouldn’t practice open leadership.  Open leadership doesn’t try to grow the customers and employers and the “Let it go” nature of open leadership is the worst nightmare of an autocratic leaders.

References