Five Leadership Styles to Avoid
The tyrant The
tyrant is a leader that leads with force and discipline. He or she is typically a micro-manager and
works hard to ensure every aspect of the operation is always under
control. This leader is skilled at
establishing accountability within his or her team but rarely shares that
responsibility. Typically this leader
earns respect through fear and consequence and is not much fun to work with or
for. These leaders are seen as closed in
and don’t easily share information with the team and therefore the team usually
only knows their role within the team and not the team vision, progress, or
accomplishments. The tyrant rarely
acknowledges accomplishments instead focusing on opportunities and
failures. A tyrant leadership style
demands discipline and respect yet never works to earn it. The irony is this
leader never really achieves respect or loyalty and when a tyrant leader’s
tenure ends the team looks forward to the next leader never remembering this
person in any positive way.
The emotional leader An emotional leader as earlier discussed
uses emotion as a motivational tool and often tries to achieve loyalty through
sympathy. This leader will frequently
display emotions to emphasize their point and goals. These can vary from extreme anger,
frustration, happiness and excitement, sympathy, depression, discouragement,
and optimism. This leader is emotionally
all over the map and carries a sense of unpredictability. He or she will often show public displays of
emotion including crying, and yelling, and is easy to upset. The team’s primary goal becomes to keep this
leader happy and stable and not to improve performance of focus on the
vision. This leader often has closed
door conversations in the open and cares little about how they are perceived by
their team. This behavior keeps the team
at a constant state of stress and anxiety and the unpredictable emotional
nature of this leader does severe damage to his or her team through lack of
respect and admiration.
The parrot The
parrot is a common leadership style and easy to recognize. This person holds corporate policies as
foremost priority and embraces every aspect of corporate culture and
vision. They will often state the
obvious and typically lacks creative thought or innovation. They will frequently quote company jargon, mission
statements, and goals and will never challenge the status quo or their leader’s
instruction thus earning the name parrot.
The parrot does not question and is typically what is called a “yes
man”. The parrot’s primary focus is
maintaining their job or position and is rarely in the best interest of the
team. The parrot is rarely respected by
his or her peers or team members and is completely comfortable with maintaining
current levels of performance. The
parrot hates risk and will never willingly take any initiative that involves
risk. This leader does not embrace
change unless it is directly instructed from their superior and will always
result back to standard operating procedures.
They will never initiate change on their own and in the interest of
improvement trusting that the organization and their superior knows best what
changes to make and how to operate.
The BFF The BFF is the polar opposite of the
tyrant. The BFF has difficulty separating what behavior is acceptable in the
workplace and at home and frequently involves his or her personal life into
their daily business. They are typically
close friends with their team members and frequently find the gray area in
professionalism in an attempt to lead through friendship and trust. This leadership has a very low sense of
accountability and easily accepts excuses especially if the excuses are of
a personal nature and stem from trouble at home or off the field issues. The BFF is equally skilled at offering
excuses and those also typically revert back to challenges in their personal
lives which of course are always unique to them. The BFF is easy to identify as their
superiors and subordinates typically know everything about them. They will openly discuss anything and cross
the lines of professionalism frequently spending personal time with their
employees. This person is a constant
liability risk and although usually adored by their team they frequently find
themselves in drama and personal conflict between their responsibilities as a
leader and responsibilities as a friend.
They typically have the loyalty of their team but for all the wrong
reasons. This behavior makes it difficult for this leader to attach
accountability or initiate discipline. This usually results in very poor team
performance and frequent excuses and for the most part the BFF is someone that
probably should not have been placed in a leadership position in the first
place.
The superhero The superhero actually is not a completely
ineffective leadership style but one with limited long term potential. Typically this leader will work hard and
aggressively to accomplish his or her goal and use every resource to make a
difference. This person will take risk,
and is typically knowledgeable and competent in his or position with strong
communication and team building skills.
This will yield fast results initially but the motivation is flawed. Typically this person requires constant
praise and acknowledgement for his or her accomplishments and rarely shares
their success or offers credit to their team for victories. Although the team is the primary catalyst
that helped the superhero accomplish his or her vision this is rarely discussed
and for the most part the superhero will take complete credit for any
accomplishment feeling the team could not have done it without them. This person is typically praised by both team
and superior for his or her performance as a leader and over time this has created
a level of arrogance and lack of direct accountability. The superhero does not take discipline or
criticism well and when things go wrong can be a master of excuses. Being both knowledgeable and well spoken this
can be hard to recognize and appear as justified reasons. He or she will always cite their action plan
to fix the problem and will never admit fault or direct responsibility. The problem with this leadership style is
that in the long term the superhero’s supervisor and team will recognize that
the culture of the team is built around the leader and not the vision and only
in the interest of the leaders pride and arrogance. The team will slowly lose respect for this
leader seeing him as self serving and arrogant, and that leader will lose loyalty. The leader's supervisor will see a leader that
always has an answer, excuse, or plan but never takes direct responsibility and
although effective at times is highly inconsistent and not destined for long
term success.
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