Thursday, March 7, 2013

5 Leadership Styles to Avoid

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.

Learn More:  Click Link Below


http://www.amazon.com/The-Secret-Leadership-Explanation-Simplified-ebook/dp/B00IPS1YSQ/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1394111996&sr=8-6&keywords=thomas+dipaolo


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