Every leader has a dominant approach to tackling problems, influencing others, and presenting ideas. In general, there are 4 styles that you can play at any given time:
- Cheerleader —This style is focused on providing praise, encouragement, and a high-energy culture. The fundamental strategy here is to keep people engaged and excited.
- Social Worker—This style is more coach-like, where the leader sees their role as confident, helper, and relational support. This style is based on the belief that you spend most of your life at work, so you might as well like the people you work with.
- Challenger—This style is more action-focused than the other types. It believes that offence is the best strategy and wants to win. Not necessarily at all costs, but this type of leader is never satisfied with the status quo and is focused on the future.
- Engineer—This style is more reserved than the others and is focused on logical data and doing the work. These leaders lead by example and focus on doing great work.
All four styles have their place in leadership. However, like skiing, if you don’t balance your main style with ski poles or complementary styles of leadership, then your leadership becomes less impactful.
The social worker and challenger and the cheerleader and engineer balance each other. Wherever your dominant leadership style falls in these four, look to balance it with its complimenting style.
I am not much of a skier, but as I understand it, the poles provide greater agility and help you fall less. Like leadership, if you are only really on your main style, then you are likely only effective in certain situations or slopes, but if you find yourself in moguls, you fall flat on your face.
Achieving the Social Worker & Challenger Balance
The Social Worker & Challenger styles are complementary yet opposite in their approach. Where the challenger is future-focused and will choose results over relationships, the social worker will emphasize relationships over results.
Over-reliance on the social worker style leads to a very comfortable team that is highly relational but not always reliable in delivering results.
On the other hand, a challenger-dominant style can leave the team burnt out and less focused on team dynamics and health.
If you are a dominant social worker, it is time to build in a more challenging approach to your leadership. In this approach, you challenge your team’s ideas, push their capacity, and provide constructive feedback.
If you are a challenger, then it is time to slow down and ensure that you are bringing people along with you and not just listening to respond.
Achieving the Cheerleader & Engineer Balance
The Cheerleader style is highly focused on the future and gets people excited about what is coming next. The Engineer’s style is less high-energy and biased towards fixing things and doing the work.
Over-relying on the cheerleader style can result in mistrust, as this approach can come across as not being in touch with reality and avoiding the tough stuff. The Engineer style, when overused, can also be ineffective, as everything is about the data details, etc., and decisions can be slow and energy low.
If you are a cheerleader, you must build in some engineering practices and commit to regular meeting cadences and work routines. If you are an engineer, start your meeting by celebrating last week’s wins, and don’t forget to add some enthusiasm to your meetings.
Key Takeaways
- Reflect on your dominant leadership style: Are you a dominant social worker, cheerleader, challenger or engineer?
- Based on your dominant approach, highlight the balancing style (social worker – challenger; Cheerleader – engineer) that requires a little more attention and effort
- Commit to 1 or 2 practical shifts this week to ensure you are leading in balance and using your poles.
