How to Strike the Right Balance in Your Leadership Effectiveness

How to Strike the Right Balance in Your Leadership Effectiveness

What is your natural, tempting go-to response when under pressure in a leadership position? Exert more power? Withdraw? Give room for your people to figure things out?

Executives have a difficult job to do. Each day, they must balance competing demands, face numerous uncertainties, whilst taking the needs and concerns of all stakeholders into account when making decisions—while also trying to continuously develop their own professional skills and leadership abilities.

When it comes to effective leadership, both authority and vulnerability are necessary ingredients. The times of focusing exclusively on efficiency and getting results are long gone. If your predominant approach to managing your people is based on issuing orders, micromanaging every task, telling people off for making mistakes and always putting profits first and foremost, you are in trouble.

Today’s economy rests on knowledgeable workers who may possibly know more than you do, and demand a fair degree of independence and flexibility to do a good job. Your people need leaders that are going to give them room to use their skills whilst also providing support  when needed.

As a leader, how do you strike the right balance between vulnerability and authority? What does it mean to be yourself at work? What role does authenticity and emotional intelligence play in effective leadership? When are emotional responses appropriate?

People look at their leaders for guidance, support and feedback in the form of coaching, training and encouragement. But just as important as those is to ensure they get their everyday work done, engage with stakeholders properly and professionally, and carrying out the necessary tasks for producing the best possible results.

Effective leadership is not an either/or approach. Knowing when to assert authority whilst knowing when emotional responses are appropriate is important, so your people can trust, confide and respect each other more, whilst learning from mistakes instead of being afraid to try.

How to strike a balance 

Every leader needs to strike a balance between authority and vulnerability, knowing when to concentrate on each. To help you blend them effectively, ask yourself these questions:

• Is the work getting done well without my intervention?

  • Yes – Concentrate on motivating the team to keep performing well.

  • No – Put on your manager hat and ask the team what’s getting in the way of better performance, then help them implement changes.

• Do you focus on results or how the job got done (process)?

  • Results – Good for you. That’s what is most important.

  • Process – If you tend to focus on process more than results, challenge yourself to become more comfortable with the reality that many alternatives may exist to getting the same result.

• What do you spend the most time talking about? The tasks at hand, processes and deadlines, or the big picture and strategy?

  • Leaders need to discuss both but pay attention to whether you’re leaning too hard one direction or the other.

• Do you ask employees to accomplish objectives without explaining the need behind the request?

  • No – Skip to the next step.

  • Yes – Employees are more likely to go the extra mile if they understand the reasons they’re being asked to do something.

• Who is responsible when things go wrong? Do you blame the team or yourself?

  • Team – Think again.

  • Yourself – A leader understands that it’s ultimately his responsibility for the success or failure of his team.

A more authoritarian manager without the soft skills of leadership won’t know how to ask questions, listen and motivate.  Without understanding, a manager can’t be as effective in encouraging innovation and improving productivity, the real goal of any successful business.

Without vulnerability, your ability to motivate and inspire employees who span a 40-50 year age range, with different cultural perspectives, needs and goals will be compromised. Now more than ever before, we need leaders who can bring mentally healthy values to their teams and organizations. And that means showing weakness, at times, in the right context – and this is one of the hardest things to do in leadership.

But be careful – according to science, showing too much vulnerability at work can also hurt you if you are the boss. So be mindful about keeping some things to yourself. Sharing too much or too many doubts about your own abilities or worries that the company might fail, may cause people to lose faith in you.

If you’re a leader, what does this mean? Unfortunately, that you should probably think twice before admitting a weakness or failing to your team members, even if that failing has nothing at all to do with your company or your job. So next time you want to scream to the world you don’t know what you’re doing and it’s all going to hell, you better keep it to yourself, and have a select group of people that you can let your guard down with – and don’t work for you.

The business world demonstrates very different management styles – one more domineering and the other smoother and more inclusive. Both have meticulous attention to detail in common. The most effective leaders in the 21^st century will need to lean toward the softer style of leadership because the more authoritarian style can work for a while, but only when complemented by other attributes.

Over to you now. What’s your more dominant style? What style does your people respond best to? Do you ever share your more vulnerable side in business? Have you found the right balance between authority and vulnerability?

To your success,

Isabel

Isabel is an experienced Peak Performance Strategist with over 20 years of international work experience holding senior positions within the hospitality industry in countries around the world, as well as Executive and Leadership coaching, mentoring and training.
She specializes in high performance strategy, leadership development and building organizational culture to help leaders and their teams learn, grow and succeed.
Isabel is passionate about helping empower business leaders with the mindset, performance, skills and strategies that they need to get ahead.
More available on www.isabelvalle.com