Transcript
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You're listening to the Her Leadership Coach podcast for the quietly determined career woman who's looking to step up into a first or next level leadership role. If you're looking to make a bigger, more positive difference in your organization, you've come to the right place. Well, hello. Welcome in. It's Rochelle.
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Thanks for joining me on today's episode of Her Leadership Coach, where we're talking about leadership frameworks. What are they? How good are they? Do we really even need them? On last week's episode, we went into depth on human leadership, which is a style of leadership where the main traits are authenticity, empathy, and adaptivity.
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If you haven't listened to that episode yet, I encourage you to find episode 18, after you've listened to today's episode, of course. So looking at one style of leadership last week kind of got me curious. What other styles of leadership are there? And is there, like, a best style, the one we should all be working, too? Like, if we're to take on a framework or embrace a list of traits, does it mean we're going to get better results as a leader?
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Which kind of also begs the question, what are good results as a leader? There are so many leadership frameworks, and I am going to talk about a few of them today, but this is not the end of the story. So the ones that I'm going to talk about today are situational adaptive servant transformational, agile and digital. And I guess we can't forget the good old authoritarian leadership style. Yeah.
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Each of these frameworks attempts to talk to the qualities or the traits of successful leaders. So what are they? Well, rather than bore you with a big, long list of traits for each style, I spent some time doing a little analysis for you. So I can give you the too long, didn't read version. I had to look at the traits for each of the six types that I just mentioned.
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So situational adaptive servant, transformational, agile and digital. I left out Authoritarian for now. We'll come back to that one. I also ended up largely leaving Situational out because the idea of Situational is you choose a different leadership style depending on the situation. So it could be any of the styles above, although the people that developed the framework itself do have specific frameworks that they talk about or specific styles that they talked about.
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But we'll get to that at the end. So for the remaining five, I spent some time listing each of the traits in my digital whiteboard that I love, and I did a quick compare and contrast exercise. Now, for some of the frameworks, there was a bit of debate, I guess, in the articles that I found over the traits. So in other words, different people were saying different things. I had different ideas of what traits they were.
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So I tried to look for those that I found to be the most common, the ones referenced the most or the ones that research had decided were the traits for each style. So going through this exercise highlighted a couple of things for me. First was that there are definitely more similarities in all of these leadership styles and differences. And then second was that every style really does have its pros and its cons, and that includes situational and authoritarian, believe it or not. So let's look at the similarities.
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First, there are four traits that I found were almost universal, as in pretty much all of the five styles had something that included these. So let's have a look at them. The first and also most universal trait was collaboration, some form of collaborating or teamwork. Servant leadership was particularly strong with this one. So really all five of their top traits were able to fit into this category of collaboration and teamwork.
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However, every single framework addressed this element in some way or another, whether that was through building trust or simply encouraging collaboration across functions, across organizations. This one was clearly an important trait. Second trait was some kind of curiosity and a willingness to learn, often in the name of innovation and also including experimentation. Now, because I am obsessed with learning and experimenting, I was pretty happy to see this one show up consistently. In fact, the only style that didn't include something along those lines was the 7th leadership one.
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Although you could argue one of the traits of listening also falls under this umbrella, so perhaps all of them could count. The third commonality was to be inspirational. This one had quite a few different names, so I had to really dive into what each trait meant at the core of it to be sure that it aligned with this idea of inspirational transformational framework. They have a trait they call charismatic and an agile. It's called integrity, but it's all about inspiring others with either who you are or the vision you're painting of where you're going.
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So I thought that was a good common trait. And then last but not least is inclusivity, which is a really big one. Digital and transformational frameworks didn't specifically call this one out. I know digital leadership, which is what I work with a lot at work. We work a lot around the human centered design methodology, which is a very inclusive way of working.
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We talk often about including all of the voices in the conversation. So I'm going to take the liberty of adding digital in. Adaptive leaders accommodate other people's views. That's what they describe. And agile leaders reach far and wide across the organization, across silos to increase engagement.
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In servant leaders, their description is that they value people for who they are, which is definitely what inclusivity is all about. So that was a really quick trip across the four common traits. So summarizing, collaboration, curiosity, inspiration and inclusivity. So what about the differences? Well, let's start with some runner ups.
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These are sort of not as common, yet not entirely separate either. So there's a couple where there are, say, two of the frameworks that agree with these. The first is setting a vision or direction for people. And that's slightly different than the inspiration trait that is more about inspiring people to go along the journey with you. And this one was really about being the person that sets the destination.
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So that was common, that was in Transformational and Agile, and then there was Managing Risk and that was in both Transformational and digital. So sort of talking around, yes, we're okay with risk, we know we just need to manage it, but we're not going to get rid of it. So they were specifically calling that out as a trait and then all by themselves, the real outliers leveraging technology for digital leaders, which of course makes sense, and creating a sense of urgency for the agile framework, which also makes total sense. So I mentioned there were some pros and cons for each of the frameworks. I'm not going to get into all of them or we will probably be here all day, but I did want to touch on Situational and Authoritarian because those are the two that we didn't really look at yet.
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Situational Leadership is a framework that was developed by Ken Blanchard, who is a very famous author, and if you haven't heard of his books, I would highly encourage you to look them up. And also Paul Hersee. And they developed this in iron. So it's been around quite some time by now. It's all about adapting your style to each unique situation to best meet the needs of the team.
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So they outline four ways to lead based on the maturity level of the team and the complexity of the task at hand. Other people talk about situational leadership when they're not talking about the framework that Kim Blanchard and Paul Hercy have developed. They do talk about Situational Leadership just being any style of leadership depending on the situation at hand. And it sounds like a really good approach, right? It's not like we can use one style of leadership to fit all situations.
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However, the downside of it is that leaders need to be constantly assessing which style they're going to use. And for many leaders, that can be really difficult, especially if you're early on in your career. And then it can also be confusing to employees, right? So if you're changing your style based on the person and their maturity and the complexity of the task that you're giving, people are going to see you treating people differently. And that can be a little bit confronting for some people, a little bit threatening.
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So there's some definite downsides to Situational Leadership, along with some really good upsides and then authoritative leadership. This is a framework that so many of us, I think, are probably familiar with and probably not impressed with. I know I don't fit well under the style of leadership. It's very much a do as I say, no discussion required here style. And yet I need to be fair.
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There are times that this style is going to be required. However, I would say briefly and as little as possible, the two main situations that spring to mind for authoritative leadership is first, if an urgent decision is required, and it's important that that decision is followed really quickly. For example, if you're in combat, if you're at war, you don't want to be deciding altogether what's going to work best and worrying about who's right and who's wrong and all of that stuff. You just want to know what am I doing and when am I doing it. You want to be moving quickly.
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Also, if there's a short term project that must get finished quickly I don't mean like quickly. So often we have to finish projects quickly because someone gave it some arbitrary date, right? That's not the quickly I mean. It's more like, say, I know the Olympics are coming to Queensland in 2032. It's a big topic at work at the moment, so let's pretend the opening ceremony is tomorrow and all of a sudden you've heard the grass has been eaten up by some giant worm species.
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Look, just go with me on this one. I have no idea what eats grass up, but if this was the situation, it's not the time to wait for, again, a unanimous vote on what to do. It's not the time to be looking at learning and development or inspiration, really. You want it fixed, and you want it fixed now. And the fastest way to do that is to give orders and make sure they're followed.
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So, yes, there are some pros, there are times when you need to be an authoritative leadership leader. Okay, we've looked at the traits, we've looked at some pros and cons, but which style works the best? Well, here's something I found that was quite interesting. Gartner conducted what they called the leader effectiveness survey for leaders. I don't know why it was called that, but that was back in.
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This particular one that I found was in 2019. It looks as if they might do this every year. The research then showed that between leadership styles, there's actually very little difference, at least as far as team performance goes, which to me seems like a good starting measure for leadership effectiveness right now. They didn't go into how they measure team performance or how they measure leadership effectiveness or leadership traits within this. And I couldn't find the original data, so I can't tell you much more than that.
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But as well as showing that there wasn't much difference between leadership styles, it also showed there is much more difference between the best and the worst performers within each framework. So if we look at a graph and it shows all six leadership styles across the graph, not including authoritarian in this one, let's say the difference between the worst leadership style and the best leadership style is about 7%. And yet the difference when we look at one style so let's take situational leadership. If we look at the difference between the best and the worst leaders using that style of leadership, in fact, it's not even that. It's the 25th and the 75th percentile.
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So they've cut the outliers out and just given you the middle of it. The difference between that the best and the worst of the 21st and the 75th is more like 21%. So three times the difference in team performance. Now, again, not super accurate with those figures because I couldn't find the raw data, but it's pretty close looking at the graph that they supplied. So what is it that makes a leader good if it's not really the style of leadership that they are practicing?
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I believe, and I think this data shows that how good a leader you are comes down to you, the person. Right? At the end of the day, we don't lead based on a framework or a style. We don't generally pick a framework and say, right, this is who I'm going to be, this is me as a leader. Although frameworks can certainly provide guidance on something that we might aspire to.
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So we might look at a digital leadership framework and go, okay, yeah, good. I can look at those traits and try and do better in them. But at the end of the day, we're leading as us, and we will revert back to behaving in alignment with who we are on the inside. So, for example, if you're trying to behave in a way that's inclusive, right, which is one of the common traits, because that's what you're hearing is the right thing to do right now. And yet inside you think it's your job to have all the answers to everything and actually including other people is just a waste of time, then you're going to be putting minimal effort into being inclusive.
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Right. Even if you say that's what you're doing, I remember there was a leader I used to have who would come in every morning and just ignore everyone, just ignore the whole team. Then at some time, sometimes a few minutes later, sometimes half an hour, or if at all, it's like this light bulb would come on and they would remember it's as if someone had told them at some point that as a leader, you really need to say hello to your people and the psychological come on. And they would remember this conversation. So at some point they would just pop up and go, hi, how are you today?
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Like, it was genuinely funny, but for the most part, they'd say it and then not wait for a reply at all and get straight back to work. Or they'd say it and barely wait for a reply before launching into how they spent last night. It really was amusing on our good days at least. And thankfully, as a team, we were able to support each other in a bit more human way. So it wasn't the worst, but it was just such an interesting experience of someone that clearly was trying to work to a particular trait that they had been told was good and yet just didn't have it in them.
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They weren't that person. So, yeah, I thought that was a good example.
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Again, if who you are on the inside is out of step with what you are trying to do or who you are trying to be as a leader, the good news is I know that that is something that you can change. And really, it's two things. You just first need to believe that it's possible that you can change as a person, right, which I know not everybody believes. And that kind of comes down to a gross mindset, which is an episode for another day. And then the second thing is you have to be willing to do the work it takes, because it's not easy.
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It's simple. It is simple, but it takes work and you have to be willing to do that. All right, that is it for this week. Thank you for joining me. If you want to continue this conversation about all of the leadership styles, then why not join us in the Woman and Leadership Facebook group?
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You will find the link to the group in the show notes. Let us know what you think, come and join us. Tell us whether you agree or disagree. We're always keen to hear both sides of the story. And if you got value out of this episode, I would love it if you could share it with others.
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And of course, if you've been listening to podcasts for any amount of time now, you'll know that rating the show and leaving your review helps others find the show too. And I would really appreciate it. Until next week continues to lead the way. Her Wayne.
