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What is, how it works
Leadership and management are two areas closely connected. Project managers are often the project leaders as well. As managers they are responsible for consistently deliver the expected results to the project’s stakeholders. As leaders, they should give their teams a sense of purpose beyond the scheduled goals, inspiring them with a compelling vision towards a collective mission.
Relationship skills, knowing how to establish smooth relationships between team members, is a powerful tool to achieve effective coordination and information sharing, two key points for successful project and team managing. Developing competencies in emotional intelligence is a big step towards skilful relationship management.
Emotions are the glue that holds people together in a team. All leaders should strive to build resonance between team members. Resonance keeps people’s feelings attuned in the same emotional wavelength; leaders should move people in a positive emotional direction.
Daniel Goleman tells in his book “The New Leaders” about six distinct approaches to leadership that can influence the emotional climate of an organization and thus affect the results they produce: he calls it “leadership styles”.
Four of these styles are sure to produce positive impact in the emotional climate of the team, creating resonance among team members which translates into better performance: they are the visionary, coaching, affiliative and democratic styles.
The other two styles can also have a positive impact on the organization, but must be used with extreme caution otherwise they will create dissonance among the team, loosing effectiveness. They are the pacesetting and commanding styles.
Goleman also says that different situations call for different leadership styles. The best leaders master skilfully at least four of them, and intuitively choose the appropriate style to use in each situation.
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Possible general uses
The six leadership styles differ in the way they build resonance, and work better when applied in different situations:
Visionary. Visionary leaders help people to see how their work fits into the big picture, reminding them of the larger purpose of their work. They inspire employees with a true belief in their vision.
- It builds resonance by moving people towards shared dreams.
- Appropriate when changes require a new vision, or a clear direction is needed.
- Not appropriate if the leader is working with a team of experts or peers who are more experienced than he.
Coaching. Coach-style leaders help people identify their individual strengths and weaknesses in order to plan their personal and career aspirations and establish long-term development goals.
- It builds resonance by connecting what a person wants with the organization’s goals.
- Appropriate to help an employee improve performance by building long-term capabilities.
- Not appropriate if the employee needs excessive personal direction or the leader lacks sensitivity to give motivating feedback.
Affiliative. Affiliative leaders nurture strong personal ties with employees and focus on their emotional needs even over work goals. Using empathy they build strong loyalty and trust bonds.
- It builds resonance through harmony, by connecting people to each other.
- Appropriate to heal rifts in a team, motivate during stressful times or to strengthen connections.
- Not appropriate to be used alone – it usually goes together with the visionary approach.
Democratic. Democratic leaders meet employees regularly to listen to feedback. They are open to critiques as well as fresh ideas and advice. They seek agreement rather than make top-down decisions.
- It builds resonance by valuing people’s input and gets commitment through participation.
- Appropriate to build consensus or to get valuable input from employees.
- Not appropriate when crisis events demand quick decisions or if advise-giving employees are incompetent or uninformed.
Pacesetting. Pacesetting leaders aim for high performance, pushing themselves and their teams into doing things better and faster. If a team member fails to meet their standards they take over and get the job done themselves.
- It builds resonance if used to meet challenging and exciting goals, together with an inspiring vision.
- Appropriate to get high-quality results from a motivated and highly competent team with little need for guidelines.
- Not appropriate if the leader has lack of empathy or doesn’t trust the capabilities of team members.
Commanding. Commanding leaders demand immediate compliance with orders and often resort to intimidation. They seek tight control of situations, centralizing authority.
- It can build resonance by soothing fears and giving clear direction in an emergency.
- Appropriate in exceptional situations such as crisis, to kick-start a turnaround or with problem employees.
- Not appropriate to be used recurrently as a main style or if the leader lacks empathy or emotional self-control frequently showing anger and disgust towards subordinates.
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Example of concrete usage
I will refer here to one example of the commanding style given in Daniel Goleman’s book that I mentioned earlier:
- “One executive in our research used the commanding style artfully when he was brought in as a division president to change the direction of a money-losing company. He began by acting forcefully in his first weeks to signal the changes he meant to engineer.
For example, the top management team met regularly in a very formal, rather intimidating conference room and sat in gigantic chairs around a marble-covered table that ‘looked like the deck of the Starship Enterprise’ (…). The distances between people stifled spontaneous talk, and the meetings themselves were stilted – no one daring to even rock the boat. In short, the conference room symbolized the lack of dialogue and true collaboration among the senior management team.
To signal a shift toward openness, the new president had the room demolished – a clear command-style move – with positive effects. From that moment on, the management team met in an ordinary conference room, ‘where people can actually talk to each other’, as the new president put it.
He used the same approach regarding a set of very detailed decision-making manuals that specified who had to concur before a management decision was made. The new caveat: no more manuals and endless paper passing. ‘I want people to talk to each other’, the president explained to us. ‘Anyone who needs to can come to the executive committee meeting to tell us, ‘here’s what I’m working on – I need your help and ideas’. I want us to be more of a resource to people than merely a rubber stamp’.
In sending these messages, the new president was forceful and strong. But his strong tactics worked because he attacked the old culture – not the people. In fact, he made it clear that he valued their talents and abilities; it was their way of doing things that he felt needed to change dramatically.”
quoted from The New Leaders
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References
Books
Goleman, Daniel. The New Leaders, London, Time Warner Paperbacks, 2003.
