Great leaders motivate a team through challenging times.
Great leaders present a clear vision that people want to fulfill. As a scientist, you need to form effective teams all the time. What are the qualities of a great leader?
We asked 50 leaders from 3 countries.
Here are the admired leadership themes from that survey:
“One who communicates the reasons behind decisions and inspires me to do better.”
“I respect leadership through actions, allows those are being led to emulate what they see/experience.”
“Data driven, these types of leaders do their homework before making decisions.”
“Authentic, empowering and collaborative, and who have vision.”
“Spirit of innovation, a clear sense of direction, and a very open, honest and tactful way of communicating.”
“Remain humble and lead from the back and let others shine, but be the first to roll up sleeves to do hard work.”
What Are Common Leadership Styles And When Do You Use Them?
There are as many leadership styles are there are leaders.
Each individual brings the culmination of their experience, training, personality, and emotional intelligence to the team to be led. Variables such as the situational context, internal and external pressures, and even current mood can all impact team interactions.
Leadership can therefore be a highly dynamic process rather than static. Application of the right leadership style at the right time, can motivate your team and facilitate crossing the finish line towards your shared goal.
Authoritative
- Actions: Mobilizes people towards a vision. “Come with me.” Sets clear standards for success.
- Time to use: Most business situations. When a clear direction is needed.
- Effect on team: Often strongly positive. Team understands what they do matters and why. Flexibility and freedom to innovate/take calculated risks. Fails if team has greater expertise than leader.
Charismatic
- Actions: Uses personality to influence and inspire. Energetic and positive.
- Time to use: Boost team morale. Rally action.
- Effect on team: Can be overly reliant on leader. Motivating. Needs to be backed with substance. Team needs detailed orientated members
Innovative
- Actions: Understands bigger picture. Visionary, pushes boundaries and new thinking.
- Time to use: Create an atmosphere to develop new products, services. New solutions to old problems.
- Effect on team: Greater risk taking. Failures not a barrier.
Hands-off
- Actions: Understands processes but hands-off. Relies on others to keep promises. Gives regular feedback.
- Time to use: Skilled cohesive team and quick results are needed. If you have teams in several locations or under multiple leaders.
- Effect on team: Effective with experienced, self-directed team members. Can lead to lack of motivation and poorly defined roles.
Commanding
- Actions: State what, when, how task to be done. Little or no input from team.
- Time to use: Leader is the expert. Little time for group-decision.
- Effect on team: Good for rapid decision making. Can create dysfunctional environments.
Compassionate
- Actions: Includes the team in making decisions. Service to others is key. Puts team in front to take credit.
- Time to use: To build trust. To get rounded picture and 360 feedback.
- Effect on team: “Best place to work” lists. Can boost morale. Hard to meet pressured deadlines.
Putting It All Together
When it comes to leading your team, clear, intelligent communication (both IQ and EQ emotional intelligence) goes a long way. You can use the above guide to identify an appropriate style depending on the composition of your team and the task requirements.
While jumping wildly between styles will cause confusion, being adaptable and using traits at different phases of project and team development is a powerful approach.
You may start off with an ‘Innovative’ style to generate ideas at the beginning of a project, adopt a ‘compassionate’ to ensure team members have their ideas heard and incorporated into the plan, and once a trusted team has proven success let them soar with a more ‘hands-off’ approach.
The sky is the limit.