Here are few stories to illustrate Leadership styles of of few leaders:
Leader 1:
Ram is an expert technologist and is recently promoted as a manager for the product he has been working for years. Now he has responsibility for a team 7 members. Ram feels that he can do the work much waster better rather than getting it done by the team. So, he neglects team and sees them as a problem. Ram stretches himself to work 12 hours a day and complete most of the work by himself. Ram wants to showcase himself as hero to his manager and never gives any credit to his team members.
Leader 2:
Mary has been managing teams for an year now and she is responsible for 3 teams. She is often frustrated that he teams are not capable of doing work as she could do when she was hands on. She can’t trust her teams too much and hence decided to keep strategy, planning and control with her and delegate only the execution part to the teams. Since Mary wants to showcase to her bosses that she is a great achiever, she pushes the team harder to complete the work. She is a task master and closely monitors everyones work. Mary some time even offer bonuses and other goodies to motivate the team. She pretends to praise the team members though she doesn’t really mean it. Mary feels that the team members as pawns and she is the master mind behind them.
Leader 3:
Mike is a seasoned manager and leads a department of 6 teams. He has gone through few leadership development programs and understands how to influence the teams maximise their performance. Mike takes time to work with everyone and explain the organisational and his own goals. Also, helps them set their personal and professional goals in alignment with organisational goals. Mike doesn’t involve day to day work since he trusts his people that they are capable of getting the work done only supports, mentors and coaches them as needed.
Does your leadership style match with one of these? Ram is an Expert Leader, Mary is an Achiever Leader and Mike is a Catalyst Leader. An Expert and Achiever leaders align with traits of traditional leaders where as Agile Leader is a Catalyst. Unfortunately, Expert Leaders comprise of 55%, Achiever Leaders are 35% and Catalyst Leaders are only 5%. Scrum Alliance offers Agile Leadership Eduction through it’s brand new certifications. Lack of Agile Leadership Education is one of the major barrier for organizational transformations.
