What's your Leadership Style?

What if I told you your success was a reflection of your leadership skills? Not everyone can be a true leader, there are some who are thrown into this responsibility without a paddle or life vest and ultimately sink the business and the team and then there are those who have an innate ability to rise above expectations and in the process pull everyone around them to success and growth.

A strong leader has the ability to think strategically and has developed their critical thinking skills someone who is able to see the big picture and is not afraid to rally the troops to accomplish that vision.

One’s leadership style can be summed up in to 3 simple categories:

Authoritarian

Such a leader tends to be autocratic, provides clear expectations, does not seek input from peers or team, tends to be controlling and somewhat of a micro manager, does not tolerate being challenged, however they are definitely decision makers they can work efficiently and quickly and they are focused on reaching their goals, most of all under stressful situations they can assume the complex decisions and delegate effectively.

Participative

This is a more common and seeked style of leadership in today’s corporate environment, also classified as democratic leadership. Such leaders tend to have a more coaching approach, someone who guides their team to success, inclusive of opinions and does not fear being challenged. This being said they are not afraid to make an executive decision or have the final say in the matter at hand.

Such a leader tends to bring out the best in their team making them feel valued and does portray a strong ability to work with emotional intelligence.

Delegative

Delagative leadership is a very non-participative, hands off style, they choose to be low profile with minimal motivation, this is where the leader allows the employees to make decisions. They are responsible for the actions, but do not provide guidance or championship.

A true and successful leader will use all of these styles depending on the varying circumstances, with some dominant tendencies for a particular style, thus making it important for the leader to understand each of these styles to enable them to adapt and accomplish the overall organizational strategic goals.

Your Leadership style is how you form a strong team and obtain overall success in your career path, don’t be afraid to find out what’s your style.

Business Improvement and Change Management are Co-dependent

Businesses of all sizes can use the philosophies of lean enterprise to help eradicate waste, reduce costs and boost productivity. The benefits of achieving process and quality improvements in a business is open to private and public companies across all sectors, including areas of commerce and healthcare and traditional industry employers.

The qualification aims to provide the following benefits for employers and employees:

• Maximize company profits and revenues
• Reduce costs, variation and waste
• Assist with recruitment and retention
• Boost employee morale and motivation
• Demonstrate the quality of the workforce to existing and potential customers
• Provide theoretical and practical knowledge of lean business improvement techniques
• Introduce and encourage a culture of continuous improvement
• Provide an insight into current best practice

Additionally business improvement initiates process improvements, however the first step is to identify the need for 'change'. The most effective way of doing so is by conducting a process audit and review which will provide the opportunities for improvement and potential risks.

Analyzing the current process, once you have decided what processes need to be improved you are able to understand the process from start to finish allowing to set realistic objectives and process change, develop a process map, causes, effects and analysis.

Once these objectives are identified you are able to obtain a commitment and support for this initiative from senior management giving you a clear necessity for change and how it impacts the organization. It is critical that the senior management understands the need for change to ensure they will support the recommendations and improvement, since it time intensive.

The final stage is creating the 'Improvement Strategy', after the process analysis is concluded it is imperative to develop a feasible strategy, which would include steps, process, desired results and financial implications.

Change management then becomes a result of the identification for the need of business improvement and taking it to the next level of success.