The Power of Diverse Leadership Styles in Flourishing Teams

Can you remember the last time you were in a meeting where there was tension in the air? Or did you feel tension, even if no one else mentioned it? One leader was pushing to get everyone to buy-in to the project schedule, and you were concerned about the teammates who were quiet.

This kind of tension is common when you work with people of different leadership styles without acknowledging the impact of differences. Understanding your own style and being aware of how others are wired can lead to positive teamwork—because the full participation of people with different styles can bring out the best in your team.

Awareness of Leadership Style

Most leaders believe themselves to be self-aware, but research has shown that only about 15% of leaders actually are self-aware. This gap means that most leaders have very little idea of how their style is impacting their employees.

Pair this lack of awareness with the strong role that leadership has in the health of workplace culture, and workplaces are at risk for disengaged employees who experience conflict and lack of collaboration.

Leaders can grow in understanding and leveraging their leadership style to have a flourishing workplace culture. And a senior leadership team can model the importance of different styles working together well to accomplish the mission of the organization.

Foundation of Different Styles

The study of personality types and leadership styles has been going on for decades, and recent advances in neuroscience have verified the amazing complexity and differences in our brains. MRIs have shown that we are not all alike, and there are wide variations in how the enormous number of synapses in our brains interact and respond. Research over the last decade has shown that such variations impact how we collaborate in the workplace.

As people of faith, we affirm the biblical foundation that we are created in the image of God, and we are fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:14). And we know that God was purposeful in creating us for the work he calls us to do (Ephesians 2:10). Throughout Paul’s letters we see that to function as the body of Christ, we need all the unique contributions of each person to be working together for God’s glory.

When we are intentional about learning our own leadership style, we honor how God made us and also commit to exercising our influence on other people wisely. As we extend that understanding to appreciate the styles other people bring to our team, we affirm the value of each person and recognize that we need to work together to best accomplish our mission and flourish.

Specific Tools

Most of the leadership style and personality type tools are based on a grid model with two different attributes. In general, the ranges evaluate style on the following:

• How do you approach tasks?
• How do you approach people?

Best Christian Workplaces doesn’t endorse a specific tool but encourages you to look at the foundation and basis for each of the available assessments. The following are some that are widely used in workplaces for effectively understanding leadership styles and personality types:

• Myers-Briggs Type Indicator®
• DiSC Model®
• CliftonStrengths (previously called StrengthsFinder)
• Working Genius (more recent, developed by Patrick Lencioni and team)

Next Steps in Understanding and Embracing Leadership Styles

Start with your senior leadership team and affirm that leadership styles are not right or wrong but are descriptive of the different ways people interact and respond to situations. Select an assessment tool and, take the time to use the tool and discuss the results.

As you consider the different styles on your senior team, what is missing? Do you experience blind spots in decision-making or personal interactions because of a style that is lacking on your senior team? You can either add people with distinctive styles to your team or grow in flexibility to take on different approaches as you stretch and grow as a leader.

Leadership styles reflect tendencies—think of them in terms of gradients—not all-or-nothing descriptions. People have a primary style, but an emotionally intelligent leader will be able to stretch to incorporate or at least account for other styles. In fact, this is a core requirement for leadership in today’s workplace.

Once your senior team has discovered and integrated knowledge of leadership styles into the team, each leader can roll this experience out to their own teams to increase awareness and set the foundation for good collaboration and conflict resolution.

Application for Flourishing Workplaces

As I consult with Ministry Partners to grow flourishing workplace cultures, differences in leadership styles are a regular part of the conversation. Understanding styles is especially helpful in team building, leadership development, training on conflict resolution, and succession planning.

Here are a few ways I’ve seen Ministry Partners use an understanding of styles recently:

• A Christian school displays a poster in the office hallway with a visual grid that includes the styles of each person on the administrative team. This keeps an awareness of styles top of mind. It serves as a visual reminder to value what each person brings to the team and the importance of collaborating among all styles.
• A leadership team that had successfully worked on understanding styles is bringing on new employees and decided to do assessments as part of the onboarding process. Now, the whole team can benefit from understanding how each person functions. The new colleagues can be more easily integrated into the team with healthier communication and reduced unproductive conflict.
• A ministry leadership team learned to recognize different styles, including how the dominance of one style or the absence of another might impact decision-making. They made a conscious decision to avoid “group-think” by considering the perspectives of four primary leadership styles. When one is missing, someone intentionally asks questions to fill the gaps or gathers input from outside the team.

A clear understanding of leadership styles and appreciation for what each person brings to a team enhances collaboration. As part of the Best Christian Workplaces’ Flourish Model, Fantastic Teams contribute to workplace health. The Employee Engagement Survey measures a number of factors related to teamwork, including working effectively as a team, good teamwork across departments, and good conflict-resolution skills. As a team understands and values what each person brings, including their differences, they will increase their engagement and move towards a flourishing workplace.

Resources:

• Leadership 360 assessments will increase self-awareness and help leaders understand their impact on others in their workplace.

• Teaming With Style: Understand the four collaboration styles to optimize team performance.