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Use Caution When Employing Style Indicators

Guest post by: Robert Whipple

Article Overview: Style indicators are helpful at providing insights about how a leader operates. The mistake often made is to assume you cannot change your style. This article discusses some aspects of style that may help you grow in dimensions you had not considered.

Use Caution When Employing Style Indicators

Many organizations use personality style indicators to help leaders and individuals understand themselves better in an effort to relate more effectively with others on the job. The two most common style indicators are the Myers Briggs Type Indicator or MBTI test and the DiSC profile.

The caveat here is that these style indicators are helpful at identifying your preference, but you should not feel it is necessary to stay in any one particular box with no way to change your style. I like to visualize style as a continuum of many variables, where you display preferences and manage them based on the circumstances. There are no wrong or right styles, but how you manifest preferences is critical to success.

Ten examples of dimensions that relate to style:

1. Level of trust -Reinforcing people for sharing conflicting views

2. Political acumen - Knowing when to stand firm and when to back off

3. Emotion vs. Analysis Dealing with situations - Gut level vs. logic

4. Tolerance vs. Impatience -Cracking down or encouraging

5. Irrationality and Fear -Using these or avoiding them

6. Do outrageous things to make a point - Creating folk tales about yourself

7. Dealing with bureaucracy - Feeding the animal when necessary

8. Level of micro-management - Managing by looking over people's shoulders

9. Atmosphere Having fun in the organization - laughing at ourselves

10. Reinforcement - Making it work as intended

Thinking of style in this context, you can identify additional items for your situation. There is no such thing as a "correct" set of items, but it is helpful to have a list like those above to increase understanding.

Optimizing Leadership Style

Use the list above as a way to generate dialog among your leadership team. How well are you doing with these issues of style? What is working for you and what is not? Each leader has methods of getting through to people, eliciting responses helpful to the organization. Often these style behaviors are occurring on a subconscious level, where the leader is not even aware of how she is responding. It is helpful to have a forum with other leaders where you can share ideas about style and compare notes. These discussions can be pithy, deep, and very insightful. Try taking your key leaders off site for a day or two to discuss these concepts. They will come away refreshed and stimulated.

Allow yourself to explore reasonable modifications to your style in order to learn new ways of leading. This is key to being a leader in a learning organization. Steven Covey described it this way in "Principle-Centered Leadership":

"Some may wonder if it's possible for senior managers, old dogs, to learn a new style or trick. Some may contend that our styles - whether we are vocalists, comedians, or managers - are so deeply imprinted that by the time we turn ten, twenty, or thirty, they're etched in stone. I think that although it is very difficult to adapt or change our style, it's not impossible. Our leadership style can be ‘situational,' but before we're able to make a change, we may require new mentors and models."

One leader may be highly successful using an occasional tantrum, while the same technique would backfire for others. The idea of experimenting with style to learn new modes of operation will enhance your leadership. You cannot change your underlying nature, but there are numerous ways to modify style in particular situations to expand your repertoire.

One caution: develop an environment of trust before experimenting with style. If you try different styles without first establishing trust, people will become totally confused, and you will undermine efforts to build the right environment. Your behaviors need to form a pattern of consistency before you can venture into a learning mode on style. When you do, the style must be congruent with your true feelings. You are not playing games with people, only trying a different mode of sharing your feelings. If people react with, "What the heck is he trying to do? He is completely off the wall!" you are too inconsistent. The reaction you are looking for is, "That's interesting. He is not acting with his typical response on this issue. Something significant must be going on here."

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Article Tags: assessment, DiSC, Flexibility, growth, Indicator, MBTI, Style



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