John C. Maxwell is an internationally recognized leadership expert, speaker, and author who has sold over 19 million books. When it comes to talking about leadership, John Maxwell is one of the gurus in this area. We’ve explored John Maxwell’s leadership work, books, and famous quotes in this article.

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Top 5 John Maxwell Leadership Books

John Maxwell speaks to Fortune 500 companies, international government leaders, and audiences as diverse as the United States Military Academy at West Point, the National Football League, and ambassadors at the United Nations. He is an awarded bestseller by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Business Week. Maxwell was named the World’s Top Leadership Guru by Leadershipgurus.net.

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We’ve examined John Maxwell’s leadership books and picked the top 5 most popular ones in this article. While we are picking the top 5 books, we’ve gone through the review ratings and number of reviews on Amazon and Good Reads. The combined rating is the weighted average of the Amazon and Good Reads ratings.

If you like reading books for your self-development, you should add these leadership books to your reading list. Let’s go through each of these John Maxwell books and examine them.

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1- The Most Popular John Maxwell Book- The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership

The most popular and best John Maxwell leadership book is “The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You”.

This book has over 8,000 reviews on Amazon with an average rating of 4.7. There are even more ratings on Good Reads with over 51,000 reviews and an average rating of 4.15.

John Maxwell focuses on the fundamental pillars of successful leadership such as vision, influence, responsibility, and commitment in this book. While defining leadership, it focuses on how to set targets for yourself and for your team. The book shows how to manage the emotional balance in hard times as well. While the book goes over the 21 laws, each law is justified by scenarios and examples from John Maxell’s leadership experience.

The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership book by John Maxwell is a go-to resource for exploring the ways to become a leader and be successful in the workplace. This book is the best John Maxwell leadership book people can read if they want to:

• Learn leadership on their own,
• Develop as leaders in a group
• Teach leadership to others as a mentor.

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2- The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth

The second John Maxwell book in our list is “The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth: Live Them and Reach Your Potential”.

This book has over 5,000 reviews on Amazon with an average rating of 4.8, and over 8,000 reviews on Good Reads with an average rating of 4.32.

John C. Maxwell wrote his tested and true principles for maximum personal growth. According to John Maxwell, there are tested and correct principles that can help personal growth. The book focuses on:

• The Law of the Mirror: You Must See Value in Yourself to Add Value to Yourself
• The Law of Awareness: You Must Know Yourself to Grow Yourself
• The Law of Modeling: It’s Hard to Improve When You Have No One But Yourself to Follow
• The Law of the Rubber Band: Growth Stops When You Lose the Tension Between Where You Are and Where You Could Be
• The Law of Contribution: Developing Yourself Enables You to Develop Others

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3- The 5 Levels of Leadership

The third John Maxwell leadership book is “The 5 Levels of Leadership: Proven Steps to Maximize Your Potential”.

This book has over 4,000 reviews on Amazon with an average rating of 4.7, and over 6,000 reviews on Good Reads with an average rating of 4.29.

You can read this John Maxwell book to learn about the leadership tools to fuel success, grow your team, and become the visionary you were meant to be.

True leadership is not related to having particular jobs or titles. In order to grow your career, you must be successful and reach targets with your team. You must act as a servant leader and help your people to improve their skills to become leaders as well.

The book focuses on the following 5 Levels of Leadership:
1. Position—People follow because they have to.
2. Permission—People follow because they want to.
3. Production—People follow because of what you have done for the organization.
4. People Development—People follow because of what you have done for them personally.
5. Pinnacle—People follow because of who you are and what you represent.

John Maxwell goes over each of these five levels of leadership through insights and examples.

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4- How Successful People Think

The fourth John Maxwell leadership book on our list is “How Successful People Think: Change Your Life”.

This John Maxwell leadership book has over 3,800 reviews on Amazon with an average rating of 4.7, and over 12,500 reviews on Good Reads with an average rating of 3.93.

How Successful People Think, a Wall Street Journal best-seller, is the ideal, concise read for the fast-paced world of today. John C. Maxwell writes about how to be innovative and challenge traditional traits. The book teaches you to see the big picture while you are focusing on day-to-day activities.

5- Developing the Leader Within You 2.0

The fifth and last leadership book by John Maxwell on our list is “Developing the Leader Within You 2.0”.

This John Maxwell leadership book has over 3,000 reviews on Amazon with an average rating of 4.7, and over 23,500 reviews on Good Reads with an average rating of 4.21.

This book can help you develop the influence, character, service, and vision that it takes to be a leader in every aspect of your life. John Maxwell analyzes the different types of leadership styles and lists the following fundamental principles for inspiration, motivation, and influence.

• Influence – using the 5 Levels of Leadership as a roadmap to influence others
• Character – embracing good ethics, practicing self-leadership, and valuing people
• Service – asking eight questions to develop into a leader who serves others daily
• Vision – including eight components when painting a vision for your people so they can experience it

Developing the Leader Within You 2.0 book will help you transform the way you think about leadership.

Top 10 John Maxwell Quotes

There are thousands of famous quotes by John Maxwell. We’ve picked the top 10 quotes voted on Good Reads.

Quote #1 – “Leadership is not about titles, positions, or flowcharts. It is about one life influencing another.”

Quote #2 – “Seven Steps to Success
1) Make a commitment to grow daily.
2) Value the process more than events.
3) Don’t wait for inspiration.
4) Be willing to sacrifice pleasure for opportunity.
5) Dream big.
6) Plan your priorities.
7) Give up to go up.”

Quote #3 – “We cannot become what we need by remaining what we are.”

Quote #4 – “Change is inevitable. Growth is optional.”

Quote #5 – “The greatest day in your life and mine is when we take total responsibility for our attitudes. That’s the day we truly grow up.”

Quote #6 – “A man must be big enough to admit his mistakes, smart enough to profit from them, and strong enough to correct them.”

Quote #7 – “Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them.”

Quote #8 – “Talent is a gift, but character is a choice.”

Quote #9 – “Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it.”

Quote #10 –  “Success is…
knowing your purpose in life,
growing to reach your maximum potential, and
sowing seeds that benefit others.”

All of them are inspirational, which one is your favorite?

Summary – John Maxwell

John Calvin Maxwell (born February 20, 1947) is an American author, speaker, and pastor who has written many books, primarily focusing on leadership. We’ve reviewed the hundreds of books written by John Maxwell and picked the top 5 based on Amazon and Good Reads.

The top 5 John Maxwell books are: 

• The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You
• The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth: Live Them and Reach Your Potential
• The 5 Levels of Leadership: Proven Steps to Maximize Your Potential
• How Successful People Think: Change Your Life
• Developing the Leader Within You 2.0

John Maxwell has thousands of quotes about leadership as well. We’ve picked the top 10 for our article as well.

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Participative leadership style is also known as democratic leadership. In the participative leadership approach, the leader fosters group participation in decision-making processes, although the final words might be told by the leader. We have gone through the 7 traits of participative leadership style, pros, and cons, when to use this leadership style, and when to avoid it.

Bill Gates and Jim Lentz are known as famous participative leaders. We will show some examples from their leadership as well.

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What is Participative Leadership?

The inception of the participative leadership style dates back to the 1930s. Kurt Lewin, a German-born American social psychologist known for his field theory of behavior, developed a framework based on a leader’s behavior. Lewin argued that there are three types of leaders:

• Autocratic leaders make decisions without consulting their teams. You can read more in the Authoritarian Leadership article.
• Laissez-faire leaders do not step in; they create the environment for maximum participation, and let the people make many of the decisions. You can read more in the Laissez Faire Leadership article.
• Democratic leaders foster team participation before making a decision.

The level of participation in participative leadership depends on the leader. Democratic leadership style is considered when a consensus is important to get team buy-in. Note that, if there are several differing ideas in the team, it might be difficult to manage and reach a conclusion.

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7 Traits of Participative Leadership Style

There are several traits of participative leadership. We will go through the most common 7 traits in this article.

1- Participative Leadership Requires Active Listening

The backbone of participative leadership is about encouraging group decision-making. To do this, participative leaders must be an active listener. Active listening is about following what people say without interruption, providing feedback about their ideas, and also welcoming feedback about what you say.

To evaluate every perspective emerging from the group, participative leaders must be active listeners.

2- Approachable

Participative leadership requires being approachable. Do you know leaders who go straight to their rooms, attend meeting after meeting until the evening, and do not contact their teams? This is an old-school type of management.

Participative leadership style requires the leaders to be approachable. Team members should be able to talk with their leaders without barriers. This will encourage better communication and relationship which will lead the team members to express their ideas freely.

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3- Participative Leaders are Open-minded

Open-minded is defined as “willing to consider new ideas; unprejudiced” in the dictionary. No matter what the team members bring in, participative leaders should give appropriate time to consider new ideas within the group. Personal feelings or beliefs on a particular perspective should not hinder the leader from evaluating this together with the group.

4- Communication

Participative leadership requires efficient and effective communication. Several ideas might be discussed within the group and while evaluating each idea, especially if there are opposing ideas, leaders should be careful to manage the discussion.

Efficient and effective communication ensures that the morale and motivation of the team are not hampered while evaluating different ideas.

5- Participative Leadership Fosters Accountability

Group members can bring in new ideas to discuss with the group. This fosters accountability in the group. Because, individuals are expected to bring in their ideas, and all groups will consider those perspectives in a group meeting.

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6- Participative Leadership Motivates People

Participative leadership motivates people. Because, when making a decision, a participative leader looks for the team’s buy-in. The ideal scenario is consensus.

Since people actively participate in group discussions and decision-making, they feel that their ideas are important and affect the results. This motivates people.

7- Team-Building

As the team makes the decision as a group, participative leadership improves team-building. During the discussions, team members get to know each other better, this improves the relationship among the team and increases the team performance.

💡 Read 15 Types of Leadership article to learn about other leadership styles.

When to Use Participative Leadership Style

With participative leadership, you focus on mutual participation. You consult with your group, and you consider their ideas and expertise before making a decision. This approach works best when your team members are experienced, when the task is complex and challenging, and when your team members want to give you their input. 

Even if the participative leader has the final say on decisions, team members are involved in the decision-making process. This builds trust and good working relationships, and team members feel empowered and engaged with their work. You depend on your group to develop ideas, not just offer opinions on an idea. The participative style is more about group problem-solving and brainstorming. So, make sure each person’s voice is heard equally.

Participative leadership works best when there are no tight deadlines, high-pressure, and when creativity is expected. Because, participative leadership is about hearing everyone’s voice on the team, evaluating the options, and making the best decision. This requires time.

Some example industries or places where participative leadership works best are:

• Universities
• Technology companies because they need innovation,
• Creative agencies for the generation of out-of-the-box ideas

When to Avoid Participative Leadership Style

The downside of participative leadership is that it can slow the decision-making process, which can lead to missed opportunities. This can be particularly damaging in emergencies or crises. Emergencies, time-critical tasks, and having an inexperienced team are the cases when you should avoid a participative leadership style.

• Emergency cases: quick decisions and fast reactions are needed in case of emergencies. This requires minimum time to decide on a solution. Autocratic leadership will work in emergencies.
• Time-critical tasks: When there is time pressure, there might not be time to evaluate different perspectives and opinions from the team.
• Inexperienced teams: If your team members are junior and need maximum guidance to perform, it is less likely to receive creative ideas from them. So, group participation may not be needed if you have an inexperienced team.
• Operational works: If the team is working on operational tasks such as customer support requests, answering phone calls, or working on field cases, you might avoid participative leadership as the key performance indicators will be timely responses and the procedure is already defined in most of the cases.

3 Benefits of Participative Leadership Style

There are several benefits of the participative leadership style. We will go through the top 3 benefits here.

1- Employee Retention

People may think their existence is not important to the organization if their ideas are not asked or if they do not contribute in the decision-making process. This can cause absenteeism. Absenteeism is a habitual pattern of absence from a duty or obligation without good reason.

Participative leadership values the individuals’ ideas and perspectives. Therefore, they feel they are important to the organization. This cuts down on turnover and absenteeism.

2- Higher Morale

Having words in group discussions, contributing to the decision-making, and taking a more active part in the organization make employees feel like more than just a number, they’re more likely to engage in company policy and enjoy their work.

No doubt, higher morale will lead to higher productivity.

3- Creative and Innovative Thinking

Every individual has a different experience, insight, and perspective. Therefore, having words from each member can lead to creative and innovative ideas.

Sometimes, management can get stuck in a loop that leads them to make stagnant or outdated decisions. By opening up the floor to employee input, creative thinking ensues—and that opens the door for cost-saving innovations, unique approaches to productivity and efficiency, and more.

3 Flaws of Participative Leadership Style

Nothing is perfect, participative leadership has some flaws as well. While there may be many flaws, we’ve listed the top three here.

1- Slower Decision-Making Process

Group participation, hearing every voice in the team may require a significant amount of time especially if the team is big. If you are trying to reach a consensus, it might be impractical as well. This causes slower decision-making. If there are tight deadlines or high pressure such as an emergency, participative leadership may not be possible.

2- May Not Work in Inexperienced Teams

Group participation and welcoming new rationale ideas and perspectives are possible only if the team members are experienced. Inexperienced team members will have limited knowledge and insights, so, applying a participative leadership style with an inexperienced team may not work.

3- May Question the Leadership Existence

As the group is making decisions, in some cases, the existence of the participative leader may be questioned. Because, the team evaluates the different ideas on their own, makes a decision, and comes to a conclusion. Team members might question the existence of the leader in this case even though the final words rely on the leader.

Famous Participative Leaders

Although there are several participative leaders, the most famous two most famous participative leaders are Bill Gates and Jim Lentz.

Bill Gates as a Participative Leader

I think everyone knows who Bill Gates is. Co-founder of Microsoft, billionaire, computer tycoon, and a predictor of future technology. Gates managed Microsoft’s product strategy from 1975 until 2006.

Bill Gates was using both transactional leadership and participative leadership. He asked for the ideas of his team members and valued the group participation. However, in some cases, he was the quick decision maker and excellent delegator of the tasks even if the majority of the team was thinking differently than him.

Bill Gates is one of the great leaders affected our lives in the last 25 years. Do you want to see all 12 Great Leaders Who Affected Our Lives?

Jim Lentz as a Participative Leader

James E. Lentz is an American business executive and former chief executive officer for Toyota North America. Lentz began his career at Toyota in 1982 as a Merchandising Manager climbed up the ladder to the top and ended his Toyota career by 2019.

Through his years at the company, he has realized that being a “tyrant boss” isn’t going to get you very far. The following quotes from an interview show his participative leadership style:

“You’re not going to motivate people that way. Even back in the day, if you were very dictatorial in your management style, you got exactly what someone asked you to do. Not less, but not more. Today if people really understand why they’re doing something, I think they give more.”

Summary

The participative leadership style allows group discussion in decision-making processes, evaluating different ideas and perspectives, and looking for a consensus and team buy-in. This increases morale, motivation, and performance as the team members feel their ideas are important. Also, creative and innovative ideas emerge under participative leadership.

Participative leadership can be applied when there is no high pressure when deadlines are not critical, and if the team is experienced. Some examples are universities, technology companies, and creative agencies. If there are tight deadlines, if there is an emergency, or if the tasks are operational, a participative leadership style is not appropriate.

Benefits of the participative leadership are employee retention, higher morale, and creativity. Flaws are a slower decision-making process, inapplicable in inexperienced teams, and leadership existence may be questioned.

Bill Gates and Jim Lentz are famous participative leaders to name a few from several famous leaders believing in participative leadership.

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Adaptive leadership is using a set of strategies and practices you can use to overcome obstacles, accomplish meaningful change, and adapt to challenging and complex environments. We are living in a harsh competition age and the fast pace of business dynamics is like never before. This makes adaptive leadership a crucial strategy for many businesses to be successful. We have described adaptive leadership and the five principles of being an adaptive leader in this article.

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What is Adaptive Leadership?

Inception of the adaptive leadership dates back to 1994. Ron Heifetz, a Harvard professor, described adaptive leadership as a set of strategies and practices you can use to overcome obstacles, accomplish meaningful change, and adapt to challenging and complex environments.

Heifetz’s theory was based on natural selection theory in biology. This theory supports that animals and plants which can adapt to changing conditions can survive for a longer time. Based on the theory, animals and plants keep the crucial parts of their body for their survival, and get rid of unnecessary parts as the species evolve over time.

Similarly, adaptive leaders take the most useful competence, skills, and lessons from past events and experiences to use them in the future. According to Heifetz, the adaptive leadership process has three stages as shown in the following figure.

3 Stages of Adaptive Leadership

Let’s go over the three stages of adaptive leadership now.

1- Observing Events and Patterns

During business transformation, there is a critical question you should ask: What’s worth keeping and what is not? Which processes and practices are useful to the organization and which are not? Which processes slow down business? How can you achieve faster decision-making?

Adaptive leadership requires observing the business, determining the patterns, keeping the useful practices, and eliminating the unnecessary ones. For example, bidding farewell to a vendor relationship the company has had for decades or nixing a process that used to boost efficiency but now hinders it. In short, for an organization to grow, this parting with the past has to happen because letting go has the power to prompt new economic opportunities, thoughts, and value systems.

2- Interpreting and Developing Hypotheses

At this stage, an adaptive leader directs and encourages creativity and innovation. New hypotheses are developed and tested at this stage of the adaptive leadership cycle. Be prepared for failures at this stage as the company is testing new things that have not been tested before. Adaptive leaders understand this and are prepared for these challenges because they know that within these challenges lies the potential to propel the company to new heights.

For instance, hypotheses, the company decides to remove managerial approvals up to $1,000 monthly expenses from employees. This will save time for managers and employees will not have to wait for their expenses to be approved to do their work. This can be tested in a few departments at first to see how it goes, and the process can be improved accordingly before making it company-wide applicable.

3- Designing Interventions

In the third phase of adaptive leadership, the trial phase for developing new approaches to operating the organization is over. The practices and hypotheses that worked well are applied and the ones that did not work out are eliminated. At this stage, adaptive leaders carefully monitor the impact of new systems and processes, report their findings, and work with teams to make any necessary adjustments for improvement.

💡 Read 15 Types of Leadership article to learn about other leadership styles.

These steps are iterative, so once you’ve completed them all, you repeat the process and refine your observations, interpretations, and interventions until you’re satisfied with the solution.

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Adaptive Leadership Example – Best Buy Case Study

It is best to go over a real-life case example for adaptive leadership. In 2003, competition in the U.S. consumer electronics market was particularly fierce, with Wal-Mart®, Target®, and Costco® threatening to take market share from perennial leaders, Best Buy® and Circuit City®.

Julie Gilbert, Best Buy VP, noticed that her organization skipped an opportunity to win more market share by focusing on young and male customers and ignoring women. Julie decided to change this strategy and worked on how to target female customers.

Following Gilbert’s adaptive leadership, Best Buy updated its stores to make them more appealing to female customers. Some of the practices were widening the aisles for baby strollers, softening the lightning, and reducing the volume of background music in the stores. The output was fruitful. Best Buy increased the revenue from female customers by $4.4 billion in four years. This counted an 11% rise in overall revenue mainly because of Gilbert’s adaptive leadership strategy.

Like Best Buy, all businesses must adapt to different environments, whether these come from changes in technology, customer expectations, laws and regulations, or employees’ expectations. Leaders must find ways to adapt and take advantage of the opportunities that these changes bring.

5 Principles of Adaptive Leadership – How to Become an Adaptive Leader

There are five common principles of adaptive leadership. You can apply these in your role to become an adaptive leader and adapt your business to changing conditions.

1- Navigate the Business Environment

Adaptive leaders must embrace uncertainty and adopt new approaches to perform well in changeable environments. To succeed in this dimension, you should apply some tactics as follows.

• Get the buy-in of all members of the organization. Less experienced professionals are more likely to be critical of processes and they can ask tough questions compared to more experienced professionals. If you involve as many people as possible, you can identify more improvement areas.
• Share the leadership role. Every person has their own strengths and weaknesses. In some cases and roles, some people can be more successful than others while in another case, the same person can be less successful while another one can be more successful. You can use situational leadership strategies to allocate leadership responsibility to those who are most suited to making particular decisions to achieve the best result for your organization. Also, consider applying a laissez-faire leadership style.
• Keep questioning. Analyze the risks and make tests by creating new hypotheses. As part of adaptive leadership, you can create “what if” scenarios to find new improvement areas. For instance, “What happens if we apply agile project management rather than a waterfall?”, “what happens if we limit the meeting durations to a maximum of 30 minutes?”.
• Stay objective. Sometimes, it is hard to be objective, and humans are emotional and subjective in many cases. Heifetz used the concept of “getting on the balcony” as opposed to “being on the dance floor” to refer to the perspective you need. This means spotting trends and patterns rather than focusing on the minutiae of day-to-day activity.

2. Lead With Empathy

Great leaders are empathetic. Adaptive leaders create a shared sense of purpose and manage through influence rather than command and control. You can read more about this in the charismatic leadership article. To succeed in this dimension, you should apply the following tactics.

• See the world from others’ perspectives. Do not focus on your or your team’s self-interests. Adaptive leadership requires focusing on the big picture and focusing on the optimum solutions that fit everyone or at least for the benefit of the majority.
• Develop rapport with your team. Before you can influence others, you need to make a personal connection with them. To do so, you’ll need to understand their beliefs, values, and concerns. You can strengthen your bond with your team members by improving your emotional intelligence. You can apply authentic leadership to improve your rapport with your team.
• Create a Common Goal. What is the mission and vision of the organization? What is the big picture? Encourage your followers by showing a clear vision and mission of the organization. Note that, these should align with the team members’ values and interests.
• Reward accomplishment. Do not hesitate and delay rewarding accomplishments. Rewards can be monetary or non-monetary. For instance, a bonus payment for overperformance is a monetary reward. However, giving additional leading responsibility is a non-monetary reward if the team member is willing to take on new roles. By rewarding them, you build their loyalty and commitment to the organization and to your goals. HR leadership is also crucial when defining an organization’s rewards and punishment policies.

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3. Learn Through Self-Correction

Adaptive leadership requires encouragement and persistence in experimentation. There will be failures and successes through these experiments. The important point is to try and find the correct practices. To succeed in this dimension, you can apply the following tactics.

• Build trust and integrity. Adaptive leadership should ensure to creation of an environment where the team members can propose their ideas. New ideas should be encouraged as new practices can emerge from these ideas.
• Encourage creativity and innovation. Ideas generate solutions and innovations. The more ideas your people generate, the more likely it is that you’ll arrive at an effective solution. Encourage people to discuss ideas, brainstorm, and evaluate different perspectives. Foster group discussions that will emerge new ideas.
• Foster a learning environment. New ideas and innovations come out of competent people. Ensure an environment where people are not afraid of making mistakes. Improve skills and competence of the people. Pay attention to growing emerging leaders. New leaders with improved team leadership skills can lead the company to success.
• Experiment and test ideas. Business tests allow you to assess your ideas before applying them to a large scale. For instance, if you are trying a new process, try it in a few departments or locations at first. You can see the weaknesses and strengths of the process. And then, you can apply it to all departments of the company.
• Manage uncertainty. Many people are resistant to change by nature. You should guide people through the change and support them during new adaptions.

4. Create Win-Win Solutions

Adaptive leaders focus on achieving success for both the organization and its external network of stakeholders. To succeed in this dimension, you can apply the following tactics.

• Build acceptance. The faster your people adjust to change, the less disruption there will be. Test your skills to pinpoint any areas that you need to develop further.
• Extend engagement outside your four walls. Your organization’s success likely depends on the contribution and engagement of its external suppliers, vendors, and customers. Allow them to participate in decision-making and ask for their opinions regularly. Adaptive leadership welcomes new ideas inside and outside.
• Strengthen the company’s reputation through social responsibility initiatives. Leaders must focus on more than the bottom line to succeed in the marketplace. By connecting with its community, an organization can help others while improving customer loyalty and its reputation as an employer of choice.

5. Become Persistent Until You Find the Best Practices

Adaptive leaders will never stop improvement. There is no end to process, practice, and tool improvement. Because, technology changes, industry changes, and market changes, as a result, your organization must be adaptive to ever-changing conditions. While finding and applying the best practices, you can follow the following tactics.

• Do not be afraid to fail. If you are afraid to fail, you cannot try new ideas. This will hinder creativity and innovation.
• Continue to ask “What’s Next?”. Once you iterate your results, focus on the next one. Improvement should be inevitable under adaptive leadership.

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Benefits of Adaptive Leadership

Organizations that adjust to changing circumstances do better financially than ones that don’t. It claims that agile, flexible businesses continually demonstrate strong, sustainable performances and outperform their peers during volatile periods.

Similarly, leaders who adopt an adaptive leadership approach alongside a transformational leadership style are often the best equipped to steer organizations through turbulent periods of change. They raise morale by generating solutions to issues with other team members, and then continually refine those ideas until they arrive at the best one. This iterative approach means that the final decision is typically the most effective one.

The process of coming up with multiple solutions builds a culture where people can have healthy debates with one another. It also empowers them to generate their own ideas and to think independently.

Flaws of Adaptive Leadership

Adaptive leadership does have its drawbacks. The process of exploring new possibilities can bring a degree of uncertainty, and this can create friction among team members. Leaders may resent their ideas being challenged, and block others’ suggestions.

It’s also not a leadership style that’s suitable in all situations. For example, it’s better applied to more unpredictable environments than stable ones. When an industry is mature, leaders may need to adopt a style that’s more disruptive to innovate and push the business ahead.

Furthermore, adaptive leadership may not be appropriate when senior managers need to make important decisions quickly, whereas authoritative leadership will be more suitable. It takes time to develop different processes and for people to adapt to new situations. Therefore, a more autocratic leadership approach may be suitable in this environment.

Famous Adaptive Leaders

There are several famous adaptive leaders. We will be focusing on two of them here.

1- Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln was an American lawyer, politician, and statesman who served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Lincoln accepted diversity, appointed rivals for his cabinet, and was always open to debate and criticism. Lincoln was a believer of adaptive leadership and he also had an open-door policy, inviting citizens to discuss their challenges with him. His attentive ear and natural empathy helped him earn respect.

2- General George Patton

George Smith Patton Jr. was a general in the United States Army who commanded the Seventh United States Army in the Mediterranean Theater of World War II, and the Third United States Army in France and Germany after the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944. The adaptive leadership style worked well for Patton. He gained respect as a military leader in large part by soliciting input from his team. Always one to anticipate trouble, he believed in having a backup plan in case a situation went south.

Summary

Adaptive leadership is using strategies and practices to overcome ever-changing business conditions and trying to achieve the best. Market changes, customer changes, unexpected things happen, and business changes. Adaptive leadership requires adapting the business to ever-changing conditions and managing the organization to success.

There are three stages of adaptive leadership. These are, observing events and patterns, interpreting and developing hypotheses, and designing interventions. There are five principles of adaptive leadership. These are navigating the business environment, leading with empathy, learning through self-correction, creating win-win solutions, and persistence until finding the best practices.

Organizations applying adaptive leadership are financially more successful. People are more committed as their ideas are valued and performance is typically better. However, there are flaws in the adaptive leadership style as well. Evaluating all ideas may require significant time and is not feasible when quick decisions need to be made. Abraham Lincoln and General George Patton are two famous adaptive leaders.

The post Adaptive Leadership: 5 Principles to Be an Adaptive Leader appeared first on San Francisco Business School.

There are several leadership skills that must be present in leaders. You should have seen the “top leadership skills” types of posts before. This article differs from them. We’ve surveyed 6,992 professionals and asked them a single question: “What are the top three important leadership skills you would like to see in your leadership at your workplace?”. The results are inspiring.

📌 Hint: Do not skip this article, you will find FREE Leadership Training resources throughout the article.

Let’s go over the 21 effective leadership skills professionals expect to see at their workplaces.

💡 Transformational Leadership is the most demanded leadership style. Have you seen the 5 Steps to Transformational Leadership article? 

Leadership Skills Survey

We’ve surveyed 6,992 professionals enrolled in professional business training programs at San Francisco Business School. You can see the demographics, titles, functions, industry details of the respondents, and methodology of the survey at the bottom of this article (*).

We’ve shown the 21 different types of leadership skills and asked respondents to pick the top three leadership skills they would like to see in their leadership or management at their workplace. Below are the results.

Watch 21 Leadership Skills Professionals Expect to See at the Workplace YouTube Video

If you like watching videos rather than reading, you can watch our Top 21 Leadership Skills YouTube video.

Top 21 Leadership Skills

We will go through each of these 21 leadership skills one by one.

Top Leadership Skills #1 – Communication – Relationship

Communication, relationship, and interpersonal skills are crucial for leaders. Based on research, executives and managers spend 90% of their time on communication. The survey results justify this as well.

Professionals seek for confident and easy communication with their leaders. They expect to see emotional intelligence and leaders who can see the issues from different perspectives. Have you seen leaders go to their room in the morning, go to meeting after meeting until the evening, and not set aside any time for their team? That’s an example of bad communication.

Leaders should wander around and be visible to the people in their team. So, people should feel comfortable when communicating with their leaders and the leaders should be easily accessible. That is why professionals pick communication as the top leadership skill.

Top Leadership Skills #2 – Integrity – Trust – Authenticity

Transformational leaders follow the rules, ethical standards, and moral principles. They are fair and at equal distance to all members of the group. Their actions are taken as a role model by others. Therefore, leaders must be trustworthy.

You should have seen examples where leaders or managers go along better, and have more personal relationships with some individuals compared to others. Humans are social, and this can be. However, your personal relationships must not affect your work and attitude toward the people in your team.

Enhance Your Leadership Skills – Executive Leadership Training Program

San Francisco Business School offers an online, self-paced comprehensive executive leadership training program. You can consider enrolling in this program to improve your leadership skills.

Top Leadership Skills #3 – Encouragement – Motivating Others

Leaders inspire people, motivate their team, and encourage them to produce the best results. Professionals seek encouragement as a leadership skill in their leadership team.

There are several ways to encourage people. The most common ways are setting clear goals, giving incentives, appreciation verbally, and celebrating success.

If you see any mistake or misbehavior of your team members, avoid talking about this in the group. Try to set up a one-on-one meeting. Refrain from phone or online meetings.

4- Charisma – Persuasion & Influence

Charisma is described as a personal quality of presence or charm that others find compelling. Charisma is one of the intangible but sensible traits of leaders. You cannot avoid charisma when defining leadership.

Scholars in sociology, political science, psychology, and management reserve the term for a type of leadership seen as extraordinary. In these fields, the term “charisma” is used to describe a particular type of leader who uses “values-based, symbolic, and emotion-laden leader signaling”.

Charismatic leaders combine charm, interpersonal connection, and persuasiveness to motivate others. Professionals seek charisma, persuasion, and influence leadership skills in their executives. These skills will help their business unit to overcome obstacles, communicate with other departments in the organization easily, and a better performance in the end.

Watch Laura’s 30 Seconds Experience – Executive Leadership Program

Hear from Our Alumni Laura Smith, Head of Design. Laura attended the Executive Leadership Program at SFBS.

5- Setting Goals for Everyone

Organizations have missions and visions. To reach those missions and visions, goals are set on an organizational level, and these goals are broken down to the department or business unit level. Then, goals are set on an individual level.

Professionals expect their leaders to set goals for everyone. This does not mean that everyone has similar goals. Depending on the experience, level, and skills of each individual, leaders must seek a fair goal distribution for everyone.

6- Strategic Thinking – Decision-Making

We are living in a fast-paced environment. This is similar to making business decisions as well. In some cases, leaders have to make a decision with limited data or under tough conditions.

Professionals expect their leaders to have strategic thinking and decision-making leadership skills. Strategic thinking refers to evaluating the several aspects of a move or decision. Strategic thinking is like playing chess, being able to see several steps ahead and decide based on the current situation.

Free Online Leadership Skills Training Program

One of the requirements to be a good leader is to improve yourself continuously. The best way to do this is, to enhance your competence through training. Take a step ahead and jumpstart your leadership competence. Enroll in our 1-hour Free Leadership Training program.

7- Positivity

Leaders should be realistic and positive. Sometimes, there is a misconception between positivity and seeing things through rose spectacles.

The dictionary meaning of positivity is the practice of being or tendency to be positive or optimistic in attitude. Leaders should be calm, positive, and optimistic. Otherwise, the negative energy can affect their team and it can hamper the business productivity in the organization.

8- Perseverance – Commitment

Perseverance and commitment is another important leadership skill. Once the goals are set, leaders should be perseverant throughout the journey to reach the goals.

It can be a long journey, and there can be disasters, roadblocks, impediments, and issues affecting the team to reach its goals. Professionals seek perseverance and commitment leadership skills in their management to go over the issues with patience.

9- Conflict Management – Negotiation

Conflicts are unavoidable wherever there is a human interaction. You should not be afraid of the conflicts. However, leaders must have conflict management and negotiation leadership skills.

There are five types of conflict management techniques:

1. Avoiding: This is simply delaying to make a decision about the issue.
2. Competing: Addressing the conflict directly and trying to solve the conflict as quickly as possible.
3. Accommodating: This is resolving the issue by giving in to the opposing party.
4. Compromising: This is referred to as “lose-lose” as well. Each side is pushed to make some sacrifices to reach a resolution.
5. Collaborating: This method looks for “win-win” resolution. Parties look for a solution that will make everyone happy.

Leaders should use their leadership skills to overcome conflicts in the best way. Win-win may not be the ultimate outcome in some circumstances.

10- Agility and Adaptability – Flexibility

We are living in a fast-paced environment. Business conditions may change rapidly. So, leaders must be agile, and flexible and be able to adapt to changing conditions.

Professionals expect their leaders or managers to have agility, adaptability, and flexibility leadership skills. Agility refers to the ability to think and understand quickly. Adaptability refers to the quality of being able to adjust to new conditions and flexibility refers to adapting to changing circumstances and expectations of the workplace.

11- Innovation and Creativity

Innovation refers to finding new ways or ideas to overcome a situation. Typically, innovations are linked with new services or products. However, leaders are expected to be innovative when they hit a roadblock. Common ways or traditional techniques may not help the team to overcome the issue. Therefore, professionals expect their leaders to be innovative and creative.

12- Team Building

Team building is growing strong teams that have strong professional bonds and perform efficiently to provide better outputs. Tuckman identifies team building in five stages:

• Forming: The team is gathering at this stage. The team is structured, and no one knows each other enough.
• Storming: The team starts to perform and interpersonal conflicts start to arise.
• Norming: In this stage, team members are creating new ways of doing and being together. Team members start to trust each other.
• Performing: The most productive stage of the team. Everyone knows each other, and support is at the highest degree.
• Adjourning: The work is finished, and the team adjourns.

The critical moments in teams are when a new one joins the team, or if the whole team is formed recently. Leadership’s team-building skills will play a significant role in minimizing conflicts and reaching the maximum performance level.

13- Problem-Solving

In some cases, problem-solving is confused with conflict management. Typically, conflicts arise between people. However, problems can be related to anything including people.

For instance, if one of your team members is coming late every day, this is a problem. Similarly, if there has been a fire in your region and if your premises were damaged, this is also a problem.

Leaders must be calm and patient against problems. Problem-solving is an important leadership skill to overcome the issues.

14- Coaching

Coaching is a form of development in which an experienced person, called a coach, supports a learner or client in achieving a specific personal or professional goal by providing training and guidance. The learner is sometimes called a coachee. Occasionally, coaching may mean an informal relationship between two people, of whom one has more experience and expertise than the other and offers advice and guidance as the latter learns; but coaching differs from mentoring by focusing on specific tasks or objectives, as opposed to more general goals or overall development.

15- Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is the analysis of available facts, evidence, observations, and arguments in order to form a judgment by the application of rational, skeptical, and unbiased analyses and evaluations. In some cases, it might not be possible to avoid emotions when coming to a conclusion. However, leaders must refrain from emotional effects when they are making a decision. Therefore, critical thinking is one of the leadership skills.

16- Taking Responsibility

Leaders or managers are responsible for their teams. So, when there is a success, it accounts for the entire team. However, if there is a failure, people may start to look for a scapegoat. Leaders play a vital role here. They should prevent their team, and absorb the pressure coming from higher management. Leaders should take responsibility for their team.

17- Effective Planning

Businesses perform time-sensitive projects, tasks, or activities. In order to complete a project on time and on budget, effective planning skills are crucial. Therefore, professionals seek effective planning skills in their leaders.

18- Delegating

Professionals like delegating leaders. They want to be accountable for their activities. So, they want their leadership to set the goals and expectations, and give them the way to perform their activities. However, some leaders or managers are not confident after assigning tasks to their team.

Micromanagement is a pattern of manager behavior marked by excessive supervision and control of employees’ work and processes, as well as a limited delegation of tasks or decisions to staff. Typically, micromanagement is a flaw of new leaders or managers and professionals hate it.

19- Decisiveness

20- Feedback (giving and receiving)

In many cases, leaders or managers come together with their team members annually or every six months to make a performance review. This is a very long period. Leaders should be visible and approachable. The feedback mechanism should be two-way. Leaders should give feedback to the team members, well, this is normal. However, leaders should be mature enough to receive any type of feedback from team members as well.

Actually, feedback is one of the best ways to see how others see you. Therefore, make sure you establish a productive feedback mechanism in your organization.

21- Punctuality – Time Management

Typically, leaders and managers are very busy. Their calendar may shift during the day. However, they must find a way to plan important meetings on time. Even if they need to reschedule, they should be informed in advance instead of a no-show. So, professionals expect their management to have punctuality and time management leadership skills.

22- Other Leadership Skills

There are many other leadership skills you can name. However, we’ve listed the top 21 leadership skills and asked them to vote for our audience. A minority, 0.51%, of the respondents chose that there are other leadership skills than we listed above.

How to Develop Leadership Skills – 5 Common Ways

We’ve listed the top 21 leadership skills, but how can you develop your leadership skills? There are five common ways in which leaders develop and enhance their leadership skills.

1- Leadership Skills Courses/Programs

There are leadership programs or courses that you can attend and enhance your leadership skills. While courses focus on particular leadership skills, programs aim to develop your overall leadership presence and skills. For instance, San Francisco Business School offers an Executive Leadership Program.

Executive Leadership Training Program Covers:

• Generic & Adaptive Leadership – Change is inevitable and leaders must be prepared for the changing dynamics of the business environment. Learn how to adapt your leadership in changing circumstances.
• Grasping Power – Only powerful leaders sustain in a brutal business environment. You’ll learn how to grasp power.
• Servant Leadership – Leaders must be adaptive, servant, and transformational in today’s business world. Walk the path to be a servant leader that empowers people and organizations.
• Emotional Intelligence – Emotional effects are unavoidable wherever there is a human factor. Develop your competence to be an agile, optimistic, and humble leader. Learn how to show people why they matter.
• Tomorrow’s Leaders – You cannot lead the millennials the same way as you do for boomers. Increase your awareness for future leadership and transformational leadership.
• Leadership in Hard Times – While being an optimist leader, you have to be ready for the unanticipated cases. Improve your contingency planning skills, dealing with conflict of interest, and how to overcome a crisis.

You can check further on the program page.

2- Coaching

We’ve explained the coaching above. In coaching, the coach guides the coachee through real-life scenarios. In some cases, the coach can help the trainee with the real cases the trainee faces at work. There are several coaching programs available on the web. However, make sure to choose the right coach for you. It is important to choose a coach from a similar or even the same industry, who has gone through your career path before and who can guide you transparently.

3- Practicing

As in any profession, the best method to sharpen your leadership skills is practicing. Whenever you see a chance to practice your skills, do not hesitate. For instance, if you see a conflict between your colleagues, you can seek a resolution. Or, help a team member to make a decision.

4- Reading

You can consider reading leadership books, articles, or business blogs. There are phenomenal leadership books. You can make a reading list, and read those books to sharpen your leadership skills. You might be interested in our John C. Maxwell – Top 5 Leadership Books article.

5- Events

There are conferences, seminars, and webinars about leadership. You can follow these activities and attend them if they fit your schedule.

Note that, there are other ways to develop leadership skills such as volunteering, giving back, or on-the-job training. We’ve listed the most popular 5 ways to improve leadership skills.

Watch 5 Ways to Develop Leadership Skills YouTube Video

Summary – Effective Leadership Skills

Leadership requires several skills. Luckily, these can be earned later through education, programs, coaching, books, etc. There are 21 effective leadership skills that professionals seek to see in their management at the workplace. We’ve listed these skills in this article.

Professionals improve their leadership skills by attending courses or programs, coaching, practicing, reading, or events. There are other ways to improve leadership skills as well.

(*) Leadership Skills Survey Demographics & Methodology

You can see the demographics, titles, functions, industry details of the respondents, and methodology of the survey below.

The majority of the respondents are from the US. Approximately half of the respondents are performing functional roles such as engineer, analyst, specialist, etc. and the other half are managerial or leadership roles.

Respondents of the survey reflect the GDP distribution by industry in the US. Also, there are respondents coming from different functions or departments in an organization.

We’ve shown the 21 different types of leadership skills and asked respondents to pick the top three leadership skills they would like to see in their leadership at their workplace. When we are calculating the results, we have given different weights to the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd skills.

• 1st skill’s weight is 55%
• 2nd skill’s weight is 30%
• 3rd skill’s weight is 15%

The following table shows the number of respondents who picked each skill in their 1st, 2nd, and 3rd top leadership skills.

The weighted average is calculated as follows:

Weighted Average Score = (Number of Respondents Picked the Skill in 1st Place) * 0.55 + (Number of Respondents Picked the Skill in 2nd Place) * 0.30 + (Number of Respondents Picked the Skill in 3rd Place) * 0.15

The post 21 Leadership Skills Professionals Expect to See in the Workplace appeared first on San Francisco Business School.

Ethical leadership style is a leadership style in which leaders show common moral and ethical values in their behaviors. In short, ethical leadership is all about doing the right thing. We will go through the definition, importance, scandals and examples, characteristics, and criticism of the applicability of ethical leadership in this article. We will list famous ethical leaders as well.

📌 Hint: Do not skip this article, you will find FREE Leadership Training resources throughout the article.

💡 You might be interested in the 21 Leadership Skills Professionals Expect to See in the Workplace article.

What is Ethical Leadership?

Ethical leadership is doing the right things no matter the situation and conditions even if it will cause the company to lose money. Several scandals even in Fortune 500 companies like the Volkswagen emission cheat, Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal, and controversies about Uber increased the importance of ethical leadership even more than before.

Volkswagen, Facebook, and Uber are just a few examples of several ethical scandals. These examples show that when people are at powerful levels, they can be greedy, and make poor ethical choices even if it will cause their companies or even themselves to end up in court.

For ethical leaders, doing the right thing and common moral values are at the top of everything else. Ethical leadership requires being fair, and showing integrity and trust. Ethics is at the bottom of the leadership behavior of ethical leaders. Ethical leaders do the right thing even if it will cause financial losses to their organization. Research shows that ethical leadership makes it more likely that the teams will be loyal, dedicated, and ethical, in return.

Ethical leadership is similar to Authentic Leadership in many aspects.

Enhance Your Leadership Skills – Executive Leadership Training Program

San Francisco Business School offers an online, self-paced comprehensive executive leadership training program. You can consider enrolling in this program to improve your leadership skills.

💡 Read 15 Types of Leadership article to learn about other leadership styles.

Why is Ethical Leadership Important?

Ethical leadership is important, because “trust” is a value and asset that cannot be earned through money. Trust is gained over long years of quality, sustainability, and doing the right things in order. However, all several years of reputation can be lost with a single case or failure. That is why ethical leadership is vital to the reputation and integrity of an organization.

Robert Bosch, the founder of Bosch, a famous German multinational engineering and technology company, short quote about trust tells us everything:

“I would rather lose money than trust.”

Author and ethical leadership expert Linda Fisher Thornton lists several connected reasons that can cause ethical failures by individual leaders and organizations.

Individual causes include ignoring boundaries such as organizational or industry codes, following the herd, or lack of self-control.

Organizational causes include a lack of positive role models, a lack of codified standards of behavior and training, and a lack of accountability.

Three Ethical Leadership Scandals

There are lots of scandals caused by a lack of ethical leadership in organizations. We will list the top three scandals as an example here.

1- Enron – Biggest Chapter-11 Bankruptcy in History

The Enron scandal is for sure the top corporate scandal of all time. The scandal started in 2021 when financial analysts started to question Enron’s annual report. The reports were prepared using irregular procedures and it was not easy to track how the company was making money. Andrew Fastow and others at Enron’s poor ethical leadership orchestrated a scheme to use off-balance-sheet special purpose vehicles (SPVs).

The SEC began to investigate the issue and found that Enron was hiding billions of dollars in liabilities through its subsidiary companies or the companies they controlled. Enron was showing in their reports that they were profitable although they had severe cash flow problems.

Enron’s share price fell from $90.56 to under a dollar as the crisis unfolded, with Enron forced to file for what was then the biggest chapter-11 bankruptcy in history.

2- Volkswagen (VW) Emissions Scandal

The Volkswagen emissions scandal is also known as “emissionsgate” and “dieselgate”. The scandal started to unfold in 2015 when the EPA (US Environmental Protection Agency) announced that VW had cheated emissions tests.

Volkswagen’s poor ethical leadership created cheating software for the diesel cars. The cars going through laboratory testing with this software were imitating that they were emitting 40 times less nitrogen dioxide than actual emissions.

Based on estimations, the scandal affected up to 11 million cars worldwide.

3- Facebook Data Scandal – Cambridge Analytica

In March 2018, the Guardian and New York Times reported that a firm called Global Science Research had accessed and used data from millions of Facebook users in 2013 without the consent of the users.

Facebook’s poor ethical leadership privacy policy allowed apps to access users’ names, birthdays, and locations. Even though 30,000 users were using Global Science Research’s app, they could access 87 million Facebook users’ data. These analyses and user data were sold to Cambridge Analytica where they launched highly-targeted campaigns, especially for the undecided voters. It is believed that these campaigns affected the elections in favor of Brexit and Trump.

Ethical Leadership: How to be an Ethical Leader YouTube Video

We have a 10-minute YouTube video. The video focuses on how to be an ethical leader.

Good Examples of Ethical Leadership

There are several good examples of ethical leadership as well. Let’s go through two good examples of ethical leadership.

For instance, Toyota called their vehicles when they discovered brake and pedal issues. Instead of ignoring the issue, their strong ethical leadership decided to call the vehicles before it caused further accidents or problems. There were some cases where Toyota cars were doing unintended acceleration and brake problems. Toyota called the models causing the problems and changed their problematic parts although it caused significant cost and operation for the company.

Patagonia is another example of where strong ethical leadership is present. The company applies environmental and welfare responsibility programs. Patagonia’s programs force it to reduce its footprint by converging water, eliminating toxins, and reducing emissions. Now only that, they are trying to power their facilities with 100% renewable energy. Although these programs cause more costly production and more expensive production, Patagonia’s ethical leadership values the environmental concerns at the bottom of its entire company philosophy.

5 Characteristics of Ethical Leadership

There are several characteristics of ethical leadership. Although they follow rules and policies, in some cases, especially if the rules and standards are against self-interests or company interests, being ethical can be hard. We have listed the top 5 characteristics of ethical leadership.

1- Ethical Leadership Fosters Integrity and Trust

As integrity and trust are the backbone of ethical leadership, we should not be surprised that the first trait is integrity and trust. By the way, integrity and trust is the 2nd top demanded leadership skill professionals expect to see in their workplace. See the leadership skills survey results.

Ethical leaders follow the rules, ethical standards, and moral principles. They are fair and at equal distance to all members of the group. Their actions are taken as a role model by others. Therefore, leaders must be trustworthy.

You should have seen examples where leaders or managers go along better, and have more personal relationships with some individuals compared to others. Humans are social, and this can be. However, your personal relationships must not affect your work and attitude toward the people in your team.

2- Communication

Ethical leaders are excellent communicators. They use several different communication strategies to pass along their values, inspire their teams, and give clear instructions.

Communication, relationship, and interpersonal skills are crucial for leaders. Based on research, executives and managers spend 90% of their time on communication. Ethical leaders frequently communicate with their team and inform them about the news, situations, and issues. Therefore, communication is a critical trait of ethical leadership.

Professionals seek for confident and easy communication with their leaders. They expect to see emotional intelligence and leaders who can see the issues from different perspectives. Have you seen leaders go to their room in the morning, go to meeting after meeting until the evening, and not set aside any time for their team? That’s an example of bad communication.

Leaders should wander around and be visible to the people in their team. So, people should feel comfortable when communicating with their leaders and the leaders should be easily accessible. That is why professionals pick communication as the top leadership skill.

Free Online Leadership Skills Training Program

One of the requirements to be a good leader is to improve yourself continuously. The best way to do this is, to enhance your competence through training. Take a step ahead and jumpstart your leadership competence. Enroll in our 1-hour Free Leadership Training program.

3-Feedback (giving and receiving)

Communication requires “give and take.” Ethical leaders understand that the world isn’t just about them, and they listen actively to other people and accept good advice, no matter where it comes from or who gives it. Feedback is crucial in authentic leadership.

Good communication also involves feedback. It can be incredibly difficult for leaders to get the feedback they need to improve, no one wants to tell the CEO that his idea stinks!. However, ethical leaders work hard to create a culture of open communication. They know they are not perfect, and they hire people who are willing to tell them so.

In many cases, leaders or managers come together with their team members annually or every six months to make a performance review. This is a very long period. Leaders should be visible and approachable. The feedback mechanism should be two-way. Leaders should give feedback to the team members, well, this is normal. However, leaders should be mature enough to receive any type of feedback from team members as well.

Actually, feedback is one of the best ways to see how others see you. Therefore, make sure you establish a productive feedback mechanism in your organization.

4- Perseverance – Commitment

Perseverance and commitment is another important ethical leadership skill. Once the goals are set, leaders should be perseverant throughout the journey to reach the goals.

It can be a long journey, and there can be disasters, roadblocks, impediments, and issues affecting the team to reach its goals. Professionals seek perseverance and commitment leadership skills in their management to go over the issues with patience.

Watch Laura’s 30 Seconds Experience – Executive Leadership Program

Hear from Our Alumni Laura Smith, Head of Design. Laura attended the Executive Leadership Program at SFBS.

5- Ethical Leadership Requires Conflict Management and Negotiation

Conflicts are unavoidable wherever there is human interaction. You should not be afraid of the conflicts. However, ethical leaders must have conflict management and negotiation leadership skills.

There are five types of conflict management techniques:

1. Avoiding: This is simply delaying to make a decision about the issue.
2. Competing: Addressing the conflict directly and trying to solve the conflict as quickly as possible.
3. Accommodating: This is resolving the issue by giving in to the opposing party.
4. Compromising: This is referred to as “lose-lose” as well. Each side is pushed to make some sacrifices to reach a resolution.
5. Collaborating: This method looks for “win-win” resolution. Parties look for a solution that will make everyone happy.

Ethical leaders should use their leadership skills to overcome conflicts in the best way. Win-win may not be the ultimate outcome in some circumstances.

Debates About the Applicability of Ethical Leadership

Being “ethical”, building “trust”, and showing “integrity” sounds appealing. However, it is not easy to follow ethical leadership characteristics when it is not mandated or regulated.

For instance, consider that you are the executive leader of a coffee chain that has stores worldwide. The regulations in the countries you operate in do not require you to employ fair trade policies to power the coffee shows with renewable energies, use recycled materials, etc. If you apply ethical leadership and use fair trade coffee products, equip coffee shops with renewable energy power supply and recycled materials, the costs will increase and decrease your strengths against your competitors.

Do you remember that Boeing’s 737 Max MCAS issue caused a few airplane accidents? Authorities investigating the airplane crashes concluded that the design of Boeing’s new flight control system, MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System) software, repeatedly pushed the jet’s nose down and caused the accidents.

After further investigation of the issue, it has been found that, although further testing and FAA regulations are required in case of such a major development in maneuvering systems of an airplane, Boeing’s poor ethical leadership pretended in the documentation that there was not a massive change requiring further tests and FAA regulative tests. Because these tests would cause additional time and costs for the company. So, if the airplane crashes had not happened, although this new system requires additional tests, the company would have avoided and saved time and cost.

Famous Ethical Leaders

There are several famous ethical leadership examples. We will go through three examples of ethical leaders.

1- Gay Ridge – CEO of WD40

Gary Ridge, CEO of WD40 passionately speaks about how creating a culture of trust (not fear), respect, and candor has been transformative: “Leadership is about learning and teaching. Why waste getting old if you can’t get wise? We have no mistakes here, we have learning moments,” he explained in a Forbes interview. Under his ethical leadership values, Ridge has seen the company have a 90% staff retention rate and shareholder value increase year on year in the last 14 years.

2- Yvon Chouinard – Founder of Patagonia

Another great example of ethical leadership comes from the outdoor clothing company Patagonia which thanks to its founder, Yvon Chouinard has a strong ethical core. Patagonia is famous for its donations of at least 1% of sales or 10% of profit to environmental groups. They are supporting environmental groups because they are pioneers of mountain climbing clothing.

3- Rose Marcario – CEO of Patagonia

Marcario joined Patagonia in 2008 as a CFO and then became a CEO in 2014. Since then, she raised the ethical leadership of the company to a new level. She is one of the great leaders who affected our lives in the last 25 years.

Whilst also achieving financial success, Marcario has fought to defend public lands and has created Patagonia Action Works to help its customers become involved in environmental and social activism. She has also encouraged customers to exchange and repair their clothes rather than always buying new ones – standing true to the idea that “you do things not when it is convenient or when someone is watching, but because it is the right thing to do.”

Is it easy to encourage people to exchange or repair their clothes, rather than buy new ones? It is against the sales and profitability of the company. However, as the pillar of ethical leadership, they foster the “right thing”.

Summary

Ethical leadership is acting compliant with the rules, policies, and standards and doing the right thing whatever it takes. It is important in this age especially when several reputable companies go through scandals such as the Volkswagen emissions scandal, Boeing’s testing scandal, and Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Ethical leadership has common traits such as integrity, trust, efficient communication, feedback, perseverance, and conflict management. Although it has several benefits, applying ethical leadership is not as easy as it is told. It may cost time and budget to apply ethical leadership practices and it is not practical in today’s highly competitive age.

Gay Ridge, Yvon Chouinard, and Rose Marcario are three famous ethical leaders.

The post Ethical Leadership: 5 Traits, 3 Ethical Scandals, Applicability appeared first on San Francisco Business School.

Authentic leadership style is a leadership style that inspires people through trust and integrity. Transparency is the key characteristic of authentic leadership. We have gone through authentic leadership, 5 traits, debates about the applicability of this leadership style, and famous authentic leaders in this article.

📌 Hint: Do not skip this article, you will find FREE Leadership Training resources throughout the article.

💡 You might be interested in the 21 Leadership Skills Professionals Expect to See in the Workplace article.

What is Authentic Leadership?

Leadership today is very different from leadership in previous generations. The top-down approach in management is old school. No one wants to work in such an environment anymore. Values, mission, and how the individual’s interest matches with them are much more important in today’s leadership compared to the past. Individuals expect to feel as if their work matters for the organization and they would like to feel special and authentic leadership plays an important role here.

Authentic leadership creates a strong bond between leadership and team members through integrity, trust, and open communication. Authentic leaders are easily approachable, willing to be open about the issues, frequently communicate with the team, and inform the team transparently.

💡 Read 15 Types of Leadership article to learn about other leadership styles.

Enhance Your Leadership Skills – Executive Leadership Training Program

San Francisco Business School offers an online, self-paced comprehensive executive leadership training program. You can consider enrolling in this program to improve your leadership skills.

Being authentic may not be easy all the time. Authenticity can mean many different things and involves a wide range of leadership skills, actions, and behaviors. For example, when the company is planning to lay off some of the team members from the team, is it easy to apply authentic leadership, be transparent, and share this information with the team?

Authentic leaders have their own values and they lead their teams based on these values. They know who they are, and they don’t let anyone keep them from making a decision that they know is right. They have integrity and a firm moral code, and they manage to stay sensible and stable even during the most difficult times.

Authentic leadership is very similar to Ethical Leadership in many aspects.

Why is Authenticity Important in Leadership?

People thrive to work on a mission, vision, and values. Transactional leadership alone won’t work for the individuals who value the organization’s goals, missions, and objectives. People have higher expectations from the workplace and their leadership. That is why inspiring passion and confidence in teams is crucial for success.

When people work alongside a truly authentic leader, they’ll often give their whole hearts and minds to the cause. In these situations, a spirit of teamwork and loyalty can spread throughout an organization, resulting in high morale and producing extraordinary results. Therefore, if teamwork, collaboration, and communication are vital for the success of an organization or project, authentic leadership will boost the performance of the team members.

Authentic Leadership: How to Lead Authentically YouTube Video

We have a 7-minute YouTube video. The video focuses on how to lead authentically.

5 Traits of Authentic Leadership

The authentic leadership path is not straight and well-defined. As we said earlier, it involves many different skills, traits, and actions. But, by focusing on some of the most common characteristics, you can start down your own way to be an authentic leader.

1- Authentic Leadership Fosters Integrity and Trust

As integrity and trust are the backbone of authentic leadership, we should not be surprised that the first trait is integrity and trust. By the way, integrity and trust is the 2nd top demanded leadership skill professionals expect to see in their workplace. See the leadership skills survey results.

Authentic leaders follow the rules, ethical standards, and moral principles. They are fair and at equal distance to all members of the group. Their actions are taken as a role model by others. Therefore, leaders must be trustworthy.

You should have seen examples where leaders or managers go along better, and have more personal relationships with some individuals compared to others. Humans are social, and this can be. However, your personal relationships must not affect your work and attitude toward the people in your team.

2- Communication

Authentic leaders are excellent communicators. They use several different communication strategies to pass along their values, inspire their teams, and give clear instructions.

Communication, relationship, and interpersonal skills are crucial for great leaders. Based on research, executives and managers spend 90% of their time on communication. Authentic leaders frequently communicate with their team and inform them about the news, situations, and issues. Therefore, communication is a critical trait of authentic leadership.

Professionals seek for confident and easy communication with their leaders. They expect to see emotional intelligence and leaders who can see the issues from different perspectives. Have you seen leaders go to their room in the morning, go to meeting after meeting until the evening, and not set aside any time for their team? That’s an example of bad communication.

Leaders should wander around and be visible to the people in their team. So, people should feel comfortable when communicating with their leaders and the leaders should be easily accessible. That is why professionals pick communication as the top leadership skill.

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3-Feedback (giving and receiving)

Communication requires “give and take.” Authentic leaders understand that the world isn’t just about them, and they listen actively to other people and accept good advice, no matter where it comes from or who gives it. Feedback is crucial in authentic leadership.

Good communication also involves feedback. It can be incredibly difficult for leaders to get the feedback they need to improve, no one wants to tell the CEO that his idea stinks!. However authentic leaders work hard to create a culture of open communication. They know they are not perfect, and they hire people who are willing to tell them so.

In many cases, leaders or managers come together with their team members annually or every six months to make a performance review. This is a very long period. Leaders should be visible and approachable. The feedback mechanism should be two-way. Leaders should give feedback to the team members, well, this is normal. However, leaders should be mature enough to receive any type of feedback from team members as well.

Actually, feedback is one of the best ways to see how others see you. Therefore, make sure you establish a productive feedback mechanism in your organization.

4- Situational Leadership

All leaders have power. But authentic leaders know how to use the right kind of power – for the good of the group, and for the goal that needs to be achieved. There are several different kinds of power. One type is expert power. When you have expert power, your team looks up to you because of your skills, knowledge, and experience.

Authentic leaders don’t just know what type of power to use in a given situation. They also understand power – where it comes from, and how to use it to get things done.

Authentic leaders apply situational leadership to address different situations, different experience levels, and maturity in an organization. Hersey and Blanchard developed the Situational Leadership theory in the 1970s. Since then, it has been widely adopted by several leaders focusing on short-term goals and is well suited to authentic leadership style as well.

The situational leadership theory focuses on four different types of behaviors, Directing, Coaching, Supporting, and Delegating. The model supports different styles for different maturity and performance levels as well.

Situational leadership best works when there are different levels of experience and motivation in the group. Steve Jobs, Eisenhower, and Collin Powell are known as famous situational leaders.

Read more about situational leadership.

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5- Authentic Leadership Requires Conflict Management and Negotiation

Conflicts are unavoidable wherever there is human interaction. You should not be afraid of the conflicts. However, authentic leaders must have conflict management and negotiation leadership skills.

There are five types of conflict management techniques:

1. Avoiding: This is simply delaying to make a decision about the issue.
2. Competing: Addressing the conflict directly and trying to solve the conflict as quickly as possible.
3. Accommodating: This is resolving the issue by giving in to the opposing party.
4. Compromising: This is referred to as “lose-lose” as well. Each side is pushed to make some sacrifices to reach a resolution.
5. Collaborating: This method looks for “win-win” resolution. Parties look for a solution that will make everyone happy.

Authentic leaders should use their leadership skills to overcome conflicts in the best way. Win-win may not be the ultimate outcome in some circumstances.

Debates About the Applicability of Authentic Leadership

“Authenticity”, “trust”, “integrity”, “transparency” and many other characteristics of authentic leadership sound compelling. However, it is not very easy to be authentic on many occasions. Therefore, there are debates about the applicability of authentic leadership. Let’s explain this through a fictitious scenario.

Scenario – PharmaPro is Shutting Down San Diego Facility – Authentic Leadership Applicability

Kate is the Executive Vice President of the PharmaPro, a pharmaceutical company. Kate leads the production units and the company has production units in three locations: Austin, San Diego, and Chicago. Due to increasing costs, the company decided to shut down its facility in San Diego and increase the workforce in Chicago and Austin.

The San Diego facility produces BoostX, a vitamin and one of the flagship products of the PharmaPro. 790 people are working in this facility and the company does not want to let the people know about the shutdown and layoffs as it may cause strikes or a decrease in production performance.

Is it easy for Kate to apply authentic leadership in this case? Of course not. If she will be transparent with her team, she has to share that the company will be closing down the facility. Then, the workers may organize strikes, or their motivation can decrease and this can affect the production.

Famous Authentic Leaders

We are all inspired by different traits, actions, and characteristics, but names that feature regularly on lists of authentic leaders, past and present, include the late civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr, former Apple CEO Steve Jobs, and former U.S. President Barack Obama.

Martin Luther King Jr as an Authentic Leader

On 28th August 1963, Martin Luther King addressed a crowd of over 250,000. In his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, he calls for an end to racism and equality for all. In 1999, this speech was ranked the top American speech of the 20th century in a 1999 poll of scholars of public address. Martin Luther King is referred to as one of the most famous authentic leaders.

Steve Jobs as an Authentic Leader

Steve Jobs is one of the famous authentic leaders as well. His famous quote about integrity shows that he is a believer in authentic leadership.

“You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through. You need to do good even when nobody’s looking. It’s not about others, it’s about your integrity.”

President Barrack Obama as an Authentic Leader

Barack Hussein Obama II is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. Obama is well-known for giving value to all perspectives and ideas in his meetings. He was sharing the situation transparently with the team and expecting to come to a consensus based on the current conditions.

Summary

Authentic leadership style is a leadership style that requires integrity, trust, and open communication with the team. The philosophy behind authentic leadership is ensuring transparency, improving team relationships, and in this way improving team performance.

Authentic leadership has several traits. The top five traits are integrity, effective communication, feedback, situational leadership, and conflict management. Steve Jobs, Martin Luther King, and President Obama are examples of famous authentic leaders.

Even though integrity, trust, and authenticity sound appealing, there are criticisms about the applicability of authentic leadership. In some cases, it is not possible or easy to be transparent with the team as it may cause underperformance or even worse outcomes.

The post Authentic Leadership: 5 Traits & Applicability appeared first on San Francisco Business School.

Authoritarian leadership style, also named authoritative leadership or referred to as autocratic leadership, is a rigid and one-man deciding and guiding leadership or management style. The authoritative leaders or managers make decisions on their own, instruct their team, and expect the team members to follow orders with no questions asked. Elon Musk and Bill Gates are famous leaders who applied an authoritarian leadership style. 

The authoritarian leadership style is generally criticized mainly because it does not allow participation, or group decision-making, outdated, and there are more participative leadership styles such as laissez-faire leadership, transformational leadership, or servant leadership.

📌 Hint: Do not skip this article, you will find FREE Leadership Training resources throughout the article.

Although an authoritative leadership style might sound coercive, in some cases, authoritative leadership is the best approach. We’ve explained what authoritarian leadership is, 7 traits of authoritative leadership, when to apply this style, its pros, and cons, and famous authoritative leaders in this article.

What is Authoritarian Leadership – Authoritative Leadership?

Authoritarian leadership, also known as authoritative leadership, is a leadership style where leaders or managers have full control and authority to make all decisions with limited input or participation from the team members or others. Authoritative leaders make decisions on their own using their intuition, experience, moral values, and insights. They take no input or limited input from the others. So, there is little or no participation in group decisions, the leader makes a decision, and members follow the orders and instructions.

💡 You might be interested in the 21 Leadership Skills Professionals Expect to See at the Workplace article.

The inception of the authoritarian leadership dates back to the 1930s. Kurt Lewin developed a framework based on a leader’s behavior. Lewin argued that there are three types of leaders:

• Authoritative leaders: These leaders make all decisions without consulting their teams. Authoritarian leadership is considered when a quick decision is required, when the leaders do not need any input, or when the consensus of the team is not critical for a successful result.
• Democratic leader: Democratic leaders encourage team participation before making a decision. The level of participation depends on the leader. Democratic leadership style can be preferred when a consensus is important to get team buy-in. Note that, if there are several differing ideas in the team, it might be difficult to manage and reach a conclusion.
• Laissez-faire leaders: Laissez-faire is a French term that means “leave it be”. As the term refers, laissez-faire leaders do not step in; they create the environment for maximum participation, and let the people make many of the decisions. This leadership style works when there are competent resources in the team, people are motivated, and require minimum supervision. Steve Jobs and Warren Buffet are famous leaders applying this leadership style. You can read more in the Laissez Faire Leadership article.

When there is a more fancy and popular word, “Democracy”, autocratic leadership may sound dim or avoided. However, there are many cases where autocratic leadership works as the best approach.

💡 Read 15 Types of Leadership article to learn about other leadership styles.

Enhance Your Leadership Skills – Executive Leadership Training Program

San Francisco Business School offers an online, self-paced comprehensive executive leadership training program. You can consider enrolling in this program to improve your leadership skills.

7 Traits of Authoritarian Leadership Style

While there are several traits of the authoritarian leadership style, we have listed the top 7 traits in this article.

1- Authoritative Leadership Style Allows Minimum Group Participation

Authoritative leaders decide on their own, based on their insights and experience. They ask no questions, or minimum questions to their team members. They order the team and expect the team to follow them with little or minimum questions.

2- Authoritative Leaders Make All Decisions

Authoritarian leadership requires leaders or managers to make all decisions. To ensure this, the hierarchy and culture of the organization should give authority to the leader. While authoritative leaders make all decisions, they may ask some questions to their team on technical or expertise-needed topics.

3- Authoritaritarian Leadership Style Features Dictatorship

“Dictatorship” may sound repressive and detractive. However, in some cases, as we will see below, the authoritarian leadership style is the best approach to apply.

An authoritarian leadership style allows the leaders to dictate the ground rules, methods, tools, techniques, and processes to the team. This is a must to ensure quick decision-making and application.

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4- Authoritative Leadership Discourages Creativity and Innovation

In authoritarian environments, leaders expect the team members to perform their tasks with no or minimum questions asked. There is no room for innovative thinking or creativity. Even if the resources are capable of providing creative and innovative outputs, authoritative leadership may hinder their capacity.

5- Authoritarian Leadership Creates a Highly Hiearchieal and Rigid Environment

Authoritative leadership requires a strong personality, leadership, or managerial authority. This requires a structured organization and a top-down approach. Typically, organizations with hierarchical and conventional structures apply authoritarian leadership.

6- Authoritative Leadership Minimizes Team Building and Feeling

Authoritative leaders are solo decision-makers. They make their decisions on their own and expect their team to follow their orders and instructions. This may cause team members to feel as if they are not important, or not trusted. If authoritative leadership is unavoidable, make sure you set enough time for the team members to motivate them. You can consider applying charismatic leadership skills in this case.

7- Authoritarian Leadership Establishes Clear Rules and Communication

Authoritative leaders make quick decisions and expect their team to follow them immediately. They expect quick results. This requires a clear set of rules and communication. So, team members do not hesitate on the tools or processes to use when they are performing their tasks.

Top 3 Benefits and Flaws of Authoritarian Leadership

As with any leadership style, authoritarian leadership has its own benefits and flaws as well.

The top 3 benefits of authoritarian leadership are:

• Allows for quick decision-making, especially in stress-filled situations. Leaders or managers make all decisions. Since there is no or minimum group participation, leaders can make quick decisions. This can provide a tremendous advantage in emergencies or tight schedules.
• Offers a clear chain of command or oversight. Authoritative leaders are the ultimate authority in their team. Therefore, when they make a decision, group members follow the autocratic leaders with minimum or no questions.
• Works well where strong, directive leadership is needed. When leaders are knowledgeable, experienced, and have broad foresight, autocratic leadership works well. Because, decisions rely on one person, the leader and it must be the optimum decision to achieve success.

The top 3 flaws of authoritative leadership are:

• Discourages group participation. Authoritative leaders make a decision and do not ask the opinion of their team members. This hampers the team building, team feeling and motivation of the team members.
• Hurts morale and leads to resentment. Since the team members are expected to follow the orders from the authoritative leader, they may feel like robots. This can hurt the morale of the individuals.
• Ignores or impairs creative solutions and expertise from subordinates. If the team has competent and experienced members, they might have better ideas to propose. However, authoritative leadership hinders group participation, so creative and innovative solutions from subordinates are unlikely to arise in autocratic cultures.

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When to Use and Avoid Authoritarian Leadership?

The benefits and flaws of authoritarian leadership guide us on when we can use authoritative leadership and when we should avoid it. We’ve given three examples of each when to use and avoid autocratic leadership style.

3 Cases to Apply Authoritarian Leadership

Emergencies, time-critical tasks, and having an inexperienced team are the best cases to apply authoritarian leadership.

• Emergency cases: quick decisions and fast reactions are needed in case of emergencies. This requires minimum time to decide on a solution. Authoritarian leadership will work in emergencies.
• Time-critical tasks: When there is time pressure, there might not be time to evaluate different perspectives and opinions from the team. Authoritative leaders make decisions, and team members follow orders. Therefore, authoritative leadership may be beneficial for time-sensitive projects or tasks.
• Inexperienced teams: If your team members are junior and need maximum guidance to perform, authoritarian leadership may be better. Also, it is less likely to receive creative ideas from junior professionals, so, group participation may not be needed if you have an inexperienced team.

3 Cases to Avoid Authoritative Leadership

If you have creativity-requiring tasks, team development and training, and relationship-building tasks, avoid using an authoritative leadership style.

• Creativity-Requiring Projects/Tasks: Creative ideas and innovations emerge from “free” environments. Creativity and innovation require group collaboration. To ensure this, group members must be encouraged to maximum participation. This allows new ideas to arise from the team. This is opposite to the nature of the authoritative leadership culture.
• Team Development and Training: If you are growing the competence of your team or enhancing their skills, you need to talk and get feedback from them. Therefore, you need maximum involvement of the team during team development and training.
• Relationship-building Projects/Tasks: If your work requires interaction with your team members, you need to build your relationship with each and every individual in the team. authoritarian leadership may not be appropriate in these cases.

Famous Authoritative Leaders

We have gone through several aspects of authoritarian leadership. Do we know any famous authoritative leaders? I am sure you know all of them but you may be surprised that they are autocratic. Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Adolf Hitler, and Napoleon Bonaparte are a few to name from famous authoritative leaders. You may be surprised to see Hitler, Musk, and Gates in the same sentence, however, authoritative leadership can lead to good and bad results, depending on how you use it.

We’ve picked three authoritative leaders for this article.

Elon Musk as an Authoritative Leader

Elon Musk is a business magnate and investor. The SpaceX and Tesla CEO is an autocratic leader in many of his ventures which lead them into fast growth and tremendous success. He often makes quick decisions that team members haven’t vetted. So, Elon Musk is definitely at the top of our famous authoritative leaders’ list. Read more about other Elon Musk leadership styles.

Elon Musk is one of the great leaders affected our lives in the last 25 years. Do you want to see the all 12 great leaders who affected our lives in the last 25 years?

Bill Gates as an Authoritative Leader

Bill Gates was using both authoritarian leadership and democratic leadership. He asked for the ideas of his team members and valued the group participation. However, in some cases, he was the quick decision maker and excellent delegator of the tasks even if the majority of the team was thinking differently than him. Read more about other traits of Bill Gates leadership style.

Napoleon Bonaparte as an Authoritative Leader

The French Revolution military leader was known for his infamous authoritative leadership style. He commanded a huge army and, later, an entire nation comprising millions of people without sharing his ideas or military tactics with anyone. However, his tactics worked, and he became one of the greatest military leaders in history.

Summary

At first glance, “authority”, “authoritative”, or “authoritarian” may sound outdated, especially when all the world is talking about “democracy”. However, authoritarian leadership may result in the best outputs in some cases such as emergencies, inexperienced teams, or time-sensitive tasks.

If your work requires creativity, team development, and relationship-building, you should avoid an authoritative leadership style. There are criticisms about authoritarian leadership as it may decrease team morale, and group participation and may make the individuals unimportant.

Despite many critics of authoritative leadership, it has been applied by today’s most wealthiest and successful businessmen such as Elon Musk and Bill Gates.

The post Authoritarian Leadership – 7 Traits of Authoritative Leadership appeared first on San Francisco Business School.

There are several emerging leaders programs offered by universities, colleges, business schools, professional communities, or councils. These programs require significant enrollment fees and there are certain admission requirements. How should you select the best-emerging leaders program for you? We have gone through five tips in this article.

📌 Hint: Do not skip this article, you will find FREE Leadership Training resources throughout the article.

💡 Read the Top 10 Executive Development Programs article.

What is the Emerging Leaders Program?

Emerging Leaders Programs are offered by educational institutions, organizations, professional communities, or councils and aim to gather promising future leaders and create a diverse group of attendees. The main purpose of an emerging leaders program is to grow the team leadership skills of the participants and help them to better lead their resources in their organizations.

Typically, attendees of an emerging leaders program has five to ten years of professional experience. In some programs, certain years of professional experience is a strict requirement while some other programs recommend having a few years of professional experience.

Emerging leaders program fees depend on the length, delivery type, content, and providing organization. Although there are exceptions, the program fees vary between $2,000 and $11,000. Self-paced programs are more affordable while in-person or campus programs cost more.

The duration of the emerging leaders programs varies. Some programs last in a few weeks while some programs can take up to six months. Depending on the schedule, frequency of the classes, and curriculum, the duration of the programs vary.

💡 Read 15 Types of Leadership article to learn about other leadership styles.

Enhance Your Leadership Skills – Executive Leadership Training Program

San Francisco Business School offers an online, self-paced comprehensive executive leadership training program. You can consider enrolling in this program to improve your leadership skills.

5 Tips to Select the Best Emerging Leaders Program

There are several factors you should consider when choosing an emerging leaders program for you. We have gone through the top 5 tips in this article. Let’s go through each tip, and ease your emerging leaders program selection.

1- Program Curriculum Matching Your Career Goals

The first factor you should consider when choosing your Emerging Leaders Program is the program curriculum. Even if the program fits your budget or schedule, if the curriculum does not align with your career goals, there is no need to opt for that program. For instance, if you are planning to enhance your cross-cultural or diverse workplace leadership skills, a global leadership program might be a better option for you.

Review the program curriculum and objectives carefully. For instance, if you are planning to develop your particular leadership skills, look for them in the program curriculum. Some popular areas in today’s leadership are situational leadership, green leadership, servant leadership, and crisis leadership. You can look for other non-popular areas but important for your career goal as well.

You can review the curriculum of the Emerging Leaders Program in the program provider’s pages. If you need further information, you can ask the provider and they can send you detailed brochures.

2- Emerging Leaders Program Delivery Type and Schedule

Many Emerging Leaders Programs require in-person attendance and professionals have to take days off from their jobs to attend the programs. In some cases, they have to travel to the campus to attend the program. If the program takes several weeks or even months, it will be less likely to attend a full-time working professional.

You can consider a self-paced and online Emerging Leaders Program. For instance, San Francisco Business School offers an Executive Leadership Program.

Executive Leadership Training Program Covers:

• Generic & Adaptive Leadership – Change is inevitable and leaders must be prepared for the changing dynamics of the business environment. Learn how to adapt your leadership in changing circumstances.
• Grasping Power – Only powerful leaders sustain in a brutal business environment. You’ll learn how to grasp power.
• Servant Leadership – Leaders must be adaptive, servant, and transformational in today’s business world. Walk the path to be a servant leader that empowers people and organizations.
• Emotional Intelligence – Emotional effects are unavoidable wherever there is a human factor. Develop your competence to be an agile, optimistic, and humble leader. Learn how to show people why they matter.
• Tomorrow’s Leaders – You cannot lead the millennials the same way as you do for boomers. Increase your awareness for future leadership and transformational leadership.
• Leadership in Hard Times – While being an optimist leader, you have to be ready for the unanticipated cases. Improve your contingency planning skills, dealing with conflict of interest, and how to overcome a crisis.

You can check further on the program page.

3- Certificates and Diplomas

We are in a highly competitive age. Thousands of people apply for a vacancy if the conditions are appealing and the company is reputable. One of the best ways of standing out in the crowd is by highlighting certificates and diplomas earned from the programs you attended.

Check what the Emerging Leaders Program you are planning to attend offers upon completion. Some programs have graded assignments, some programs just offer a letter of attendance, and some offer certificates and diplomas. Opt for the programs that offer diplomas and business certificates.

LinkedIn users who’ve added certifications to their profile increased by 44% in the last two years. Having business certificates on your profile or resume can set you apart from other applicants.

San Francisco Business School’s Executive Leadership Program offers a diploma and you can showcase this in your LinkedIn profile upon completing the program. You can see a sample diploma and how you can showcase this on your LinkedIn profile.

4- Alumni Testimonials & Reviews

The best way to evaluate an Emerging Leaders Program is by reaching out to alumni and checking student testimonials and reviews. Some providers are transparent and you can find all reviews and testimonials on their program pages.

When checking reviews, try to find people who have a similar background to you. If they are satisfied with the program, it will double your chances that you will like the program as well.

Watch Laura’s 30 Seconds Experience – Executive Leadership Program

Hear from Our Alumni Laura Smith, Head of Design. Laura attended the Executive Leadership Program at SFBS.

“I found the content of the course to be extremely informative and applicable to the real challenges of being a leader.

I loved the frameworks and the case studies from real-life companies. Self-paced lectures helped me to follow the program on my own busy schedule on top of a full-time job.

One of the most influential lessons for my leadership development was leadership at hard times. I’m now more mindful of how my colleagues are experiencing me, and less averse to having difficult conversations.

Thanks to San Francisco Business School!”

5- Program Fees

The last step to pick the best Emerging Leaders Program for you is checking the program fees. Emerging leaders program fees depend on the length, delivery type, content, and providing organization. Although there are exceptions, the program fees vary between $2,000 and $11,000. Self-paced programs are more affordable while in-person or campus programs cost more.

List a few candidates for Emerging Leaders Programs you would like to attend, consider your budget, and choose the one that fits your budget. Be careful with the hidden costs of the providers. Some providers may ask for additional registration fees after admission, and some may require a fee for obtaining a diploma or certificate.

For instance, San Francisco Business School’s Executive Leadership Program is $397/year. The program is self-paced and you can watch the lecture as many times as you wish even after completing the program. No additional costs for a diploma or certificate. Attendees receive their diplomas automatically upon completing the program. The subscription is flexible and you can cancel at any time.

Free Emerging Leaders Programs

Some professionals look for a Free Emerging Leaders Program. However, it is very unlikely to find a free comprehensive program. It is very unlikely to access a premium program for free.

However, some providers offer a sneak peek of their comprehensive Emerging Leaders Program. Ask for free materials or demo training from the provider before enrolling in the program. If you can see sample lectures, you will have an idea of how the course is conducted. This will reduce the possibility of your dissatisfaction as you will have an idea of the program.

Free Online Leadership Skills Training Program

One of the requirements to be a good leader is to improve yourself continuously. The best way to do this is, to enhance your competence through training. Take a step ahead and jumpstart your leadership competence. Enroll in our 1-hour Free Leadership Training program.

Summary

Emerging Leaders Programs are offered by many educational organizations and companies. The main goals of these programs are growing future leaders, enhancing leadership skills, and maximizing cultural exchange by diverse attendees.

There are several factors when choosing the best Emerging Leaders Program for you. We have listed the top 5 tips. These are finding the program matches your career goals, delivery type and schedule of the program, certificates and diplomas provided upon completion, alumni testimonials and reviews, and program fees.

If the provider offers a free preview or sample material of the program, check that. By reviewing the free demo, you will have an idea of if the comprehensive Emerging Leaders Program will meet your expectations.

The post Emerging Leaders Program: 5 Tips to Select the Best One appeared first on San Francisco Business School.

Typically, Global Leadership Programs are offered by educational institutions such as colleges, business schools, or universities. Some professional communities offer a Global Leadership Program as well. How to pick the best program? We defined the global leadership program and how to pick the best one in this article.

📌 Hint: Do not skip this article, you will find FREE Leadership Training resources throughout the article.

💡 You might be interested in the 21 Leadership Skills Professionals Expect to See in the Workplace article.

What is the Global Leadership Program?

Each Global Leadership Program differs and targets different types of audiences. Some universities’ global leadership programs accept the most academically talented students coming in each freshman class. Some educational institutions accept sophomores, juniors, and seniors. However, the majority of the programs target senior professionals typically at least five years of work experience.

The main purpose of an global leadership program is to grow the team leadership skills of the participants, enhancing the cross-cultural leadership experience and improving skills to work in diverse environments.

While there are not a strict requirements, on average, global leadership program attendees have five to fifteen years of experience. Typically, professionals working in multinational companies and working in a cross-cultural workplace prefer to attend a global leadership program.

💡 Read 15 Types of Leadership article to learn about other leadership styles.

The program fee of a Global Leadership Program varies and typically duration of the program, delivery type, and the educational institution offering the program determines the fees. On average, program fees vary between $1,500 and $10,500. However, several providers offer online and self-paced programs. The self-paced and online programs are much more affordable.

The duration of the global leadership programs varies. Some programs take a few semesters or even years. However, the global leadership programs tailored for the professionals are typically for a few weeks.

Enhance Your Leadership Skills – Executive Leadership Training Program

San Francisco Business School offers an online, self-paced comprehensive executive leadership training program. You can consider enrolling in this program to improve your leadership skills.

5 Hints to Select the Top Global Leadership Program

There are several factors you should consider when choosing a global leadership program for you. We have gone through the top 5 hints in this article. Let’s go through each tip, and ease your global leadership program selection.

1- Program Curriculum Matching Your Career Goals

First, consider your career goals, where do you see yourself in five years, ten years, and twenty years. If you are aiming to lead a multinational company or team, then, global leadership program is for you. Before checking other features of the global leadership program, first, review the curriculum, and make sure it fits your career goals. For instance, an emerging leaders program might be a better fit for your career goals.

Review the program content and targets carefully. For instance, if you are planning to develop your particular team leadership skills, look for them in the program curriculum. Some popular areas in today’s leadership are situational leadership, green leadership, servant leadership, and crisis leadership. You can look for other non-popular areas but important for your career goal as well.

Review the curriculum of the Global Leadership Program in the program provider’s pages. You can contact the program provider and ask for further information, brochures and other materials describing the program.

💡 Read the Top 10 Executive Development Programs article.

2- Global Leadership Program Delivery Type and Schedule

Many Global Leadership Programs require in-person attendance and professionals have to take days off from their jobs to attend the programs. In some cases, participants have to travel to the campus to attend the program. If the program takes several weeks or even months, it will be less likely to attend a full-time working professional.

You can consider a self-paced and online Global Leadership Program. For instance, San Francisco Business School offers an Executive Leadership Program.

Executive Leadership Training Program Covers:

• Generic & Adaptive Leadership – Change is inevitable and leaders must be prepared for the changing dynamics of the business environment. Learn how to adapt your leadership in changing circumstances.
• Grasping Power – Only powerful leaders sustain in a brutal business environment. You’ll learn how to grasp power.
• Servant Leadership – Leaders must be adaptive, servant, and transformational in today’s business world. Walk the path to be a servant leader that empowers people and organizations.
• Emotional Intelligence – Emotional effects are unavoidable wherever there is a human factor. Develop your competence to be an agile, optimistic, and humble leader. Learn how to show people why they matter.
• Tomorrow’s Leaders – You cannot lead the millennials the same way as you do for boomers. Increase your awareness for future leadership and transformational leadership.
• Leadership in Hard Times – While being an optimist leader, you have to be ready for the unanticipated cases. Improve your contingency planning skills, dealing with conflict of interest, and how to overcome a crisis.

You can check further on the program page.

3- Certificates and Diplomas

We are in a highly competitive age. Thousands of people apply for a vacancy if the conditions are appealing and the company is reputable. One of the best ways of standing out in the crowd is by highlighting certificates and diplomas earned from the programs you attended.

Check what the Global Leadership Program you are planning to attend offers upon completion. Some programs have graded assignments, some programs just offer a letter of attendance, and some offer certificates and diplomas. Opt for the programs that offer diplomas and business certificates.

LinkedIn users who’ve added certifications to their profile increased by 44% in the last two years. Having business certificates on your profile or resume can set you apart from other applicants.

San Francisco Business School’s Executive Leadership Program offers a diploma and you can showcase this in your LinkedIn profile upon completing the program. You can see a sample diploma and how you can showcase this on your LinkedIn profile.

4- Alumni Testimonials & Reviews

The best way to evaluate a Global Leadership Program is by reaching out to alumni and checking student testimonials and reviews. Some providers are transparent and you can find all reviews and testimonials on their program pages.

When checking reviews, try to find people who have a similar background to you. If they are satisfied with the program, it will double your chances that you will like the program as well.

Watch Laura’s 30 Seconds Experience – Executive Leadership Program

Hear from Our Alumni Laura Smith, Head of Design. Laura attended the Executive Leadership Program at SFBS.

“I found the content of the course to be extremely informative and applicable to the real challenges of being a leader.

I loved the frameworks and the case studies from real-life companies. Self-paced lectures helped me to follow the program on my own busy schedule on top of a full-time job.

One of the most influential lessons for my leadership development was leadership at hard times. I’m now more mindful of how my colleagues are experiencing me, and less averse to having difficult conversations.

Thanks to San Francisco Business School!”

5- Program Fees

The last step to pick the best Global Leadership Program for you is checking the program fees. Global leadership program fees depend on the length, delivery type, content, and providing organization. Although there are exceptions, the program fees vary between $1,500 and $10,500. Self-paced programs are more affordable while in-person or campus programs cost more.

List a few candidates for Global Leadership Programs you would like to attend, consider your budget, and choose the one that fits your budget. Be careful with the hidden costs of the providers. Some providers may ask for additional registration fees after admission, and some may require a fee for obtaining a diploma or certificate.

For instance, San Francisco Business School’s Executive Leadership Program is $397/year. The program is self-paced and you can watch the lecture as many times as you wish even after completing the program. No additional costs for a diploma or certificate. Attendees receive their diplomas automatically upon completing the program. The subscription is flexible and you can cancel at any time.

Free Global Leadership Programs

Some professionals look for a Free Global Leadership Program. However, it is very unlikely to find a free comprehensive program. It is very unlikely to access a premium program for free.

However, some providers offer a sneak peek of their comprehensive Global Leadership Program. Ask for free materials or demo training from the provider before enrolling in the program. If you can see sample lectures, you will have an idea of how the course is conducted. This will reduce the possibility of your dissatisfaction as you will have an idea of the program.

Free Online Leadership Skills Training Program

One of the requirements to be a good leader is to improve yourself continuously. The best way to do this is, to enhance your competence through training. Take a step ahead and jumpstart your leadership competence. Enroll in our 1-hour Free Leadership Training program.

Summary

Global Leadership Programs are offered by many educational organizations and companies. The main goals of these programs are growing leaders to lead cross-cultural organizations and diverse workplaces.

There are several factors when choosing the best Global Leadership Program for you. We have listed the top 5 hints. These are finding the program matches your career goals, delivery type and schedule of the program, certificates and diplomas provided upon completion, alumni testimonials and reviews, and program fees.

If the provider offers a free preview or sample material of the program, check that. By reviewing the free demo, you will have an idea of if the comprehensive Global Leadership Program will meet your expectations.

The post Global Leadership Program: 5 Hints to Pick the Best One appeared first on San Francisco Business School.

Laissez-Faire leadership style is becoming more and more popular. Basically, it requires the team leadership to be hands-off as much as possible and let the team perform on its own. In laissez-faire management or leadership style, the leader gives freedom to the team and only helps them if the team needs it.

📌 Hint: Do not skip this article, you will find FREE Leadership Training resources throughout the article.

“Freedom” may sound tempting, however, there are conditions and cases in which you can apply a laissez-faire leadership style. We’ve explored this leadership style in this article since its inception, and adoption, when you can apply a laissez-faire management style, benefits, flaws, famous laissez-faire leaders, and the difference between laissez-faire vs micromanagement.

💡 You might be interested in the 21 Leadership Skills Professionals Expect to See at the Workplace article.

Laissez-Faire Leadership Style Inception

The term “laissez-faire” is French for “leave it be” and it exactly fits with the style of leadership. The laissez-faire leadership style was first coined by Kurt Lewin in the 1930s. He developed a framework based on a leader’s behavior. Lewin argued that there are three types of leadership:

• Autocratic (Authoritarian) leaders make decisions without consulting their teams. Authoritarian leadership is considered when a quick decision is required, when the leaders do not need any input, or when the consensus of the team is not critical for a successful result.
• Democratic leaders foster team participation before making a decision. The level of participation depends on the leader. Democratic leadership style is considered when a consensus is important to get team buy-in. Note that, if there are several differing ideas in the team, it might be difficult to manage and reach a conclusion.
• Laissez-faire (Delegative) leaders do not step in; they create the environment for maximum participation, and let the people make many of the decisions. This leadership style works when there are competent resources in the team, people are motivated, and require minimum supervision.

Delegative or laissez-faire leadership is a very hands-off management approach. When you use this style, you allow team members to set their own goals and deadlines, and you let them determine how to do their work.

💡 Read 15 Types of Leadership article to learn about other leadership styles.

Enhance Your Leadership Skills – Executive Leadership Training Program

San Francisco Business School offers an online, self-paced comprehensive executive leadership training program. You can consider enrolling in this program to improve your leadership skills.

5 Cases You Can Apply Laissez-Faire Leadership Style

Laissez faire managers are delegation masters. They leave it up to their teams to find their way through projects and tasks and give a minimum amount of supervision. Employees often have a lot of power to make decisions with a laissez-faire approach. In fact, at the extreme end of laissez-faire, the manager can seem to be completely absent! You need extraordinary leadership skills to apply this style.

Micromanagers are the opposite of laissez faire managers. They resist delegating, and when they do delegate, they spend much time checking up on their teams. Micromanagers focus on every tiny detail and often discourage their team members from making decisions if they’re not around.

If you apply laissez-faire leadership, you can boost the motivation and performance of your team, however, you cannot apply this management approach in all cases. Let’s go through the 5 cases when you can apply a laissez-faire leadership style.

1- Competent and Motivated Team

Delegative leadership is most effective when team members are highly motivated and highly skilled, and when you can provide frequent feedback on performance and progress. To set goals and deadlines and then leave the team to do the rest of the work, you need competent and motivated resources. You cannot leave junior or inexperienced resources on their own because they need guidance and coaching on how to perform the work.

Just competence is not enough to apply laissez-faire leadership. Team resources must be motivated as well.  Only senior, experienced, and motivated team members can work toward a deadline and draw their own roadmap to success.

A laissez-faire leadership style is also effective when you work with freelancers or consultants.

2- Creativity Requiring Works

Creativity and innovation require freedom. It is less likely to expect creative ideas, new perspectives, or innovative thinking to occur under autocratic leadership where there is minimum participation.

The laissez-faire leadership style fosters creativity as it requires maximum group collaboration and participation. The group finds its own ways, methods, and path to reach its goals. When doing this, team members participate in group meetings and discussions, and this leads to new ideas, creative solutions, and out-of-the-box thinking as a result.

Therefore, if creativity is required in your work, you can apply laissez-faire leadership. Some of the works that require creativity can be:

• New product development
• Artwork creation
• Research and development projects
• Marketing projects

You can enhance this list.

Free Online Leadership Skills Training Program

One of the requirements to be a good leader is to improve yourself continuously. The best way to do this is, to enhance your competence through training. Take a step ahead and jumpstart your leadership competence. Enroll in our 1-hour Free Leadership Training program.

3- If You Are a New Leader

If you’re a new leader and you need to build rapport with your team, you can use a laissez-faire leadership style. There are some risks to this approach as well. Because you do not know the team yet. Who is motivated, who is not, who is experienced, who is competent, who has expert power in the team, etc. In some cases, years of experience do not give a clue about the competence of a resource. As a new leader, you need to spend time with your new team to grasp the details about the resources in your team.

Laissez-faire leadership is a great approach if you have just been assigned as a new team leader. You can set deadlines and goals for the team. However, you must be closely watching your team to understand each one’s capacity, influence, and skills. The more you spend time with the team, the more insights you will have about your team.

Applying autocratic leadership or a hands-on approach to a new team you are leading can harm your relationship. Because a hands-on or micromanagement style is easy to be perceived as cold and impersonal. You would not want this to happen in the early days of your leadership.

Make sure you have enough flexibility to apply laissez-faire leadership when you are a new leader. You should be tolerant of mistakes, errors, delays, and frequent conflicts until you get to know your team.

4- Flexible Deadlines

Freedom and democracy require evaluation of the options, participation of the group, and making a decision, consensus if possible. This requires time. You need to give time to your team to discuss solutions, create new ideas, test new methods, and perform their work. While waiting for the best outputs, you have to be patient.

Therefore, if you have flexible deadlines, you can apply laissez-faire leadership. This does not mean that deadlines are not important for this leadership style. However, you must be tolerant of delays if the team cannot find a good solution yet.

Watch Laura’s 30 Seconds Experience – Executive Leadership Program

Hear from Our Alumni Laura Smith, Head of Design. Laura attended the Executive Leadership Program at SFBS.

5- Team Has A Success Track Record

Even if the team looks competent and motivated, that may not be enough to apply laissez-faire leadership. You need to be sure that the team is successful in managing themselves toward reaching its goals. Look at the track record of the team. You can ask yourself the following questions:

• How many of the team members have been working for the team for a long time?
• Did they complete similar projects before?
• What is the success project completion ratio of the team?

If you are a new leader or new to the organization, you can check the repository of the organization and ask other leaders for their opinions as well.

3 Benefits of Laissez-Faire Leadership

While there are several benefits of applying laissez-faire leadership, we will list the top 3 benefits here.

1- Fosters Creativity and Innovation

As the team feels freer, they will be more motivated to think about new ideas and this will foster creativity and innovation. If the team is just getting used to each other, you should be patient for the team to get to know each other. As a laissez-faire leader, you need to be with your team only when they need it. You have to provide the tools and resources they need to be more creative and innovative.

You can ask your team about their needs to promote their creativity and innovation. Sometimes planning a training program or a software tool that will make your team perform better will increase creativity and innovation.

2- Improves Team Building

Teams that have laissez-faire leaders are the teams that have maximum participation. They discuss different ideas, perspectives, and opinions coming from the different members of the team. The more they discuss and participate, the more they know each other.

When the team reaches its goals, they feel that “they built the road to success”. Respectively, team building is ensured. Over time, strong bonds among the team are established.

3- Leaves Room for the Leader to Focus Only When Needed

Laissez-faire leadership requires the leader to be with the team, only when needed. So, the team leadership can focus on other important tasks rather than day-to-day management of the team’s tasks. This will increase the productivity of the leader as they will step into the issues only if the team asks for their leader’s help.

3 Flaws of Laissez-Faire Leadership

Everything has a trade-off, a laissez-faire leadership style as well. We will list the top three flaws here.

1- Delays

Laissez-faire leadership requires the ultimate freedom of the team. The team evaluates, assesses, discusses, and reaches a conclusion on its own. However, this requires a significant amount of time. Sometimes, the team may need to discuss for hours even days for a solution.

Therefore, laissez-faire leadership may cause delays in projects. If the organization’s culture is ready to sacrifice time for innovation and creativity, this leadership style can be used.

2- Inexperienced Teams Can Underperform

If the team is inexperienced and requires coaching and guidance, a laissez-faire leadership style can cause demotivation and underperformance.

Typically, junior team members require mentoring, coaching, training, and guidance from more senior members or their leaders. If this is absent in the team, there is more room for mistakes, delays, and undesired outcomes. So, if you apply this leadership style in an inexperienced team, failures will cause demotivation of the team and result in underperformance respectively.

3- Underestimation of the “Leader” Image

In an ideal scenario, a laissez-faire leader is absent after setting the goals and deadlines for the team. The team works on its own to reach targets. This situation may question the existence of the leader.

However, laissez-faire leadership does not mean that the leader is absent. The leader should be there whenever the team needs support. In a perfect scenario, if the team does not need support, the existence of the leader may be questioned by the team or even by the organization.

Laissez-Faire Leadership vs Micromanagement

We’ve gone through the cases when you can apply laissez-faire leadership, benefits, and flaws. The opposite side of the laissez-faire management style is micromanagement. We have a 9-minute Laissez-faire vs micromanagement video on YouTube.

Famous Laissez-Faire Leaders

Let’s go through two different scenarios:

Scenario #1: Your manager has just handed you a big project. You’re excited to get started, but she’s left you with no direction as to how she expects you to go about it. She’s specified the deadline and the deliverable and has left you to find your own way.

Scenario #2: Your last manager was the complete opposite. He’d hand you a piece of work and then spend the next few weeks hovering over your shoulder, questioning your decisions and offering “helpful advice” at every turn.

These two scenarios illustrate opposite ends of a management style spectrum. The first manager has a “laissez-faire” management style, and the second is the classic micromanager – more politely known as a “hands-on” manager.

Both styles can be effective in the right circumstances, but not, usually, when they’re taken to extremes. As usual, the best approach lies somewhere between the extremes.

Do we know any famous laissez-faire leaders? Yes! We’ve listed three examples of famous laissez-faire leaders below.

Steve Jobs as a Laissez-Faire Leader

For sure, Steve Jobs is at the top of the list of famous laissez-faire leaders. Do you remember his following quote?

“It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do, We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.”

Doesn’t it perfectly fit with the laissez-faire leadership style? Steve Jobs applied the laissez-faire leadership style to Apple, Inc. and made it to most valuable company in the world at the time. He believed in hiring the best talent and giving them the freedom to perform to innovate, create, and make decisions.

Steve Jobs is one of the great leaders affected our lives in the last 25 years. Do you want to see all 12 Great Leaders Who Affected Our Lives?

Warren Buffet as a Laissez-Faire Leader

Warren Buffet is named the best investor of our age. Buffett is famous for investing in companies with competent management teams and trusts them to run the companies in their own style.

In an annual report from Berkshire Hathaway in 2010, Warren Buffett said:

“We allow our subsidiary companies to operate independently without supervision because it allows many of our managers to keep an owner-oriented behavior, and they use them well in motivating their team members to perform well.”

This laissez-faire leadership approach has allowed Berkshire Hathaway to become one of the world’s largest and most successful investing companies. You can read more about Warren Buffett leadership style.

President John F. Kennedy as a Laissez-Faire Leader

Kennedy was known for motivating and empowering the people around him while maintaining a hands-off approach. Kennedy’s one of the famous quotes about promoting “freedom” show his belief in the strong laissez-faire leadership.

“Freedom is not merely a word or an abstract theory, but the most effective instrument for advancing the welfare of man.”

We’ve listed just three examples of laissez-faire leaders in this article. You can think of many more and enhance this list.

Summary

The laissez-faire leadership style is a hands-off management approach giving freedom to the team to apply its own methods to meet goals and deadlines. To apply this leadership style, the team must be competent and have a proven success record. The team leadership should be tolerant of delays. If applied correctly, laissez-faire leadership can foster creativity and innovation.

There are benefits and flaws of laissez-faire leadership. The three benefits of this leadership style are fostering creativity and innovation, improving team building, and letting leaders focus on key things only when needed. The three flaws of the laissez-faire management approach are the possibility of causing delays, causing underperformance of inexperienced teams, and the questioning of leadership existence.

While there are several examples of laissez-faire leaders, the top three ones we listed are Steve Jobs, Warren Buffet, and President Kennedy.

The post Laissez-Faire Leadership – 5 Cases You Can Apply appeared first on San Francisco Business School.