The leader constitutes the organizational culture, or, as we say, the fish rots from the head. The behavior of your employees is always a reflection of your leadership style and the values you broadcast, formally or discreetly. The stronger the leader – the more employees support his or her values and share the company’s mission.
Implementing modeling methods is more important than strengthening this system through certain formats of meetings, strategic facilitation, training, team building, and job descriptions. The leader, by his behavior, lays the so-called “assumed values” (E. Shane) or the rules of conduct and thinking that may not be discussed anywhere, yet everyone takes them for granted.
For example, within the company, there can be a system of punishment with fees for being late. However, if the leader demonstrates non-obligation in these matters, employees will also begin to connive. Set a task and not control it? The next time, the task will also be performed with worse quality and probably not on time. By the way, the management will also start exhibiting the same behavior as the leader.
The leadership style determines managerial skills, personal effectiveness, and organizational culture. So, let’s try to find your leadership type and explore a zone of risk and growth for it, including the emotional intelligence perspective.
The proposed model is based on the archetypes of our human activity – something that has always been with us since primitive times (L. Aksenovskaya).
Did you find any signs of your company and leadership type?
The secret lies in the fact that most of the time, the leadership styles are mixed. As such, it is ideal to use all three to have the most effective organizational culture. This is possible only at the stage of synthetism. And if your company is still very young, at the startup stage, then you, as its leader, are probably still in the syncretic state – when models from each type are randomly used. Therefore, your goal as a leader is to build order from chaos.
The sooner you realize the growth areas and start building a proactive policy of learning and development strategy for your company (also don’t forget about your personal effectiveness), the more competitive you will be in the market.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Anna Kravtcova is a Ph.D. in Organizational Psychology and is internationally certified with EuroPsy or European Certificate in Psychology (2021). She is a member of several respectful international business psychology societies including the International Society for Emotional Intelligence (2017), and the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) – a division of the American Psychological Association or APA (2011).
Anna is a speaker at conferences all around the world (USA, Brazil, Portugal, Spain, Czech Republic, Russia, etc.), and did a TED talk on Emotional Intelligence. She has extensive managerial experience across various positions including as HR director (500 employees), COO (6 tech startups), CEO (17 hotels and restaurants), and managing partner of an international consulting company (36 consultants, 150+ clients around the world).
If you’ve watched Billions on Netflix, she is Wendy.