What type of leader are you?

Entrepreneurs may not know they have a specific leadership style. This style can also evolve over time, or change from project to project. Successful businesses are run by leaders willing to learn and adapt as they go, and part of that is understanding three key types of leadership, and when to use each.

Adaptive leadership in business

Whether you’re a small team in the startup phase or a growing enterprise, small businesses can flounder without strong leadership. While you can delegate certain responsibilities as you grow, great leaders still provide their teams with vision, direction, and motivation through the highs and lows of running a business. How you approach problems and decisions will set the tone for your employees and shareholders.

Change is the one constant you can count on when doing business. Whether that change is technological, political, or economic, you must strive to be an adaptive leader for your business to survive. 

Adaptive leadership, as defined by leadership scholars Ronald Heifetz, Alexander Grashow, and Marty Linsky in The Practice of Adaptive Leadership, is “the practice of mobilizing people to tackle tough challenges and thrive.” The authors relate ‘thriving’ to evolutionary biology, in which adaptations maintain what’s necessary for the business’s survival, discard what no longer serves the business, and allow the business to flourish in new environments.

4 principles of adaptive leadership

In some ways, adaptive leadership is exactly what it sounds like—as a leader, you must be willing to adapt to changing circumstances and new personalities. Here are four principles to guide your own adaptive leadership, based on the ideas of the authors and later commentators:

1. Emotional intelligence. Adaptive leaders know how to balance their ambition with empathy by listening actively to their partners, peers, and employees without bias. Your team is more likely to believe in your vision if they feel listened to and supported.
2. Fairness. Your team members need to feel valued while feeling you’re being honest with them. Give praise when it’s due, be transparent about your decisions, and always be open to input from team members—being fair means treating everyone equally. 
3. Development. Embrace failure as an opportunity to learn and grow. Experiment with new operational and product strategies. Encourage your employees to do the same and give them space to do so.
4. Character. Your character will shape your team’s mindset and affect the respect they have for you and the business—and how long employees stay at your company. That means being honest, self-aware, humble, and open to other perspectives, and willing to self-correct when you’ve made a mistake.

3 business leadership styles

The social psychologist Kurt Lewin was one of the first to study human behavior as resulting from one’s self-image and of one’s environment, not one or the other. In 1939, Lewin supervised a study to test how children behave under different styles of leadership, which the authors defined as autocratic, democratic, and laissez-faire.

Authoritarian leadership

Authoritarian or autocratic leaders make decisions without consulting their team members. Employees must carry out tasks, deadlines, and methods as they’re told, with minimal space for contrasting opinions. 

While authoritarian leadership wields a clear command hierarchy to make decisions efficiently, it also limits innovation by isolating the leader from the input of others. This creative rigidity can cause problems for your business’s long-term growth. Using this style long-term will also demoralize and demotivate employees, so use it sparingly—authoritarian leadership is best suited for times of crisis.

Participative leadership

Participative or democratic leaders allow employees to openly discuss decisions before making the final decision themselves. This approach encourages your employees to be creative and engaged, which leads to higher quality work and greater motivation to achieve company goals. However, participative leadership can slow down your work if you require final say on every decision.

Delegative leadership

Delegative or laissez-faire leaders empower employees to mostly manage themselves—making their own decisions and setting their own objectives with little guidance. This approach can be highly effective for teams of motivated, cooperative, and knowledgeable employees who trust each other to self-direct and self-correct. These attributes can be cultivated over time by a democratic leadership style.

Delegating leadership to employees who lack motivation, cooperation, or work skills can lead to poorly defined responsibilities, a lack of external motivation, and delayed progress on company goals.

What is your leadership style?

Being a great adaptive leader means implementing each of Lewin’s styles of leadership when appropriate. You likely tend toward one of the three styles by default. If you’re unsure which one, reflect on the following:

• How do you typically make decisions? 
• How do you interact with employees?
• How do you respond to positive and negative situations?

It’s important to build trust with your employees to get the most out of them and your business. By understanding your leadership style and being open to adapting to different situations, you can create a supportive work environment where each team member feels valued and motivated.