For leaders to be effective, they need to understand their leadership style. It is through such an understanding that the leaders can leverage their strengths to direct their employees towards achieving organizational goals. Moreover, as they understand their approach to leadership, leaders are also able to identify areas of weakness and take action to address them. There are various tools that leaders can use to determine their style. After using one such tool, I have established that my style is more in line with the people leadership approach as opposed to task leadership.
Personal Leadership Style
As already noted above, I have adopted the people leadership style. Essentially, this style allows leaders to establish relations with their employees. The leaders are able to help employees to address personal problems. Furthermore, those who have adopted the people leadership style prioritize employee wellbeing over the completion of tasks. The people leadership style plays a critical role in creating effective managers and leaders. Enabling leaders to respond to personal crises that employees face is one of these roles. As an individual who has adopted this style, I expect that the style will allow me to embrace employees and work with them as they strive to achieve personal and professional goals. Additionally, I am confident that through this style, I will be able to create an environment where employees feel valued and respected. Overall, I believe that the people leadership approach will allow me to promote employee wellbeing while pursuing organizational goals.
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Style Requiring Strengthening
In addition to revealing that I prefer the people leadership approach, the exercise also made it clear that I need to strengthen the task leadership style. Basically, the task leadership style is more concerned with the accomplishment of tasks. The key feature that defines those who have adopted this style is that they take all necessary steps to ensure that employees honor their obligations (Janet, 2006). For example, the leader may institute disciplinary action against employees whose task performance falls short of the set standards. While I find that the task leadership approach can have damaging impacts, I also recognize that it plays vital roles in driving organizational operations. For example, when they remind employees of their obligations using the task leadership approach, leaders are able to attain set objectives and strategies.
Insights from Resources
The task leadership style has been the subject of extensive discussion in literature. In particular, various resources explore the measures that individuals can adopt so as to become effective task leaders. An article by Joseph Folkman (2013) which appeared on the online edition of Forbes magazine is among these resources. While the scope of this article is rather broad, it gives special focus to task leadership. One of the recommendations that Folkman offers is that leaders should understand they are unable to complete all tasks alone. They must turn to their employees for support and help. Another recommendation is that leaders should encourage collaboration so that team members are able to work together to accomplish tasks (Folkman, 2013). Folkman also advises that leaders need to embrace communication and offer feedback.
Actions to be taken
As is clear from the discussion above, Folkman offers practical yet effective strategies for building task leadership. While all the strategies hold promise, I think that encouraging collaboration is likely to yield the greatest outcome. I have selected this strategy because it will allow me to leverage on my preferred style of people leadership. As I have already noted, this style challenges me to build relationships. Using this style, I will encourage employees to join forces and form collaborative partnerships through which they accomplish assigned tasks. I strongly encourage other leaders to broaden their leadership style. Instead of being faithful to a particular style, they should experiment with new approaches.
References
Folkman, J. (2013). The 6 secrets of successfully assertive leaders. Forbes. Retrieved September 20, 2018 from https://www.forbes.com/sites/joefolkman/2013/10/10/the-6-secrets-of-successfully-assertive-leaders/#688617ad6668
Janet, M. (2006). Effective leadership and management in the early years. McGraw Hill Education (UK).
