Every now and then, do you feel the urge to duck down and slacken the reins? The employees will kind of cope with daily business on their own… And if not, you can release the monster to take drastic action in the end.
Certainly, each leader already spent the one ore other minute with such thoughts and therewith lost valuable resources and energy. And the results possibly have been lousy. Leadership expert Susanne Spath talks about her approach on situative leadership between those extreme poles.
Situative leadership
Situative leadership – What does that mean after all? Do we have to decide between being a terrifying monster shouting at any opportunity and being a hail-fellow-well-met softy ruled by anxiety which leads to doing nothing at all? And is carrot and stick really enough to lead employees these days?
Susanne Spath, leadership expert and coach, clearly says no.
For her, effective situative leadership means influencing others in a goal-oriented way. But not in an “I trick you into doing something” kind of way. It’s rather exerting influence in order to make change possible and to have success as an individual and as an organisation. Leadership therewith has a rational as well as an emotional component and consists of words and actions based on intention and logic in the same way as of inspiration and passion.
For Susanne Spath a leader is a person leading the way by inspiring others to follow a certain direction in a certain situation and to move together in the same rhythm.
Video inspiration
The following video from fabulous Peter Sharp may work as an inspiration for you:
Neither as a leadership monster nor as a leadership softy you will succeed in convincing others to dance with you in the same rhythm.
Now you might ask yourself: What shall I do? How do I motivate my employees to “dance with me”?
Bad news first: There isn’t the one and only correct leadership style. Different employees need to be met with different leadership styles in different situations.
But the good news is that it isn’t as hard as it sounds to find the right leadership style. And here’s the real tip: The answer is right in front of you – your employees!
Observe your employees well, discover how they move in your company’s surroundings, find out what bothers them, find out what their strengths and weaknesses are, their intentions, interests and aims. And as a reaction to all of that the right situative leadership style with effective, goal-oriented influencing will appear on its own.
About Susanne Spath
Susanne Spath is trainer, coach and consultant with many years of experience in her core competencies which are communication, leading and developing teams, motivation, change management and situative leadership. Therewith she accompanied customers like Mondi AG, Sandoz GmbH, GoodMills Group GmbH, D. Swarovski KG and Agrana Stärke GmbH.
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