MC48 Developing your leadership style

Many leadership journeys start with a natural career progression: we get promoted to manager and leadership is viewed as just another work task. Over time this evolves into a broader understanding. It's a challenging job. We will get tested in all sorts of ways. And it can be an opportunity to learn so much about ourselves, to grow as a person and build invaluable skills.

But we all have to start from somewhere. And the way we manage is heavily influenced, even constrained, by the culture and expectations of our organisation. When we change organisations we often have to adapt the way that we lead.

So in all this complexity how do we develop our own leadership style?

00:00 min Pilar's leadership journey began at a very young age but has evolved a lot in later years as she wrestled with the tension of getting her way versus bringing everyone along together.

5:00 Tim wonders what his experience of leadership would have been like if he had known it was going to be a journey and an opportunity for personal growth.

6:20 Our level of skill as a leader is linked to our level of self awareness. We should always be working on our own leadership practice at the same time as we are working towards our team goals.

8:00 Leadership provides us with a unique opportunity to learn about ourself and others.

9:30 Should organisations have an homogenous style of leadership? It can be hard to develop our own style when so much of how we act is defined by the conditions of our organisation.

15:25 New managers are more likely to role model the behaviour they see in other managers.

16:30 Michael Lopp's "blue tape" approach to starting a new job.

19:00 We discuss a structured way to develop leaders through different learning phases. Noticing something that they want to act on, thinking through the outcome they want and how they will approach it, taking those actions and then afterwards to reflect on how it went.

What about you, dear listener? Have you found a style of leadership that works for you? How did you come to it? We'd love to hear about your experiences!

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