Hey everyone, it's Lorenzo and welcome to two Minute Tips on Hacking Leadership podcast.
Today's two minute Tip has brought to you by David Hammett. David is
the founder's CEO of Innovation for Entrepreneurship at Barnet Management School. As always,
checked the episode notes for links to his LinkedIn page. My name is David
Hammett and you're listening to Hacking your Leaderships two Minute Tips today. I want
to talk to you about adaptive leadership styles, which means changing your management and
leadership styles adapt to what each of your team members, customers, or stakeholders
needs. One of the first things I try to teach the new leaders and
my team is that their leadership style can't be static. Leader's job is ultimately
to motivate, influence, enable their team members to be able to progress against
their goals and their work, and your role as a leader is to help
others get things done. I'll give you an example of this. I recently
had one of my leaders approached me and tell me about a situation that he
handled in a way that I thought was magnificent. He mentioned that he had
a team member who was really having a tough time getting things done. He
had given him a number of tasks, giving him a deadline, and when
he came back, none of them were done. Now, this teammate has
been going through some personal situations that have been difficult and his mental state wasn't
all that great, and this leader decided that instead of giving the feedback directly,
he would ask one of his team members co workers to give that feedback.
He brought in somebody he trusted, explained the situation and said, look,
I need you to give his feedback because if I give it, it
might be too much coming from his boss. But if you give it as
a co worker, he might be able to take it better. And that's
what they did. The situation resulted in the person really improving their work and
starting to deliver again, and it didn't cause them unnecessary mental anxiety. And
that's exactly what adaptive leadership is all about. It's about being careful to understand
what the people you work with need right, what are their psychological needs,
how they need to be told things. Is it difficult for them to deal
with certain management styles? And if it is, you need to adapt your
own management style so that that teammate, that customer or that other leader in
your organization can move forward and get their own work done.