Weight Loss Leadership

Why No Leadership Style Works

I cringe when I am on an interview panel, and we get to the question where we ask the candidate what type of leadership style they have. They never get it right. Some will describe themselves as Authoritative. Others might toss out Participative. Yet another might describe themselves as Delegative. The Authoritative can sound a bit like a jerk. They tend to only get hired by another Authoritative. I would have a beer with a Participative, but they sound weak. The Delegative answer cracks me up the most. I always want to ask them why they didn’t delegate their interview to someone else. Those three answers were kind of the old school responses.

The trendy newer responses are usually either Transformational, Transactional, or Servant Leadership. With this group, I like to follow-up and ask them what that means to them. I have heard some disparate and interesting interpretations. Transformational and Transactional can both be hard to pin down, and often seem more like a global approach to work than how to actually lead humans. Servant leadership sounds so nice and pleasant. But those people also come off a bit pretentious, holier than thou. It’s like a humblebrag. I grant that some of them are invested in doing good on the planet. But some of them just got a hold of the buzz word when they were prepping for the interview.

None of that really matters though. Because they are all the wrong answer.

Have you ever been on a diet? Which one? Atkins? Keto? Paleo? Sugar busters? Mediterranean? Or one of the trendier ones lately like the Sirtfood Diet or Intermittent Fasting? Guess what, none of them work. Not all the time. Not for everyone. If any one of those diets was verified, vetted, and validated as perfect, there would be no obesity and the other diets would disappear.

Abraham Lincoln once said, “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.” And yet, diets and leadership styles keep trying to prove him wrong.

We should certainly Delegate sometimes. When there is plenty of time, little risk, and an experienced staff. That’s a great time for it. We have to be Authoritative at times. It’s a crisis, time is short, follow me. Being Participative is fun and has its place too. Brainstorming is a good place to use this tyle. And the Millennials love to be involved in decision-making.

Transformational is an essential style when we are focusing on the future and especially when the organization is looking to make significant changes. Keep that in your toolbox. Transactional works at times, for sure. Consequences. My daughter Ivy will toe the line to protect her allowance. It doesn’t seem to work well on my daughter Chloe. And oh my, the Servant Leaders. It is noble and fulfilling to put the needs of the team first. And the payoffs can be huge. The teams love them. Especially that member of the team who really, truly appreciates that the boss puts the needs of others first, because it is a great playground for manipulators and ne’re do wells.

You read this far. You saw me bash your favorite leadership style. Sorry. Stick with me just a minute longer. They are all wrong for the same reason that the diets are all wrong – because they are all right, they all work, when used at the right time, for the right reason, with the right people.

There is a corollary to this misguided protection of one leadership style label, which is the misplaced notion that consistency is a good thing. Ralph Waldo Emerson got it right in the middle of the 19th century when he said, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. One consistent leadership style is fallacy. The unsound argument in favor of any one style misses the foundational truth that the people who are being led all need different things, not the same. This one needs to be jump-started. That one needs an understanding ear. This one needs the steps outlined for them, whereas that other one just needs to know the end goal.

If I was on the other side of the interview table, my response would be “I am inspired by Servant and Transformational leadership because I believe in the good of people and I am motivated by opportunities to improve the organization, BUT as far as my style, all of them are in my arsenal and I have used each frequently. Would you like an example?”

And as for the diets, I used to say that I have never been on one. But since I seldom eat breakfast or lunch over the last forty years, I have learned that I have been doing Intermittent Fasting long before it was cool. I also like the idea that when you go to the supermarket, try to stay around the outside (fruits, vegetables, meat, fish, et al) and avoid the aisles, a version of the Paleo, I guess. And I am pretty good at it. But nobody is going to keep me away from my Skippy Crunchy Peanut Butter. I don’t care what their leadership style is.

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