How do you manage people at work? How do you prefer to be managed? Are you a visionary who operates independently, or a team-centric peer? You may have heard these questions floating around before in vacancy descriptions during your job search, but what do they really mean?
Whether you are the one who makes things happen, the bureaucrat, the trouble shooter or the ‘people person’, you can be a leader. It is therefore crucial to identify your work personality type to understand how you can reach your full potential to best fit in a team. In essence, your people management style reflects how you think and perceive things.
Intrigued to discover your people management and leadership style? Follow these five simple rules to help you find yours.
Recognise how you can make an impact
How do you see yourself as a manager? Or do you simply not know? While it’s important to know your peers, it’s also essential to understand yourself and show a strong sense of self-awareness. Understanding your own leadership skills and working style will allow you to communicate more effectively with your colleagues.
By recognising your strengths and weaknesses in the workplace, you will be able to form your approach to leadership more easily. Understanding your role and impact on a team can uncover blind spots that you didn’t know about previously. Download this Interview Toolkit for more tips.
Work collaboratively with your peers
The ability to identify someone else’s leadership qualities is as imperative as understanding your own. Recognising and understanding a peer’s working style – or working personality – allows you to be constructive and adaptive. The ability to adapt to different scenarios and change your approach when speaking to different colleagues, across different business units (like those involved in telecommunications jobs or public sector jobs) is a vital skill in good people management and ensuring a collaborative environment.
Motivate and inspire others
Find out which of your attributes motivates and inspires your peers. But try not to fall into the comparison trap, as this can lead to alterations in your unique management style. After all, management tactics that are successful for one person, may not be as fruitful for another – so it’s not a simple case of emulating behaviours. To truly improve your people management skills, recognise your habits and mannerisms and understand how these can affect your team.
Embrace new situations and challenges
Knowing how you prefer to work and manage doesn’t mean becoming stuck in these traits. Complacency can stall your career progression and, at times, may push you back, so it’s necessary to place yourself in challenging situations to improve your ability to solve problems. While these situations may feel uncomfortable at first, they will give your role variety and will ultimately lead to strategic thinking in times of stress or adversity. Pushing yourself in this way will develop your critical thinking and creativity when faced with future unfamiliar tasks – all critical leadership qualities of a desirable employee.
Become indispensable in the workplace
When someone says ‘manage up’ what they really mean is ‘stretch yourself’ and don’t be afraid to push your manager to deliver the support you need to get your job done. It means adding value to your work and becoming an effective member of the team. Anticipate your manager’s needs and find ways to enhance and make their workload easier to handle. These actions will help you position yourself as in control and ultimately, as an indispensable employee in the workplace.
All of these rules are easy to follow and they have one thing in common – and that is you. After assessing these approaches, you can hopefully see the full impact of being aware of yourself and your surroundings. And if you forget them, just remember one thing: as a whole, there is no ideal leadership style. Authentic leaders are the most successful in building a rapport with their team members that’s based on trust and respect. You may be working in public sector jobs, telecommunications jobs or roles in retail, but the same five rules apply.
So, what is your leadership style? Find out by taking our Work Better Together Quiz.
