Confidence Building In Others Through Leadership Styles

What do you understand by Leadership Styles? How does confidence building affect your leadership skills? To understand different leadership styles, one must first understand who is a leader. Leader is a person whose sole agenda is confidence building in his colleagues, who takes along his people and guides them through the path of personal development. He is a person with great management skills who help others in their goal setting. In addition to these core leadership skills, he has exuberant communication skills, great decision making and time management skills. Main thing is confidence building in your people, if you are able to achieve it, you are just empowering them to take decisions on their own. A leader may do all this, by using different Leadership Styles- which have been discussed in details below.

Operative Kind Of Leadership And Confidence Building Approach

This type of a leader have a different approach towards confidence building in their groups i.e. they excel in one area or function such as sales, marketing, online marketing, technology, product development etc. They develop thorough knowledge about the subject and become experts in it, the area they have opted for themselves. They give respect to details and intensely focused and competent in their area of business or technical expertise. They generally know everything about it, somewhat being close to being “subject matter experts”. They do not believe in risk taking and their every action is well planned and every move they make is well calculated. When they decide on a certain action they stick to what they know best. They rarely see outside their interest zone and they end up seeing things what they want to see. They develop an auto pilot mode and tend to see limited portion of the whole spectrum. Their emphasis as leader is on majorly two things execution excellence and the other strong and concrete expertise. Tim Cook, who is now the CEO of Apple, is the true representation of this kind of leadership style known for his rock solid operational efficiency, who was initially appointed by Steve Jobs as the supply chain head for Apple. In this whole act of confidence building, he was responsible to get every inch of cost out the system and make it extremely efficient.

Pragmatic Leadership Style And Confidence Building Approach

This type of leader is a big thinker and a visionary with great confidence building skills. They are not intimidated by risk and enjoy working in uncertainty, so to say, nothing weighs them down. They always play their game in the danger zone, the zone which is litter with explosive minefields. They give ever – increasing importance to broad and elastic thinking. They are high on self-confidence. Their characteristics drive intensity, vision, risk taking. They are intensely competitive personalities and have a tendency to take decisive actions which comes naturally with a competitive temperament. Steve Jobs, whom I greatly admire, had a flair for this kind of leadership. He was flamboyant and dynamic with a visionary perspective and strategic approach. He had a feel good perspective. He took Apple to the most valuable company in the world. He constantly looked for new innovative markets for his Apple product line. He was always in media and had larger than life personality. His life can be used to chart out a learning plan for yourself. On the top of it, he was great in public speaking which always left his audience mesmerizing.

Comparison Of Leadership Styles And Confidence Building Approaches
While we have looked at both the primary leadership and confidence building styles, I personally feel that Tim Cook has become richer and more experienced person exhibiting traits of both styles of leadership. He has unleashed his potential while truncating all his inhibitions. His actions are more balanced and wiser than what Steve took. Fame and popularity has not blunted his talent and humbleness and in as sense it is truly important and appreciable. I hope his journey under new leadership role driven by balanced and wiser style of leadership will take him many a places.

Both leadership styles represent different productive capabilities, style of working, handling situations, energies, kind of opinion and intelligence. The things which are visible and exhilarating and adventurous to leader Y is in most cases not at all visible to operative leader. In some cases, the leader X even do not even show respect to the actions of leader Y. The vice versa is also true. Infact, most decisions of each style are contrary to each other.

They all stick to their core and inherent strengths

Pragmatic leader would spend more time with investors, focusing on revenue and top – line growth and reaching out to new companies for strategic tie–ups. Whereas leader’s focus is inward, spending time with employees, product developers, and how to effectively cost down costs with aim to improve bottom –line. The truth of the matter is that both the kind of leaders have one thing in common; it is tendency to do things which matches their strength. They all stick to their core and inherent strengths. They frame their expertise and skills based on the perceived strength and temperament they think possess.

So to speak, Each of us, when born, are without any style, but eventually we lean towards a certain style over a period of time mostly due to influence of external conditioning as well our inner impulses and biases. Equally important, we create our own filters and knowingly, unknowingly colour our perspectives. This skewed perspective influences where we focus our development effort and thus be become where we put our efforts.

World Moving To A Philanthropic Style Of Leadership And Confidence Building
Off late many leaders are deliberately and consciously are getting detached from both the above rule of leadership and confidence building. They are discovering a larger sense of purpose in their operating style. They are moving beyond the starry corporate role and seemingly, using their smart, intellect and wealth to contribute to the common good. They make you feel better and their motivational words help you build self confidence and self esteem.

To sum up, they have started seeing the world differently. They have shifted their focus and broadened their perspective while shifting their approach from creating wealth for their business empire to actively solving problem facing communities both at local and global level.

Bill Gates is one of many leaders who have chosen this path. Bill Gates along with his wife Melinda established the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation. He is playing an active role in it while remaining the non executive chairman of Microsoft. This foundation has awarded whopping millions of dollars to scientific research driven organizations, charitable organization across the globe, global institutes who particularly focus on developing effective solutions to combat life consuming diseases. This initiative has given Brand bill gates and Microsoft a great facelift, winning hearts and mind of people across the globe.

This new style of beneficial and authentic leadership believes in zero-sum mindset, shared values, ethics and serving a larger purpose. It is all about taking advantage of the skills and expertise they proudly posses to service greater good through reflection and introspection.

Concluding Tips: – Reader, I have given you much to chew on, do look for patterns and behavior which matches your own style of leadership? Develop a positive thinking. It’s time to awaken the sleeping leader in you and spread the light of your confidence building skills in the world around you.

By Tarun Gupta

Leadership by Example – Natural Way of Influencing People

Leadership by example is the the natural way of influencing people. Is it true? Does it work? Ofcourse it does. This way of leading is far better than the style of force, aggression and compulsion. As an philosopher said “Example is not one of the main things to influence others – it is the only thing”. Alexander the Great, Julius Ceasar, Cicero, Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, all followed the above principle and led from the front.

Unfortunately, history is filled with examples of rulers who exercised leadership and ruled with ruthlessness, immorality and cruelty. Infact take the example of current situation of the Indian government. Corruption and all forms of financial malpractices are prevalent at all levels. Government officials, ministers, politicians are all scrupulously and shamelessly stealing money like well trained thieves from their own people, However, I am more interested in focusing of the immense power of leading by good example.

In past, during ancient times great exemplary leaders in the military never used to use tents during heat or wear extra clothing during winters, they would eat the same food as others, they would always have the same facilities as the other soldiers did. They deliberately experienced the same things as others in order to lead from the front. It is one thing to lead by example and quite different to ask others to follow suit. As Confucius, a great authority in leadership famously said…

To Govern Is To Correct. If You Set An Example By Being Correct, Who Would Dare To Remain Incorrect

As leader just try hard to be good yourself and your team members or employees will be good themselves. The virtue of leader is like wind and the virtue of an individual in the organization is like leaf, let the wind blow over the leaf and it will surely bend in the direction of the wind.

Leaders should always try to create an atmosphere of hope and optimism. Hope is the oxygen for every individual. The leader should have the courage to keep going and not to give up even to others everything looks hopeless. The man who is a true leader in an organization, the man who is in power, be it CEO or Director, who can make the employees work hard, make them eager, raise their spirits, make them committed, make them work with a will and infuse passion for the role is surely the man who grows the venture in a highly profitable way.

Leadership Is A Very Open And Practical Subject
The Uganda proverb in few words describes it well “The best person to teach and talk about leadership is only a leader”. An able leader only teaches to others what he confidently knows by his own personal experience works in practice. While trying to follow the leadership style of leading by example, the principle that need to be adopted is that do not try to lead others in a way that you would dislike and hate being led yourself. One should use himself as a test case to determine how you should behave and act with others. As it will always work in all the possible situations that the things which work for us will also work for other individuals as well. This powerful principle has stood the test of time and has been effectively used over years by various individuals to become highly successful leaders in their respective fields.

With some effort and regular practice you will yourself start getting an idea how someone should act or behave in the position of leadership. To become a good leader in future, try to spend some good quality time under an established leader. Serve under him and get valuable experience. While serving as a subordinate under a leader will not teach you the art and the skill of giving effective orders to others but you will also discover during the process the leadership style which draws the best out of you. By the time you would have finished your role as a mentee and you are ready to take the role as a leader, you would have already learnt what others expect out of you and how to effectively manage their expectations.

Leadership Should Be Done By Leading From The Front
The leader should be exemplary in this demeanor and his conduct. The voice of the leader reaches the heart of the hearer more readily, if the leader’s conduct and actions matches his commitments through words. The leaders should not show the way which he himself is not willing to follow. Words and action should always go hand in hand. Leader – good or bad spreads like fire. It is contagious. The old proverb says “One rotten apple spoils all the other good apples in the basket” also as they say “If the leaders limps others also start limping as well”. Francis Bacon famously quoted “He who gives good examples and good vision builds with both his hands but he who gives good promises and set bad examples builds with one hand and destroys with another”.

I would end by a famous quote by Mahatma Gandhi “You must be the change that you wish to see in the world.”

By Tarun Gupta