The New Golden Rule of Leadership

If given a leadership position, anyone can bark orders, make requests and demand results. But not everyone is capable of truly leading others. To lead others is to teach, to inspire and to set an example, says Phil Christensen, chief operations officer at BG Automotive in Fort Collins, Colo. There is not one uniform way to go about leading others—and there shouldn’t be. Much like leadership styles vary, so do learning styles. In order to get the most out of your employees, you need to understand how they best learn, in addition to how you best teach. 

The goal is to find a happy medium, find out how you can best lead your employees in the way that they best learn. The new Golden Rule of leadership is not heavy handedness or a sharp tongue, but rather, versatility and consideration for whom you are leading. Here’s how to go about finding your own leadership style and understanding how to best approach your staff based on their personality. 

Understand Yourself as a Leader  

You can’t understand others without a true understanding of yourself 

David Loy, CEO of Leverage Creative Group, says that he defines a leadership philosophy as the way you make decisions. If you know what guides you and where your boundaries are, it’s easier to make decisions, he explains. Every leader should have an understanding of his or her own style (for more on leadership styles, see “How Do You Lead?”). 

To do this, Loy encourages shop owners to write down answers to a few questions: What do you want your company to accomplish? What is it currently doing? Now, compare the two. How can you get from what you’re actually doing to what you want to happen? The answer may be a change or adaptation of your current leadership style based on how your team works and learns best.  

For more on crafting a personal leadership philosophy, visit Loy’s blog at bit.ly/developaleadershipphilosophy. 

Identify your style. 

Despite working in the same industry, Christensen and Brin Kline, owner of Assured Auto Works in Melbourne, Fla., have different ways of leading their employees. There are many different types of leaders and it’s not a one-size-fits-all approach for success.

Take a look at this list, put together by Indeed, and circle the one that best describes your style. Take it one step further and ask your employees how they would describe you to get a better idea of what your real leadership style is. 

• Coach: Someone who can quickly recognize strengths, weaknesses and motivations to help with improvement. This type of leader helps set goals and provides regular feedback. 
• Visionary: This leader inspires employees and earns trust while fostering confidence. 
• Servant: This person has a people-first mindset and emphasizes employee satisfaction and collaboration. 
• Autocratic/Authoritarian: This leader is focused on results and efficiency. 
• Laissez-faire (hands-off): This is the opposite of autocratic and focuses on delegation and provides little to no supervision. 
• Democratic: This style is a combination of autocratic and laissez-faire. This leader asks for input and considers feedback before making a decision. 
• Pacesetter: This person is focused on performance, sets high standards and holds their team accountable to hitting goals. 
• Transformational: Similar to the coach style, it focuses on clear communication, goal-setting and employee motivation. Instead of focusing on individual goals, this leader is focused on organization objectives. 
• Transactional: This style is focused on performance and establishes incentives. This leader is focused on mentorship, instruction and training to achieve goals. 
• Bureaucratic: Expects team members to follow procedures. Bureaucratic leaders focus on fixed duties where each employee has a set list of responsibilities and there is little need for collaboration and creativity. 

Visit bit.ly/10leadershipstyles to learn more about these different types of styles. 

Understand your strengths and weaknesses.

Christensen describes his leadership style as “approachable.” He says holding people accountable is necessary in any field of work, but as a leader, he is in the unique position to educate as well as enforce. 

A successful leader is someone who is able to motivate their team while staying on target. Christensen says he and his technicians are able to do this through goal-setting and one-on-one conversations.

 “We set goals that are feasible, but also uncomfortable,” he says. 

This drives each of his employees to think beyond their current station while also testing the skills they have acquired.  

Kline, who leads two people (a service advisor and a tech) and produces $400,000 per year has a different style.

“I generally keep an eye on each job, but I try not to intervene too much,” Kline says. 

He prefers to let his technicians forge their own path, only stepping in when he disagrees. 

“If I would do something differently, I’ll ask why they’re doing it that particular way, then tell them how I would go about it, and usually we both learn something,” Kline says. 

For Kline, being an effective leader means giving feedback at crucial junctures. 

“You have to give them the freedom to make the right decisions and let them make a few wrong ones, so they can learn from them,” he says. 

Positive feedback is really important, and Kline’s biggest downfall, he says.

“You have to pay close attention and make sure you’re giving them more positive feedback than negative,” he says. “It’s almost like a bank, you make sure you’re making more deposits than you are withdrawals.”

Leadership styles are formed from the particular leader’s personality and their own learning style. Both Christensen and Kline had to be aware of who they were and how they were motivated before they could truly grasp their leadership style. One way to do this is through a leadership style test. 

Here are a leadership style test links: 

bit.ly/whattypeofleaderareyou

bit.ly/leadershipstyledefined

bit.ly/yourleadershiplegacy

Learn to Lead Your Staff 

The success of your shop depends on your staff—get to know how they’re best led  

Analytics professor Kirk Wakefield says knowing how your students, or in this case, employees, process information is vital in helping them achieve their full potential. Something as simple as an identity assessment could give insight into why they act the way they do. Wakefield has each of his students at Baylor University take a behavioral analysis questionnaire known as the DiSC assessment, and then discuss how this affects their perception of the world.

“The DiSC profile helps them understand who they are and how they may see things differently than others,” Wakefield says. 

Test your staff. 

The method describes the four basic behavioral styles, as well as the preferences and tendencies of those who identify within the types. Originally created in 1956, the DiSC assessment draws from the DiSC theory by psychologist William Moultan Marston’s. The four types are:

(D) Dominance: active, outspoken and questioning 

(i) Influence: active, outgoing and lively

(S) Steadiness: thoughtful, accepting and patient

(C) Conscientiousness: thoughtful and analytical as well as questioning

As with any personality indicator, there is going to be some crossover. Most individuals do not perfectly fit into one style or another, which is not uncommon. By understanding your own behavioral tendencies, you can better gauge how you take in information, interact with others, and more. 

It also gives insight into how your employees best respond to your own teaching style. If they have a high Dominance, then you know to keep the small talk to a minimum, tell them what they need to know and let them get going, he says. If they’re a high Conscientiousness, that means they thrive in a supportive environment and appreciate the chance to work in collaborative environments. 

This isn’t just a tool that can be used at universities; business owners can also use personality tests as a way to work better with their own teams. 

A simple questionnaire assessment of each employee could improve almost every area of a repair shop—from customer service to interpersonal relations to the hierarchy of authority. 

Break down the results. 

Once the findings come back, that information can be used to better lead your staff. Similar to how Wakefield implements the test results with his students, a manager or owner can integrate these findings into their workplace. If there is an employee who seems reluctant to follow instruction, it could be because he or she measures high in Dominance or Conscientiousness and is craving a challenge. Similarly, if an employee who ranks high in Influence or Steadiness appears to be discouraged, he or she could be lacking the reassurance and positive reinforcement he or she needs to excel. 

What sets the DiSC assessment apart from other questionnaires is its judgement of behavior. As individuals, we are often unaware of our own behaviors because they are so inherent. The employee who needs reassurance may not even be aware that this is what he or she misses. Behavioral tendencies are much harder to define for oneself, because you have never known anything different. This is where the DiSC method can assess employees in a manner that would be otherwise inaccessible, Wakefield explains. 

Put the findings to use. 

Wakefield says one of the best parts about behavioral traits is that they are adjustable. With awareness and observation, you can coach yourself to behave differently.

 “I had very high (D) traits, but, through discipline, I was able to overcome them and now I rank highest as an (i),” Wakefield says. “It may not be your nature, but you adapt and learn over time.”

 The same can be said of the workplace. Acknowledging the learning differences between you and your coworkers does not need to have a negative connotation, it is merely an adjustment that will better serve you both in the future (To learn more, check out “Adapt Your Style”). 

Being aware of your own positionality puts you in a position to tailor your teaching methods. Being aware of your employee’s positionality makes those adjustments a reality. The DiSC method is just one way to learn more about how you and your employees work. 

Christensen says each of the employees at BG Automotive goes through a personality evaluation, which it started having all new hires take five years ago. Christensen says they do not use the DiSC method, but rather a test centered entirely around personality, excluding any and all behavioral traits. The test helps them determine who can work side by side with one another. 

“We know what motivates people and how they interact,” Christensen says. “Just knowing that much, puts us one step ahead of the grind.” 

 David Loy, CEO of Leverage Creative Group, explains that good leadership will change based on the situation but the best type is one that works for both you and the team that you surround yourself with. 

“A good [leadership philosophy] is one that you’ve spent a good deal of time thinking about and that you’ve put into practice and has proven itself over time,” Loy says. “People change. Be able and willing to revisit and revise that philosophy.”