Module VII: LEADERSHIP TRAINING

Source: https://www.scienceofpeople.com/leadership-training/#what-is-leadership-training

Leadership training is crucial for any management role. Whether you have a large team or just got your
first hire, leadership training can help you be the best possible leader. A strong foundation of leadership
training will help you effectively direct your team towards success. This is a key part of reaching your
goals.

What is leadership training?

Leadership and management training courses are specialized programs designed to help you learn new
leadership techniques and refine old skills to run your team, including assertive communication,
motivation methods, and coaching. Leadership training is ideal for anyone in a supervisory role, from
people who have just stepped up to a new position to more experienced managers who want to keep on
top of their game.
As a leader, you are the driving force of your team. You are the person who will push your team to
reach their full potential, bring out the best of each individual, and achieve your career goals.
Learning Core Leadership Practices
Before you master anything else in your leadership classes, you will first need to tackle the basics. The
basics to leadership training are about establishing what your purpose is as a leader and the mindset
you need to be cultivating in yourself and your team.
These core leadership practices include:
 Being a role model
 Making an impact
 Focusing on following a vision
 Encouraging collaboration
 Being positive

Identify Your Leadership Style

Think of the best leader you have ever met – perhaps a colleague, your first boss, maybe even a high
school teacher. What type of leader were they? How did people see them? Did they manage the team in
a task-focussed way or were they more people focussed and ambitious to putting power into the hands
of the individual to take responsibility of tasks themselves?
A good leadership training will help you identify your leadership style. Not all leaders are the same … nor
should they be!
What type of leader are you? What type of leader do you want to be?
When you are in a leadership position, it’s important to assess your own leadership style.
There are three basic leadership styles.
1. Autocratic leaders are clear in their expectations, tell employees exactly how they want a job
done, and make decisions on their own.
2. Delegative leaders are the opposite and instead of micromanaging they allow the group to make
their own decisions.
3. Participative leaders are a mix of the other two styles and provide direction while also taking
feedback from their team.
Most people want to be a good manager, but all three leadership styles have advantages and
disadvantages. For example, autocratic leaders are fantastic when disaster strikes and a problem needs
solving urgently but they don’t foster the same morale and sense of unity as a democrative leader.
On the other hand, democrative leaders might build a wonderfully close team but find that some of their
employees struggle to take full responsibility and initiative in their work.
You might already have some idea of your leadership style (knowing your personality type might give
you a hint) but a strong leadership course will go into these subjects in more detail, perhaps breaking
each leadership type into further subtypes.
Knowing your leadership style is important when you are managing people and projects to give you a
better understanding of your own strengths and weaknesses, and learning how to use your leadership
style to your advantage.
How to Delegate
Leaders face one big problem: They want to do it all.
But you simply can’t do it all! One of the hardest things to do as a leader, particularly if you’re a
perfectionist, is to delegate (and sometimes negotiate) tasks. You might feel that doing all of the work
yourself is the best way to get results. However, as a leader you will have to distribute the workload
among your team.
General steps to delegate tasks:
 Define the task at hand
 Make sure it is SMART (specific, measurable, agreed, realistic, timebound, ethical recorded)
 Identify the best team or team member for the job
 Communicate why they have been selected
 Explain the goal to be achieved
 Discuss how the task should or could be executed
 Agree a deadline
 Keep communication open through the duration of the task
 Provide feedback after completion
Motivating a Team
‘Thank you!’ It’s just two words, but don’t underestimate how much it does for you and your team. Being
openly grateful for your teams work by thanking them leads to you been viewed as a warmer person
which means people will be more interested in communicating with you and building a relationship.
Studies suggest that positively motivating a team is a great way to improve an employees effectiveness
and efficiency.
What drives motivation?
 The freedom to make decisions
 Having realistic goals
 Being recognised for achievements
 Recognizing progress on your team
 Differences in gender at the work and advice for leading women
These are the fundamentals to keeping your team members motivated. When employees are positively
motivated, it improves both their effectiveness and efficiency which leads to huge improvements in
achieving organizational goals. It’s a win-win for everyone, because everyone wants to be happy at
work.
Make Good Decisions
Decision making is one of the most important skills you can learn as a leader. Just as we all have a
personality type, we also have decision making types. Some people will excel in one particular type of
decision making, while others will be a combination of these different methods.
a) Analytic decision making. Analytic decision makers are all about carefully examining the
information in front of them before making their decision. They rely on facts, data, and observing
the situation to support the action they choose.
b) Behavioural decision making. Behavioral decision-makers like to make sure everyone is working
together and making group orientated choices and will offer decisions to their team before
deciding on the best course of action.
 c) Conceptual decision making. Conceptual decision makers are more social in their methods than
either directive or analytic types, and integrate more creative thinking and collaboration from a
team of people. They tend to base their decisions on many different perspectives and will think
further into the future when making a decision.
d) Directive decision making. Directive decision makers are rational and direct. They base their
decisions from their own knowledge, and tend to make lightning fast decisions, though rarely
view the situation from a perspective.
Once you’ve worked out your decision making style, you can purposely take some of the best attributes
from the other approaches to making decisions and applying them to the situation where they best fit.
Managing Conflict
Managing conflict might be one of the tougher leadership training topics – the trick is to keep calm and
communicate. But it’s one of those skills that are usually easier in theory than they are in practise.
Some techniques on a good management include:
 Confronting the situation
 Collaborating to problem solve
 The formal complaints process
 Understanding why conflict arises
 Handling narcissistic personalities at work
 Managing stress and emotions
 And the worst one…What to do when your boss is in a bad mood
It’s better for everyone to tackle conflict when it arises, and quickly resettle the team.
Performance Management
Performance management is the process of creating an environment at work that allows people to
perform their best and aligned with the company’s objectives. As a manager, it’s your responsibility to
make sure your team are performing. It is a continuous cycle of setting goals, planning how to achieve
those goals, reviewing the progress, and further developing the team’s skills, to include:
 Conducting annual appraisals
 Giving feedback
 Empowering employees
 Using performance management tools
 Using Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
 Implementing personal development plans
Learning these techniques in leadership will give you the knowledge to successfully monitor, analyse,
and progress with your team’s performance.
Digital Leadership Skills
Every organization will need to embrace new technologies if they want to flourish. And, those with the
most capable digital-ready leaders will continue to stay ahead of the curve.
We’re in the digital age. We have artificial intelligence making decisions in our home, robots to clean
homes, and more computing power in our mobile phones than the computers used in the rockets that
landed men on the moon and technology is fast changing.

The Top 10 Types of Leadership Styles

‘Leadership is not a position or a title, it is action and example’ — Unknown
Source: https://www.activecampaign.com/blog/types-of-leadership

Being a leader doesn’t always mean you’re the official head of a company or of a team. You can
be a leader in smaller ways, like when you: lead a project, take the lead in a meeting, present
a new idea, etc. Whatever leadership situation you’re in, know how you want to lead – and how
others need you to lead.
1. Autocratic. “My way or the highway.” Autocratic leadership (sometimes called
authoritarian) is an aggressive leadership style that’s based on control. This style of strong-
willed leadership only leaves room for one person in charge. A person with an autocratic
leadership style expects promptness and perfection from the people around them.
These are things you don’t see much of in an autocratic-led environment:
 Creativity
 Multiple opinions
 Fluid change in routine
 Open forum for feedback
An autocratic leadership style is not meant to be flexible. It enforces a strict, obedient
environment, which is why it works well in situations that benefit from a lot of control. Examples
include manufacturing, military
The ability to make decisive, crucial calls is the key trait of an autocratic leader. Autocratic
leaders aren’t always well liked, but sometimes an autocratic leader is what the job requires.
Some call an autocratic approach to leadership dictatorial or controlling, but a little bit of this
type of leadership can be an asset when you use it well.
2. Democratic. Democratic leadership is a participative style of leading that involves a team of
people who collaborate with a leader to make critical decisions. This type of leadership style is
very different from autocratic leadership – because with a democratic approach you DO get
these things:
 Creativity
 Multiple opinions
 Fluid change in routine
 Open forum for feedback
Democratic leadership gives you a range of ideas to choose from, and a team to consult when
making your decision. A democratic approach to leadership is definitely one of the better-liked
types of leadership in business.
3. Laissez-faire. Don’t like to micro-manage people? Laissez-faire leadership takes the
opposite approach. This type of leadership is a hands-off style, where delegating tasks is a
regular occurrence.
The literal meaning of the French word laissez-faire is ‘let them do’ which can be translated as
‘let it be’ in English.
As a laissez-faire leader knows what’s going but is not directly involved
 Trusts others
 Monitors performance
 Gives regular feedback
A laissez-faire leader lets people work how they need to, with little to no interference.
Leaders who use this style often lead people who are skilled enough to not need constant
supervision – which leaves the door open for creative ideas and new ways of doing things.
The one downside to a completely laissez-faire environment is that it can lack the structure that
other leadership styles offer. Some business situations have hard deadlines and demanding
quality standards that don’t match well to laissez-faire leadership.
Of course, you still have to be a leader. If you are this type of leader, make sure you still monitor
your team’s overall performance to note any problems that may arise.
Laissez-faire management avoids gate-like inspections in favor of speed, but monitoring helps
keep the manager aware of the progress of work.
4. Coaching. A coaching style of leadership is a bit of a cross between democratic and laissez-
fare leadership styles. Coaching leadership helps prepare people for the future by building long-
term strengths.
Much like the coach of a sports team, a coach-style leader can quickly identify the strengths,
weaknesses, and motivations of each team member. A coach then helps people set the best
goals to work towards, and gives them the regular feedback they need to be successful.
 A good coaching leader is able to:
 Train people effectively
 Deal with performance problems
 Improve individual performance skills
Identify new skills someone can develop that a coaching style is a significant time investment
because it:
 Takes longer to identify areas of improvement
 Work together to find the best approach
 Execute those plans
Plus, it can take more time to see the results of your efforts.
5. Transformational. Transformational leadership is a style that’s all about big vision thinking
and intellectual stimulation to create a thriving, openly communicative work culture.
Transformational leaders: have an eye for the big-picture
 Are charismatic
 Motivate those they lead
A transformational leader is common in big business, where the CEO is a visionary with a large
audience – an audience that’s receptive to innovative thinking. Transformational leaders go over
well in tech companies but can exist across multiple industries. The one thing to note about a
transformational leader is that day-to-day details are not their priority. Transformational leaders
need dedicated managers to delegate these types of tasks.
Being a transformational leader requires you to: Set challenging goals with strict deadlines and
Work in unison with a team to get them done
10 C’s a leader (all of which can be used in a transformational leadership style)
 Curiosity
 Creative
 Communicate
 Character
 Courage
 Conviction
 Charisma
 Competence
 Common sense
 Crisis
6. Charismatic. A charismatic leader automatically or intelligently attracts people just by being
their own charming selves. These types of people are: Confident, Self-starters, Passionate
about what they do.
The success or failure of a business heavily relies on the leader with the charismatic approach.
It’s seen as more of a one-man show than a collaborative team effort.
7. Bureaucratic. The Cambridge dictionary defines the word bureaucratic as “a system for
controlling or managing a country, company, or organization that is operated by a large number
of officials employed to follow the rules carefully.”
In a business, a bureaucratic leader uses strict rules for employee management and decision-
making. You can use bureaucratic leadership most often in administrative environments, where
strict rule-following and a defined hierarchy are important.
8. Visionary. Visionary leaders are motivated by what a business can become. They are not
preoccupied with technical details: they focus on big-picture, innovative thinking.
Leaders who execute this style are tasked with moving the company into a broader direction, as
they promote unity and the tenacity to push through times of uncertainty.
Most great and successful leaders have some sort of vision for where they are going. However,
some have more vision than others. Outstanding visionary leaders always transform their
visions into realities.
9. Pacesetter. The pacesetter is one of the most effective types of leadership if you need fast
results. These leaders set very high standards, with a focus on performance. They hold their
team members accountable for hitting their goals.
Although it can be a motivational leadership style when in a fast-paced environment, it doesn’t
give much space (or time) for feedback between leaders and team members.
Pacesetter leaders expect: Excellence, Self-direction, Quick results from an extremely
competent team
This kind of motivating style isn’t necessarily a bad tactic. But if you overdo it, a pacesetter
leadership style can undercut morale and make people feel like they’re failing. Use it wisely.
The best leaders often use more than one type of leadership.
10. Servant. A servant style of leadership is when someone works with a people-first mindset.
A servant leader believes that team members produce their best work when they feel both
professionally and personally satisfied.
Because of their focus on employee satisfaction, they tend to achieve higher levels of respect.
This type of leader is the kind of person to have regular one-on-one meetings to hear struggles,
concerns, or new ideas.
Servant leaders are focused on helping their teams play to their own strengths. Verne Harnesh,
in his book Scaling Up, describes the role of a great manager:
“The best managers are less concerned about motivating their people and more concerned
about NOT demotivating them. They consider it their job to prevent the hassles that block their
team’s performance…On the process side, do your people have the appropriate tools and
resources they need to get the job accomplished? Are there lame policies and procedures
frustrating your team?”
Any business can adopt this kind of leadership — it’s a great leadership style to boost morale
and make people care about their work.

Conclusion: What’s the difference between traits and styles of leadership?

Traits are the qualities that make you who you are. Styles of leadership are how you show those
traits. More specifically, Leadership traits are the individual characteristics that create a specific
leadership style. To be adaptable across types of leadership styles, the traits that every leader
needs are things like: Self-confidence, Ambition
High energy, Effective communication skills, An ability to motivate others, Strong multitasking
skills. Leadership styles (like the ones discussed above) are the ways leaders use their
respective traits.

CHARACTERISTICS OF A GOOD LEADER

Source: https://www.ccl.org/articles/leading-effectively-articles/characteristics-good-leader/

Leaders shape our nations, communities, and organizations. We need good leaders to help
guide us and make the essential large-scale decisions that keep the world moving.
Integrity
The importance of integrity should be obvious. Though it may not necessarily be a metric in
employee evaluations, integrity is an essential leadership trait for the individual and the
organization. It’s especially important for top-level executives who are charting the
organization’s course and making countless other significant decisions.
Ability to Delegate
Delegating is one of the core responsibilities of a leader, but it can be tricky to delegate
effectively. The goal isn’t just to free yourself up — it’s also to enable your direct reports to
grow, facilitate teamwork, provide autonomy, and
lead to better decision-making. The best leaders
build trust with employees in order to delegate more
effectively.

Effective leadership and effective communication are

intertwined. The best leaders are skilled
communicators who are able to communicate in a
variety of ways, from transmitting information to
inspiring others to coaching direct reports. And you
must be able to listen to, and communicate with, a
wide range of people across roles, geographies,
social identities, and more. The quality and
effectiveness of communication among leaders across your organization directly affects the
success of your business strategy, too. Learn how effective communication and better conver-
sations can actually improve your organizational culture.

Self-Awareness
While this is a more inwardly focused trait, self-awareness and humility are paramount for
leadership. The better you understand yourself and recognize your own strengths and
weaknesses, the more effective you can be as a leader. Do you know how other people view
you or how you show up at work?
KEY AREAS FOR SELF-AWARENESS
Human beings are complex and diverse. To become more self-aware, we should develop an
understanding of ourselves in many areas. Key areas for self-awareness include our
a) personality traits, b) personal values, c) habits, d) emotions, and the e) psychological needs
that drive our behaviors.
Personality. We don't normally change our personalities, values and needs based on what we
learn about ourselves. But, an understanding of our personalities can help us find situations in
which we will thrive, and help us avoid situations in which we will experience too much stress.
For instance, if you are a highly introverted person, you are likely to experience more stress in a
sales position than a highly extroverted person would. So, if you are highly introverted, you
should either learn skills to cope with the demands of a sales position that requires extravert-
type behavior patterns, or you should find a position that is more compatible with your
personality. Awareness of your personality helps you analyze such a decision.
Values. It's important that we each know and focus on our personal values. For instance, if
your first priority is "being there for your children" or "your relationship with God," it's very easy
to lose sight of those priorities on a day-to-day, moment-by-moment basis. During the workday,
so many problems and opportunities arise that our lists of "things to do" can easily exceed the
time we have to do them. Since few (if any) of those things pertain to what we value most, it's
easy to spend too much time on lower priority activities. When we focus on our values, we are
more likely to accomplish what we consider most important.
Habits. Our habits are the behaviors that we repeat routinely and often automatically.
Although we would like to possess the habits that help us interact effectively with and manage
others, we can probably all identify at least one of our habits that decreases our effectiveness.
For example, if you are a manager who never consults your staff before making decisions, that
habit may interfere with your ability to build your staff members' commitment to the decisions
and their decision-making skills as well.
Needs. Maslow and other scholars have identified a variety of psychological needs that drive
our behaviors such as needs for esteem, affection, belongingness, achievement, self-
actualization, power and control. One of the advantages of knowing which needs exert the
strongest influence on our own behaviors is the ability to understand how they affect our
interpersonal relationships. For instance, most of us have probably known people who have a
high need for status. They're attracted to high status occupations, and they seek high status
positions within their organizations. Such people also want the things that symbolize their
status. They insist that they be shown respect, and they want privileges and perks that people
of lower status can't have. Sometimes these people fight for things that others see as
inconsequential--like a bigger office. Needs cause motivation; and when needs aren't satisfied,
they can cause frustration, conflict and stress.

Emotions. Emotional self-awareness has become a hot topic of discussion recently because
it's one of the five facets of emotional intelligence. Understanding your own feelings, what
causes them, and how they impact your thoughts and actions is emotional self-awareness. If
you were once excited about your job but not excited now, can you get excited again? To
answer that question, it helps to understand the internal processes associated with getting
excited. That sounds simpler than it is. Here's an analogy: I think I know how my car starts--I
put gas in the tank, put the key in the ignition, and turn the key. But, my mechanic knows a lot
more about what's involved in getting my car started than I do--he knows what happens under
the hood. My mechanic is able to start my car on the occasions when I'm not because he
understands the internal processes. Similarly, a person with high emotional self-awareness
understands the internal process associated with emotional experiences and, therefore, has
greater control over them.
Gratitude
Being thankful can lead to higher self-esteem, reduced depression and anxiety, and better
sleep. Gratitude can even make you a better leader. Yet few people regularly say “thank you” in
work settings, even though most people say they’d be willing to work harder for an appreciative
boss. The best leaders know how to demonstrate sincere gratitude in the workplace.

Learning Agility
Learning agility is the ability to know what to do when you don’t know what to do. If you’re a
“quick study” or are able to excel in unfamiliar circumstances, you might already be learning
agile. But anybody can foster learning agility through practice, experience, and effort.
Influence
For some people, “influence” feels like a dirty word. But being able to convince people through
logical, emotional, or cooperative appeals is an important trait of inspiring, effective leaders.
Influence is quite different from manipulation, and it needs to be done authentically and
transparently. It requires emotional intelligence and trust.
Empathy
Empathy is correlated with job performance and is a critical part of emotional intelligence and
leadership effectiveness. If you show more inclusive leadership and empathetic behaviors
towards your direct reports, our research shows you’re more likely to be viewed as a better
performer by your boss. Plus, empathy and inclusion are imperatives for improving workplace
conditions for those around you.

Courage
It can be hard to speak up at work, whether you want to voice a new idea, provide feedback to a
direct report, or flag a concern for someone above you. That’s part of the reason courage is a
key trait of good leaders. Rather than avoiding problems or allowing conflicts to fester, courage
enables leaders to step up and move things in the right direction. A workplace with high levels
of psychological safety and a strong coaching culture will further support truth and courage.

Respect
Treating people with respect on a daily basis is one of the most important things a leader can
do. It will ease tensions and conflict, create trust, and improve effectiveness. Respect is about
more than the absence of disrespect, and it can be shown in many different ways. Explore how
you can cultivate a climate of respect at work or learn more about ways that you can become an
ally to others.

Putting It All Together: The Characteristics of a Good Leader

While successful leaders may exhibit these 10 leadership qualities to varying degrees, all good
leaders leverage at least some of these characteristics. Together, they make up the backbone
of strong leadership across organizations, industries, and continents. Without these qualities,
true leadership is impossible.
If you fear that you lack some of these characteristics of a good leader, don’t panic — there are
ways for you to improve on your leadership capabilities, including all 10 of these core traits. In
other words, you can strengthen any of these 10 characteristics of a good leader if you’re open
to growth and you put in the time and effort towards self-improvement. Similarly, organizations
can help their people hone these leadership qualities through development and real-world
experiences.
It’s also essential to realize that leadership is a social process. It’s less about a strong or
charismatic individual, and more about a group of people working collectively to achieve results
together. If you demonstrate several of the characteristics of a good leader but fail to grasp this,
chances are you won’t get very far on your own. You may be well-liked and respected, but it will
be challenging to accomplish team or organizational goals.

STUDENT’S TASKS. Answer the following questions to the best you can.
1. Given the chance to become a leader of a group to work on a special project, what do you
think a kind of leader you are? Why?
2. Other than saying ‘thank you’ to the group you lead, what else or other ways can you
motivate or move them to work? Answer substantially.
3. What use can the fast changing technology offer to an individual with potentials to lead to
acquire a digital leadership skills?
4. Choose 5 types of leadership styles, rank them 1 – 5 with 5 as the best. What is you reason
why or how did you arrive to that decision?
5. Which of the 10 characteristics you think would be enough to be possessed by a good
leader? Please tell why.