Forward-thinking executives and business leaders evaluate employees and clients to better understand work styles and personality types. Sales trainers try to understand the types of buyers their salespeople are talking to and how those buyers will make purchasing decisions. Marketers try to understand the personality types their companies can reach out to and how those personalities will receive a message. Understanding the types of people one works with is important knowledge, especially for executives. Peter F. Drucker put forth a simple and basic mission for executives: get the right things done. Knowing what motivates clients and employees makes it possible to know what those right things might be. Being an effective leader is what makes it possible to know how to get those right things done. Successful executives look at their leadership styles and examine how those styles impact the ability to get the right things done. Depending on what needs to be done and who needs to take action, an executive’s leadership style could be quite different from moment to moment. If an organization is preparing to launch a new service offering to its client base, a good leader would make sure the offering is crafted correctly and talked about effectively. If that same executive is taking a group of salespeople to a trade show in order to attract new clients, then he or she would need to cheer on the team as it tries to win against competitors for the orders of clients. In the normal day-to-day course of business, executives tend to default to their most comfortable or most natural personal style. What sort of executive are you?
The General
The General likes organizational discipline and a rigid and sensible approach to managing the workforce, defining missions and conquering objectives. He or she likes to spend time strategizing, studying the competitors and the surrounding business environment for signs of weakness or opportunity. The General sees business as war, the competitors as enemies and employees as troops. This may seem like an antiquated idea in an era where war is no longer one nation versus another, but there are many important aspects of the General persona that can help executives. Sun Tzu’s advice in “The Art of War” is still often used by business strategists. Carl von Clausewitz’s “Principles of War” is still a best seller. An executive who understands organizational discipline, cohesive and consistent training processes, supply-line management, contingency planning and the collection of intelligence is going to be successful. Doesn’t every business leader want to plant their flag on the enemy’s hill? The downfall to the General is that there is no experimentation, innovation or discussion allowed. If a change or initiative is to take shape, it must come from the top down.
The Tribal Chief
The Tribal Chief is not just a political or military leader as the General is, but also is a leader in culture, lifestyle and belief systems. A tribe does not just have to be an extended family group, but it often feels like one. A Tribal Chief usually is intertwined with legend. There are some great examples in American history of how impactful tribal leaders can be. Think of Tecumseh of the Shawnee. He quickly inspired a large number of people to move with great intensity toward a common goal. Look at some of the modern tribes in present-day American popular culture: Jerry Garcia and his friends in the Grateful Dead created a tribe that followed them around the world supporting their jam philosophy. George Clinton of the Funkadelics still leads a tribe of funk fans who support his idea of outrageous enjoyment. Steve Jobs became a Tribal Chief of Apple product devotees. Wouldn’t every business executive want to lead a company with a following such as Apple’s? The difficulty with being a Tribal Chief is that chiefs fall out of fashion and tribal members often leave to follow other interests. Tribes can break up as easily as they form.
The Sports Coach
Whether you are a sports fan or not, you have seen one coach or another become the figurehead and leader of a school or a city. The idea of gathering your team for a quick tactical review huddle before putting them back out on the field where they make the big play in the last seconds of the game is very appealing. The hard fact about coaching is that for every second of point-scoring exhilaration, there are hours and hours of recruiting, training, practice, study, research, discussion, preparation and anxiety. Sports and business do share some commonalities. Recruiting, training, researching, preparing and anxiety are some of them. A Sports Coach knows that their business is all about the fun and the thrill of victory, but they also understand clearly how that all relates to cash flow and asset appreciation. A Sports Coach can fall short when people in the organization do not relate to sports analogies or are not driven by team competition.
The Spoiled Brat
Sometimes a boss always wants to get his or her own way. There are some executives who are not interested in the talent their people bring, but only in production. These types of executives usually like to bark orders and berate people who don’t complete tasks exactly the way the executive wants them done. There are times the Spoiled Brat will have a temper tantrum or suddenly change his or her mind about a task just to throw people off balance. There are times the Spoiled Brat will confuse himself or herself with the General. But the General will hold composure and keep the battle plan in mind even under pressure. When under pressure, the Spoiled Brat overreacts and lashes out until someone offers a pacifier. The advantage the Spoiled Brat has is that people do react quickly and try to make this type of executive happy in order to avoid those tantrums. The downside of the Spoiled Brat is just that: a spoiled brat. There are many personas one could imagine to describe your default executive style. The key to being an effective executive is to know the strengths and weaknesses of your default style and then to adopt a different persona as circumstances require. You may need to be the strategizing General today while you prepare for a long-range planning retreat with your board and tomorrow you might need to be the Sports Coach cheering for your company at a meeting of mid-level managers. Which persona is going to get the right things done in which set of circumstances? That is the executive you should be.
