There are dozens of different styles of leadership out there. Some are firm and totalitarian while others are mellow and supportive. Having more than a couple of years of tech leadership under my belt I’ve witnessed and practised more than one myself.
The question that many books, blogs and workshop try to answer is which of these many styles of leadership is the best one and I myself have given it a fair amount of thought.
Generally I believe in team autonomy and that my role as a leader is to support and enable. But recently I found a team that were missing direction and were unhappy with the state of development. I stepped in, stopped the current scrum approach and went into micro-management mode for 2 weeks. I would assign tasks in the morning and request status updates before finishing for the day. Although one might think, that the self-actualisation of the team would suffer under such a leadership style, the team reported to be happier with this (temporary) mode of operation.
This was when I had an epiphany: there might not be one best leadership style, like there is no best architecture that can solve every software problem. It all depends on the current state of the project, the team dynamics, the balance between team happiness and project success and many more dimensions.
My key take aways
- there is no one best leadership style
- as leaders we need to be comfortable to adapt and change our leadership style
- choosing the best leadership for the current situation is hard
- the more leadership styles we know and can apply, the better we can adapt
- when changing leadership seek constant feedback from the team and stakeholders