Become A Successful Leader (7) - Leadership Style And Influencing

A good leader should be capable of influencing others and inducing resonance within the group. Additionally, leadership style would be an essential factor in the power of influence. Therefore, I will introduce the different leadership styles and how we develop our influence.

Table of Contents

7 Leadership Styles

Many successful leaders worldwide, but how do we differentiate these leaders? Among these leaders, we could summarize the leadership into seven different styles, Opportunist, Diplomat, Expert, Achiever, Individualist, Strategist, and Alchemist.

Opportunist always wants to win in any competition. An opportunist thinks to compete with others, so an opportunist is good in emergencies or sales.
Diplomats would avoid conflicts and try to compromise to fit into the group. Usually, diplomats are easy to get along with, but we cannot let them make unpopular decisions or tell unpleasant truths.
Experts are good at using data and excellent logic to make decisions with significant contributions to the team; however, they have weak emotional intelligence.
Achievers could get everything done on time and encourage others by example, but they are unwilling to try new things. Accomplishing goals is the achievers’ highest priority.
Individualists like to ignore rules and do what they feel is right. The strength of individualists is very creative and productive, but it is difficult for them to work in a team.
Strategists spend more time planning and being inclusive to be successful, so they can effectively bring in transformations. The weakness of strategists is that they cannot solve any emergent problems.
Alchemists can generate tremendous social changes and care most about the greater good; however, they are rare species in a group.

These are the seven leadership styles and if we are talking about the leaders in the industry world, Opportunist, Diplomat and Expert might have tough career path, and their performance would below average due to lack of accomplishment. Achievers are the people with average performance becuase they can finish the assigned tasks. To be sucessful, Individualist, Strategist and Alchemist could have a consistenet capacity to innovate and transform the team and the organization.

6 Influencing Styles

In addition, there are six influencing styles: Asserter, Expert, Politician, Preparer, Presenter, and Client-Centric. In other words, these are the tools for a good leader to implement leadership.

Asserters are confident in what they want, forceful, persistent, full of energy, straightforward, and resourceful.
Experts have strong technical/communication skill and objectivity to lead group.
Politicians always know who the important people are, so they spend a lot of time meeting new people with power and talking to people because of their support.
Preparers always do all the homework to consider any possibilities and never run into any surprises.
Presenters can let everyone in the audience believe that anything they present sounds great with elegant words and great arguments.
Client-Centrics are great listener to understand other’s problem and build up a great relationship with them. Usually client-centric cares about everyone in the audience.

Conclusion

In previous blog, I have introduced different personality with different communication style to individual or a group, and a leader would communicate with people and influence the group to lead the group to the sucess. Here, I present 7 leadership styles and 6 influencing style in this blog. A good leader would have different leadership styles and influencing styles to implement the right way to lead a group under different occasions.