Leadership Philosophy
Learn about their types and their importance to your company
how to define your personal leadership philosophy?
A leadership philosophy statement helps employees of a company or organization understand their leaders and set the right expectations about their roles.
Continue reading the following lines to learn more about leadership philosophy and its importance.
What is the leadership philosophy?
A leadership philosophy is a specific approach to an individual or team that describes how to deal and work within a company or organization.
Leadership philosophy serves as a framework for the leader in making decisions, delegating responsibilities, and managing behavioral concerns within the organization.
A philosophical statement helps the leader and employees to develop plans and solutions for business development and then be able to put those plans into action.
Leadership philosophy consists of three core elements: theory, behavior, and guiding principles.
Personal leadership philosophies must include some basic requirements, including the following:
Uniqueness: The wording of your personal leadership statement should be unique.
Take the time to really consider the values that are most important to you when shaping your personal leadership statement so that you can use it effectively.
Consistency between values and goals: Consider how the core leadership values that you find most important affect your business goals.
Ensure that your actions and decisions are always based on achieving the objective set out in your personal leadership philosophy.
Foundation: A personal leadership philosophy should articulate to your employees the values you find most important in a leader and how those values will help achieve business goals.
Importance of leadership philosophy
Leadership philosophy helps provide insight into a leader’s perspective on how the organization operates.
It creates positive motivation among the employees and gives them a sense of loyalty.
Leadership philosophies are critical in specific situations, especially during change and problem solving.
In addition, the leadership philosophy promotes faith and encourages responsible behavior in the workforce.
It reflects the leader’s interest in the success of the company’s business.
Instilling a leadership philosophy is essential for a leader to move the organization forward and create a deep rooted impact on people.
Types of leadership philosophy
There are several different types of leadership philosophy, including the following:
Democratic leadership philosophy: The democratic leadership philosophy focuses on the importance of directing joint efforts to achieve the goal.
This type of leadership philosophy prioritizes the people’s voice and is status-neutral.
During this type, the leader looks closely at the team’s opinion before making a decision.
Autocratic Leadership Philosophy: Autocratic leadership philosophy conflicts with democracy.
Here, the leader has complete control over the workings of the organization.
The leader relies on his or her official conduct and delegates responsibilities and tasks to those who work under him.
This type of leadership is most effective when the leader has to face difficult circumstances at work.
Strategic Leadership Philosophy: The strategic leadership philosophy focuses on creativity and innovation.
This type of leadership philosophy prioritizes looking far into the future and planning.
Transactional Leadership Philosophy: This type of leadership philosophy provides for identifying promotions and incentives when deadlines are met or identifying negative consequences for not doing so.
However, this leadership is important because it leaves a lot of room for employee improvement.
How do you define your personal leadership philosophy?
After learning about the aforementioned types of leadership philosophy, the question here may now be, how do you define your personal leadership philosophy, you can use the following steps to create your own personal leadership philosophy:
Define your values: Start by defining your core values.
What is most important to you as a leader? Do you want your employees to see you as fair and supportive, or is it more important that you be a critical risk taker? Make a list of the core values that are most important to you.
Set Your Goals: During the next step you will have to make a list of business goals that you hope to achieve. Set one or two broad goals that you can pursue through your leadership.
The goals you set must be continuous.
Here are some general goals you might consider: delivering product on time, providing excellent customer service, meeting customer needs efficiently, maintaining a safe work environment.
Find guidance: Here you can draw on an expert in your industry whose personal philosophy of leadership you admire. Get people you respect to help shape your leadership philosophy.
Jot down any values or goals that particularly interest you and add them to your lists in Steps One and Two.
Review your lists: Look at your list of values and goals, then highlight the most important goal.
Next, highlight the value that will be most influential in achieving that goal.
Take the goal and the distinguishing value and create a short, direct statement that includes both.
Some personal leadership philosophies are one long sentence, others are a series of bullet points detailing goals, values, and expectations, some are short paragraphs, review your personal leadership philosophy until you find the wording that works best for you.
