Style

There are schools of management, theories of management, leadership institutes and good old best practices which often come from the school of hard knocks. But we have recently been discussing leadership styles and more specifically what are the styles we most appreciate.

We are a learning organization and one of the things we want to learn about is how to bring newer recruits up to speed as quickly as possible and, correspondingly, how to we help them avoid the mistakes we all made along the way.

One way we have decided upon is to probe deeply into this thing we call style. Style can be like opinions where everyone thinks theirs is the right one. But that’s not where we want to go. We’re going in two directions.

First, we are asking ourselves 2 questions:
1 Who are the leaders we learn from?
2 What are their styles? And we are trying to be very specific, concrete here.

We are not inexperienced nor are we unaccomplished. But we all know there is more to do and more to learn. So from what leaders do we not only get direction but education or learning? How do they teach us? Some of this is their willingness to share information; some the way they do it. For some it’s the perspective they bring; for others the respect they show.

Secondly, we are approaching those people we each admire (and they may very well be different for each of us) to ask them to describe their style. What do they think makes them so effective? What is it they think makes others effectively learn from them?

So, what do you think? Please respond to this entry with the specific characteristics of the styles from which you best learn. Think about your personal guru and what is it about her/him that works for you …. And let us know.

We don’t expect this will be a fast exercise. It will take time, concentration and discussion. We will report back from time on our progress. So stay tuned.