Look for a model of leadership and you’ll find dozens, if not hundreds, of books or articles extolling a single approach as the key to success.
It might be courageous leadership or empathetic leadership. It might be how to be a more creative leader or a more engaging one.
There are books about how the art of leadership is all about empowering people, for example, or providing a supportive environment.
Unfortunately, leadership is not so simple. If it was all about empowering your people and delegating responsibility, then why does command and control exist? If leadership was all about support, then how would we hold people accountable and set standards?
Sometimes, we do need to take charge and tell people what to do. Sometimes healthy challenge has a place.
At its core how we behave changes depending on context. How we behave at a birthday party is very different to how we behave in a business meeting. How we behave towards someone who is upset is different to someone who is overconfident and taking risks. We haven’t changed, but the context has, and we modify our behaviour accordingly.
Leadership is about matching behaviour to context
It’s the same with leadership. Leadership is all about behaviour, and behaviour is shaped by context. Good leadership is when we as a leader understand the context and behave to get the best out of our people in that situation.
Take the example of empowering people, although most of the time leaders benefit from empowering their people, there are certain situations where the circumstance dictates that a decisive and directive approach is required.
The art of balanced leadership is to find the most appropriate leadership response in the circumstance.
The spectrums of balanced leadership
Our model of balanced leadership has 6 spectrums of behaviour which we believe are key to fitting the leadership style to the situation. We explore each of them in a series of articles to understand the range of behaviour and how to adapt and adjust considering the context.
For most leaders, this means developing a toolbox of leadership behaviours to choose from, so you have the right tool available at the right time. It also means starting to be aware of your natural preferences, so you’ll know which behaviours might be second nature (and perhaps overplayed) and which may need practise.
Achieving balance is a process, not an end state
The truth about balance is that we are always working to find it. It is a process, not an end state. Once we find balance, the context changes and we need to rebalance again.
We intuitively know how do this. We learned to walk, ride a bike, dance and perhaps something more adventurous like skateboarding, surfing, skiing. All of these activities require us to find the balance point and continually readjust.
The task for business leaders is therefore to take this pre-existing skill, this implicit knowing and apply it in a professional landscape.
We believe that, if you seek balance as a leader, you will benefit, as will your team and your organisation.
