In a comment on a recent post of mine titled, “The Ice Cream of Success” Gladstone Leslie Samuel wrote, “Climbing the summit is success. To remain at the top is a perpetual challenge”.
This comment brought up the question of positional change, and if what positions we hold dictate how fast we need to change?
Leaders are on top and have maximum exposure to outside challenges and obstacles. The heat of challenges may melt them and start flowing their effect on employees and dishearten them.
Those leaders may cause their organizations to shrink. They need to self-inspect their mindsets and view challenges and obstacles as the salt that lowers their freezing temperature to remain “solid” in facing challenges.
The world we live in is witnessing rapid change. Change brings opportunities and challenges. Leaders may need to adapt faster than change to meet the challenges of change and grasp its opportunities.
This means leaders must foster their self-belief to make their employees feel the same. The big challenge is to keep self-belief in times of rapid change and not melt because of their heat. And if they do then only to become more fluid leaders to go around challenges and obstacles and even melt them.
Leaders may melt under the heat of challenges to enhance the speed of their leadership. Those leaders melt to enable them to execute fast and execute right.
Fluid leaders are not slow leaders who only act if they go wrong and not as planned or hoped for. They are accountable and have the agility to spring back fast.
Those leaders know well the challenges ahead but also know what opportunities are hidden in those obstacles.
Those leaders work to foster collaboration and innovation as Dennis Pitocco mentioned in his recent post on “Community Matters: Because “Everything Belongs Together”.
To do so, those leaders have the ability to keep their empathy and open communication, conflict resolution, powerful persuasion, high agility, and trust.
Those leaders adapt their leadership style to be in alignment with the challenges lying ahead. The five leadership styles are authoritarian, democratic, participative, delegating, and do as I want style.
Not all leaders are in the same position and so no leadership style shall fit all situations of the position in which leaders are.
Maybe this is a “Customized Leadership” style.