The Uncommon Communicator

E101 The UC Playbook : Discover Your Leadership Identity with Rich Hopkins

• James Gable • Season 2 • Episode 101

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Ready to unlock the secrets of your leadership style? Get ready to revolutionize your communication skills as we dissect the world of leadership with our guest, Rich Hopkins. In a candid discussion, we shine a light on the main leadership styles - authoritarian, participative, and delegative - and how they shape the way we interact in the workplace. It doesn't stop there; we're taking things up a notch by delving into seven unique styles including autocratic, pace setting, transformational, coaching, democratic, affiliative, and delegative. We even touch on the laissez-faire leadership style and how it involves granting some autonomy to your team members.

Understanding your leadership style isn't just about being a boss, it is about connecting with others effectively. This episode serves as a guide to taking the reins of self-awareness and influence. We explore how knowing your leadership style can completely redefine the way you understand and communicate with others. This is more than just a podcast episode; it's an invitation to a journey of self-discovery. So, gear up for an eye-opening discussion, gain a deeper understanding of yourself, and prepare to make a bigger impact with your enhanced communication skills. Unearth your leadership style and transform your workplace dynamics today!

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Speaker 1:

You want to talk right down to us and a language that everybody here can easily understand. What we got here is a failure to communicate. Welcome to the Uncommon Kinecator Podcast, where we are here to bring enlightenment to the topic of communication. Today, in today's UC Playbook, we're going to be discussing our discussion with Rich Hopkins and leadership and communication. We're going to dive into a couple of topics today talking about leadership styles, also talking about some of the other things that were brought up during our conversation. We'll leave that for the end and possibly an apology from the Uncommon Kinecator, but let's dive right into this Now. Rich talked about leadership styles.

Speaker 1:

Now, one thing that I think is one of the most important things that anybody should do, especially self-developers, is know your leadership style. That's where I recommend that you start To really know your leadership style is really going to help you understand other people's leadership styles and how to communicate better with them. Know yours first. One thing they always recommend are the traditional formal assessments. I've taken several of them the disc method. I've also done one that didn't really have a name. It's very similar to the Briggs Meyer test. Also, a great test to take is the workplace genius Lencioni, through his workplace genius comes up with some, really some styles that really fit the work scenario. I really enjoyed going through that. All of them have a similar message. That's one of the most important things that you can get is you can assess them all these different ways. They should be a common theme in there. That gets you to the point where you really understand yourself. Then also, it helps you understand those a little bit better, outside of the traditional formal assessments or the quality of kind of self-examination, measuring within yourself the presence or even absence of different leadership characteristics. That all comes from really taking those assessments and understanding those.

Speaker 1:

Now, through some research, they have really shown that there's three main styles of leadership Authoritarian, which is that autocratic. Participative, also known as democratic. And the delegative, the laissez-faire, which what a strange word that one is. But anyways, I feel like there should be streamers and banners and a parade or something, but I don't know. That's what I get when I see laissez-faire. Somebody doesn't care, but it's not the case at all. But one thing I really want to point out is, within those research, those three main styles the authoritarian, participative and delegative those all are really in line with what Rich shared with us, which was leading from the front, leading from the middle and leading from the back.

Speaker 1:

So, diving a little bit deeper into those kind of topics that we talked about, I think it's fine to separate them into three categories. It's simple. It separates them that way, but we fit them into those three categories, but we don't operate completely within those boxes. So it's important to take those assessments and understand what your styles really are so you can understand yourself a little bit better. Then I'm going to go through seven of them. I've seen various representations that show eight, that show 10, that show four. Everybody's got one, but pick one that connects with you. But I've got seven of them and as we talk through these, listen in to see what you see in yourself and then also what do you see in other leaders. So you can now begin that kind of classification and understanding how other people lead.

Speaker 1:

First one we start with is that autocratic leadership, and we talked a little bit about that at the beginning. It's really known as that authoritarian. It's a leadership style that's always characterized by an individual control over all decisions, little input from the group members. That is the guy in charge. You see this a lot, you know them, you're thinking of them right now it's a guy who's always in charge. Autocratic it is certainly a leadership style, and there's been world leaders, dictators, good and bad, that have led the world in this autocratic leadership. The next one is pace setting leadership. Now, pace setting is kind of a results oriented style of leadership that asks team members to match or exceed the standard shown to them. So you're setting the pace. You're out there showing how the work is going and people are coming along with you and you're leading them. That way, you're pace setting. Now, transformational leadership that is the one that's probably the most effective in bringing about lasting change. Here's a couple of names of transformational leaders Henry Ford, martin Luther King Jr, steve Jobs, people who have transformed industries and our world. That's that kind of transformational leadership. It's very effective in bringing some change to this world, but it takes a certain individual to be able to lead that way.

Speaker 1:

Coaching Leadership Coaching Leadership is a style that involves recognizing team members' strengths, weaknesses, motivations, anything that helps that individual to improve. You're looking into them and you can see all the positives and the negatives and then, within those motivations, you're even learning what motivates them and what motivations they need to improve, and that's an important part about coaching leadership. The next one is Democratic Leadership. Now, democratic Leadership, also referred to as the Participative Leadership. It's a management style in which decision making is shared among the team members. Democratic it comes along with the word that we talk about, affiliative Leadership. Now, these individuals portray their leadership traits through promoting harmony and conflict resolution among teams. They're the ones who's bringing everybody together, bringing the teams together and really getting everybody to come to kind of a collaboration that their collaborators, the affiliative leadership styles, are.

Speaker 1:

And the last one is the Delegative Leadership, and this one we talked a little bit about it early on. They are known as the LASA, fair Leadership. I like to think of it as kind of that cool. He's the laid back cousin of the Leadership Family. Really, in a nutshell, he's handing over the reins at least some of them to your team members and letting them take the wheel. He's delegating, he knows how to hand the reins over and know that that individual is also going to learn from taking those reins, and so they're supporting that kind of leadership.

Speaker 1:

Now, out of those seven styles of leadership, three of them kind of repeated off our three main ones, remember, the Autocratic, the Democratic Leadership and the Delegative all fit within that bubble of the three main ones, but we operate in those other ones. And which ones of those, when you heard that, did it click with you and think that's me? The other thing that might cross your mind is I don't know if any of them are me, and that's fine, because now you need to really dive into and understand what the traits are of each of these individually and you can find out which one you fit. And here's, I think, the most important thing in any form of leadership. Yes, leaders are born. That is a true statement.

Speaker 1:

People have the natural ability and skills that just fit them to be any one of those styles of leadership, but every one of them can be learned. Every one of them can transform yourself into that new person to lead that way that you want to lead. Because that's the other side of really being on. That quantitative side of assessment is do you look at leaders and think I want to be like them? Well, that's a great example to want to learn and change your leadership style. I know that my leadership style has changed over the years and even in taking the tests they have changed in my even self-assessment of myself. But the results are changing as we develop different leadership skills to meet the needs of the people around us, and one of the things that was really important, as Rich talked about in our podcast, was you really need to fit your style to the group that you're leading, and that's one of the most important things and understanding all these different leadership styles is to really be able to transform how you lead to fit those that you are leading. Sometimes you need to be leading in front, sometimes you really need to step back and give somebody the reins to let them shine, let them grow, let them learn and this is a quote from Rich as well, too Military style.

Speaker 1:

Let's talk about that type of leadership. Generals typically aren't going to lead their troops from the front because they're considered too valuable. You know you have ranks and those ranks aren't going to be leading in the front. You're going to be sending the charge, giving the directions, having the work be done by the foot soldiers. So that style of leadership, even though you are the general of the military, you are still going to delegate and you're going to lead differently, and that's okay. It's really about leading with influence and leading with impact. One thing we briefly talked about was leading upward and Rich had to have me clarify that one a little bit. But really leading upward means having influence From any level of your position, whatever level you're at. In learning your level of leadership, one of the things is knowing that you can and have influence on those ahead of you If they value your input. You may not have the position, but you will have the influence.

Speaker 1:

Now jump it into Rich's story of Dan and Jaya. Now, dan and Jaya was a speaker who won the International Speech Contest with Toastmasters. Now, rich had mentioned, went through his story, which is really neat. I mean, they did a movie about him, they did a documentary. You can get it on Amazon Prime, I think, for 199 or something like that but it walks through his journey of becoming, and working towards being, on the stage for the International Speech Contest at Toastmasters International. And here's a gentleman that he never met, saw the video and said you know what, I'm not going to give up. And Rich has this win anyway attitude, he has this win anyway idea, which is just so inspirational. But he found this out from this Dan and Jaya, that that's the reason that he went on and this guy won the International Speech Contest and Rich has got close and we're still rooting for Rich. Rich is going to get there because Rich's message is amazing. Win anyway. But the idea from that is that there is influence that goes out, that you lead in our leading people without even knowing it, and your influence and impact can have an incredible effect on the world. Now, one thing this is where the uncommon apology comes in.

Speaker 1:

When I quoted Rich at the end of that episode, I quoted him wrong, and not only that. When I took a sound bite, I did a sound bite of myself quoting Rich Of course I wanted to hear myself say it and I quoted him wrong again. Now the quotes are very similar, but, just for clarification, rich said this at the end of his speech. He says are you living a life worth watching? And that was all in tied to this reference to Dana Giant and people following and leading are you living a life worth watching? Are you having impact? Are you influencing? Now, where I quoted Rich was, as I said, are you living a life worth repeating? Very similar though, and I'm going to attribute both of those to Rich. Rich gets the gets the attribution for those quotes, because both of those things are impactful for our lives, and I don't want to go anywhere without thinking about the power of that. In fact, during our session, I had to pause and think about it, because it really did. It had an impact on me. Are you living a life worth watching? Are you living a life worth repeating Now?

Speaker 1:

Are you seeing moment for today? First, let's do a quick summary. We did talk about the different leadership styles. You have to know your leadership style, and when you know your leadership style, you can assess others, and then you're going to know how to communicate with others. So it's very important to know your leadership styles. I challenge you to go out and look into what is your leadership style. The next thing is know about influence and that you have influence on people. Even when you don't know it, even when you're not trying, you will be influencing people, especially if you are living a life worth watching. So, are you see moment for today is this know yourself first, then you will know others better. And that's all I've got for today. See you, bye.