Leaders are responsible for improving the performance of organizations, and this is often done through the decisions they make. Two significant components of a leader’s decision are the quality of the decision and the level of buy-in associated with it.
Effective leaders want both. A good decision without buy-in is a car without an engine or a boat without a sail. Good buy-in without a good decision is- well, you can imagine just an engine or a sail alone. In either case, it’s the combination of these two factors that optimizes the leader’s influence.
The Collaborator leadership style enables a person or team to build both an effective decision and buy-in.
It is the combination of effective decisions and cooperative support that generate significant business impact.
While there are often many other leadership behavior alternatives at play, the five behavior options/leadership styles I consider include:
Avoiders don’t really want to help and have few good ideas. They often say, “I really can’t help now, sorry.” Nothing gets done. It’s risk-phobia at its finest.
Accommodators are just in it for the fun of being together with others. When it’s time to make a decision they say, ” Whatever you say, I’m just glad to help in any way.” They are usually driven by a need for social affirmation. They’re the “I just want to be liked” type.
The Competitors would rather do all of the deciding themselves. Their mantra is “My way or the highway.” Stop signs are for other people. Competitors often have good ideas but when these ideas railroaded through teams, they’re met with resistance and a lack of support. Competitors just want to win.
The Compromisers haven’t learned to expect more. They settle for half a good decision and half the buy-in. Their motto is “I can live with that.” They are lazy, which results in premature stopping points.
The Collaborators are great at assembling team members who have something to contribute. They make good decisions and work with the teams in an interactive way so that the whole team collaborates. This takes advantage of the wonderful principle: People support what they help create. Collaborators want the best idea to win, whether it is their own or someone else’s.
All five styles may have their place depending on circumstances. For example, a leader may not have the time to collaborate and would need to defer to the Competitor role. A leader may not address an issue that would normally be their responsibility and would defer to the Avoider role.
In most situations, the goal is collaboration. Collaboration is all about learning the best way to work with a group, and it’s a key business communication strategy from which your business will reap the benefits. Settling for less than collaboration is a business decision, and often not a very good one.
Brainstorming with Teams
Leaders have choices when it comes to generating ideas that are intended to drive decisions.
Here’s how these five types of leaders would facilitate a brainstorming session:
Avoiders will put the meeting off until it may be too late. Or if they call the meeting, they may defer the process to a facilitator and either multitask through the meeting contributing little, or move in and out of the meeting room taking care of “more important” business.
With Accommodators, people will sit around a table with lots of snacks and play things on the table (I may be exaggerating for effect) and have a facilitator list out the team’s ideas on a flipchart. Accommodators will likely provide lots of “great idea!” comments, regardless of the quality of the idea.
Competitors will usually sit at the head of the table with people sitting around. The leader will ask the team to throw out some ideas and encourage them with a comment like, “Come on, folks, we can do better than this!” We’ve all been in this situation before. Often, social and performance pressures prevent us from contributing. Everyone will leave in frustration asking (out of earshot) why the boss didn’t just make the decision and get it over with.
With Compromisers, people just sit around a round table. Like Competitors, the leader will ask for some good ideas encouraging with “Come on, folks, we can do better than this!” We’ve all been in this situation and most often social and performance pressures provide significant resistance to helping the boss. But here, the frustration is more with the process. No one wants to settle for a weak decision. They know they want to be more effective as a team, but they don’t know how. Fundamentally, Compromisers don’t know how to manage options.
Collaborators will confirm the purpose of their exercise (keeping a scoreboard to measure the success of their strategy). There will be five minutes of quiet time when people list their best ideas on Post-Its. Next, the team will present their ideas, have a robust dialogue and group the Post-Its in columns to clarify the majors themes of the ideas. These ideas could then be formally compared to the exercise scoreboard. The big difference with this style compared to the four others is its focus on the ideas.
My key takeaway for you: as a leader, you have a choice, and your choice depends on how you approach leading. Who leads and who contributes to the decision making process? Who gets to win?