1. Finding Your Most Effective Leadership Style
John Harris
Vice President, OMICRON

2. Learning Objectives
Learn about successful leadership characteristics, approaches, and styles.
Understand your style and how to use it effectively.

3. Agenda What is Leadership and why is it important
BEST Leadership Styles
Leadership Styles Exercises

4. Leadership lessons from CIO Forum
CIOs:
Jay Ferro, American Cancer Society
Kevin McCarthy, SWM
Calvin Rhodes, State CIO
Bill VanCuren, NCR
Have a clear vision and consistent focus
Communicate often
Listen – know where your boss is headed

5. Leadership lessons from CIO Forum
Find a mentor
Leadership is situational
Learn from difficult situations
Create high expectations
Get out of the way
Be consistent – true to yourself
Be transparent
Blend people, process and technology skills

6. What % of your IT career would you say you were well led?
20% never
10% about one-third
65% less than one-fifth

8. What is Leadership?

9. Kenneth Boulding in The Image: Knowledge in Life and Society
What is Leadership?
Leadership is a process by which a person influences others to accomplish an objective and directs the organization in a way that makes it more cohesive and coherent.
Kenneth Boulding in The Image: Knowledge in Life and Society

10. Blanchard, Zagarmi and Zagarmi 1994
What is Leadership?
Leadership is not something you do to people it is something you do with people
Blanchard, Zagarmi and Zagarmi 1994

11. Understanding Leadership
Leadership is the essential ingredient that turns visions and plans into reality
Effective leaders harness the energies and gain the commitment of their people towards great achievements

12. What Makes An Effective Leader?
The factors that make an effective leader can be classified under three headings:
Traits or characteristics they exhibit
Behaviors that they show
Situations they find themselves in

13. Traits Approach According to this approach Traits include
leaders are born not made
Traits include
Intelligence
Initiative
Self confidence
Maturity
People skills
Organizational capability

14. Behavioral Approach There are two groups Task related behaviors
Planning, resourcing and getting things done
People related behaviors
Gaining support
Gaining commitment
Motivation

15. Situational Approach
The leadership style shown is dependent upon the situation in question due to:
The nature of the task
The expectations of the followers
The characteristics of the followers
Authority arises in the situation due to:
Knowledge
Position
Personality

16. What Makes An Effective Leader?
Current thinking is that an effective leader possesses
key characteristics from the Traits approach
Skills and behaviors from the Behavioral Approach
Use these in conjunction with appropriate responses from the Situational Approach

17. Why leadership is important to the organization
The organization needs to have leadership because leaders provide:
Direction
Motivation
Inspiration
These allow ordinary people within the organization to produce extraordinary results over the long term

18. Share some examples of effective leadership from your experiences?
School
Sports
Military
Business – peers, executives, managers, subordinates
Volunteer activities
Religious
Why were they so effective?
How did they impact you?

19. BEST Leadership Style

20. Leadership Style Can be defined as
The way in which you carry out your functions as a leader
A consistent pattern of behavior
A behavior that has been developed by you consciously or sub-consciously over time

21. BEST Personality Types
James H. Brewer developed the BEST personality profile based on four personality types:
Bold
Expressive
Sympathetic
Technical

22. BEST Leadership Assessment
Your personality affects your leadership style
Learn the styles, strengths, and challenges for each
Be aware of the affects on others
Discuss when each style is best used

23. BEST Leadership Assessment
The BEST Leadership Style assessment can be taken by purchasing the instrument for $4.95 from
Due to time and resource limitations we will approximate our leadership styles using a key word list.

24. BEST Leadership Approximation
Check the words from each column that best fit your behavior style
Count the checks in each column and record the number at the bottom of the page
The column with the highest number is an approximation of your dominant style 24

25. BEST Leadership Assessment
Column 1 2 3 4
Leadership style
Bold
Expressive
Sympathetic
Technical

26. Personality Type Behaviors
Bold
Expressive
Sympathetic
Technical
First
Impressions
Directness
and
Confidence
Friendliness
Calmness
Organization
Basic Drive
To have
power
To influence
To maintain
harmony
To be orderly

27. Personality Type Behaviors
Bold
Expressive
Sympathetic
Technical
Leadership Strengths
Making quick decisions
Getting results
Persuading others
People oriented
Loyalty
Accommodating
Attention to detail
Accuracy
Leadership weaknesses
Bluntness
Won’t listen
Takes too many risks
Not objective
Emotional
Wastes time talking
Won’t change
Not creative
Too accommodating
Too rule-oriented
Slow to make decisions

28. Personality Type Behaviors
Bold
Expressive
Sympathetic
Technical
Non-verbal indicators with leading
“Go to hell” look
Restless
Smiling
Touching
“Soft” look
Helping ways
Well groomed
Neat
Leadership problems
Stress carrier
Intimidating
Doesn’t always consult or delegate
Not enough structure
Leads by emotion
Not always objective
Reluctant leader
No urgency
May not be decisive
Can forget people
Can’t deal with conflict

29. Leadership Styles in the Movies
Apollo 13 was the seventh manned mission in the Apollo space program and the third intended to land on the Moon. The craft was launched on April 11, 1970 but the lunar landing was aborted after an oxygen tank exploded two days later, crippling the service module upon which the Command Module depended. Despite great hardship caused by limited power, loss of cabin heat, shortage of potable water, and the critical need to jury-rig the carbon dioxide removal system, the crew returned safely to Earth on April 17.
The 1995 film was directed by Ron Howard. The film stars Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, Gary Sinise, Kathleen Quinlan and Ed Harris.Gene Kranz, flight director 29

30. Leadership Styles in the Movies
Failure is not an option - Describe the situation. What is Kranz’s leadership style? What is style of the team? How does Kranz modify his style? Why was this approach so effective for the situation?
Square peg in round hole - Describe the situation. What was observed style of lead engineer? Team? Would bold have worked well here? 30

31. Discussion How do/should leaders modify their basic personality types?
With your group, discuss the following situation and how you would respond as the leader.

32. Leadership challenge
ABC company recently implemented a new ERP system. There have been many problems and support issues associated with the implementation and the Help Desk has not been effective in addressing the issues. The CIO determined that a big part of the problem was a lack of leadership from the help desk manager. She fired the Help Desk Manager and hired you. The first thing you did when you started was to interview the team. You determined that most didn’t receive consistent and effective leadership from the previous manager or from anyone on the team.

33. Leadership challenge
Next you hired a trainer to deliver a leadership development course for the team. Part of the training included a leadership style assessment. Your style is expressive and it has served you well in other jobs. Your new team is made up of 50% technical, 20% bold, 20% expressive and 5% sympathetic. You must now get the team working together to begin to reduce the service outages and issues. Your CIO expects to see improvement in one month. Will you make any adjustments to your leadership style? What leadership techniques will you use to maximize the performance of your team members?

34. BEST Leadership Summary
It is important to adapt your behavior to the situation and person.
This minimizes conflict and builds stronger relationships.
It increases trust, confidence, and productivity.
Obviously, in this line of work, communication skills are incredibly important. They not only set the tone for the outcome of the interaction, but also make impressions of the company as a whole as well as the department. All we have to go on is what caller says and how they say it which is all they have to go on with us as well.

35. Take Aways What is your observation about leadership?
What is your key take away (what will you do differently)?