In an extensive study on what people want in a leader, among the top cited qualities were people-building skills. Included in this quality is the ability to assemble and develop a team; perform important skills such as planning, delegating, and performance coaching; and possess motivational qualities. In essence, the results of this study emphasized that people want an informed and caring leader. The knowledge of the personality, communication, and learning styles of their audience (and themselves!) provides a leader the insight to analyze how they are perceived, to evaluate their own strengths and weaknesses, and how best to provide absorbable information to their team. Caring leadership shows compassion, concern, and loyalty, and builds trust and rapport among followers. Together, an informed and caring leader and their followers are a team focused and energized to move forward towards achievements and success.
In my opinion, understanding people’s personalities, communication styles, learning styles and motivators – and recognizing their influence – is essential for leaders because this information forms the foundation of their leadership strategy.
Personality differences can result in communication problems unless there is an appreciation for the needs and contributions of different kinds of people and different personalities. It is important to keep in mind that different personality styles require different treatment, and this tolerance of diversity is a critical component of a leader’s character. There are five identified personality traits that are stable components for assessing one’s personality and providing insight into their core personalities, they are: openness to experience, a trait of imaginative, creative, and independent people; conscientiousness, a trait of careful, persevering, and dependable people; extroversion, a trait of sociable and outgoing personalities; agreeableness, a trait of soft-heartedness, generosity, and good-nature; and neuroticism, a trait associated with anxious, emotional, and temperamental personalities. I believe that it is important to assess personality traits holistically and to remember the perspective of others when judging basic personality traits. What one person views as a strength can be seen as a weakness in the eyes of another, and vice versa.
Understanding someone’s personality style is a component of understanding the person, and understanding someone’s motivators is equally important in order to further assess what motivates them and how their personality plays into their goals. Considering motivation is one way of understanding why people behave the way they do. Like the big five personality traits, there are five basic levels of motivators: survival needs, security needs, belonging needs, respect needs, and fulfillment needs. Being able to determine which of these levels motivates a person provides awareness into their behaviors and these points can also explain the complicated relationship between personality and behavior. After understanding someone’s personality traits and their motivators, a leader should recognize individual learning styles and be aware of how their followers learn in order to effectively develop others. This statement is founded upon Manning and Curtis’ report that “effective leaders recognize the importance of developing others” (p. 318). Additionally, for a learning environment to be optimally effective, it should capitalize not only on the context of the learning, but also the learner’s characteristics.
Of all the various learning style guidelines, perhaps the Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic (VAK) learning styles model first developed by psychologists and teaching specialists such as Fernald, Keller, Orton, Gillingham, Stillman and Montessori provides the most clarified and simple model of learning styles. The VAK model is primarily used to provide a different perspective for understanding and explaining a person's preferred or dominant learning style by classifying them as either a visual, auditory, or kinesthetic learner. Using this model, a visual learning style is characterized by those who prefer to see and read from observed things such as pictures and diagrams to learn while an auditory learner is one who prefers to listen to spoke instruction to learn; a kinesthetic learner prefers hands-on learning.
In addition to an awareness of personality styles and their most definitive traits as well as motivators and learning styles, an effective leader is a communicative leader and recognizes the importance of their and their followers’ communication styles. Communication skills and styles are equally as variable and dynamic as personality and learning styles, and deserve equal attention. Because of their expansive influence, communication styles are a popular topic across all industries, and like personality and learning styles, there are myriad models to choose from to follow. The American Society of Mechanical Engineers discusses four dominant communication styles of listener, creator, doer or thinker. In this model a listener is someone who is flexible and people-oriented, however may have trouble delegating or making decisions; a creator is someone who is enthusiastic and persuasive, but may be impulsive; a doer is someone who competitive and competent, but may be impatient or controlling; and a thinker is someone who is detail-oriented and analytical, but may be rigid and overly serious.
Though assessing all of these dynamics may seem daunting and overly complex, knowledge and insight into personality styles, communication styles, and learning styles critical in good leadership because it provides a leader acumen into the unique dynamics of their followers and allows an ordinary leader to grow into a caring leader.
References
American Society of Mechanical Engineers. (2010).
Chapman, Alan. (2010). Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligences.
Manning, G. & Curtis, K. (2009). The art of leadership (3rd ed.).
Melis, E. & Monthienvichienchai, R. (2004). They call it learning style but it’s so much more.