Developing Your Leadership Philosophy

What’s the first step of being a leader? To think about and develop your coaching philosophy. You may have never thought about this before but your philosophy has a huge impact on your staff’s motivation and partly determines how successful they will become. In order to develop your leadership philosophy you’ll need to develop some deeper self-awareness. You can do this by asking yourself some or all of the following questions:

• Who am I?
• What do I want in life?
• Where am I going?
• What are my goals?
• Why do I want to be a leader?
• Am I leading for the right reasons?
• Am I a good leader?
• What would make me a better leader?
• What are my goals as a leader?
• Which is more important, ‘winning’ or my staff?
• Am I a command or cooperative leader?

Your philosophy helps determine what kind of a leader you will be. It is the foundation for who you are and what you value about leading and value in your staff. Your philosophy helps determine whether you will be a command or cooperative style leader.

The command style of leading uses the win first philosophy. These leaders favor extrinsic motivation, they feel responsible for directing, motivating, controlling and persuading staff and they use rewards and punishments. Some reasons explained for why command style leaders lead in this manner is because they have low self-esteem, they’ve worked for a similar style leaders and they are low in empathy.

Cooperative style leaders on the other hand, have a people first philosophy. They favor intrinsic motivation and feel that motivation, potential for development, capacity for assuming responsibility, the ability to work toward individual and team goals are present or can be developed and that it’s the leaders responsibility to help staff develop these qualities. Some reasons explained for why cooperative style leaders operate in this manner is because they have high self-esteem, they’ve worked for a similar style leader, they are high in empathy and they see the benefits of operating this way.

“If I can supply you with a thought you may remember it or not, but if I can make you think a thought for yourself, I have indeed added to your stature”- Elbert Hubbard

What does this mean? It’s basically saying that as a leader you can tell your staff what to do (command) or you can help support them to figure it out (cooperative). Which type leader do you want to be?

At the core of your philosophy is your ability to communicate. The most important skill for leaders is the ability to communicate effectively. Communication is what separates successful leaders from less successful leaders. Communication skills should be aligned with your philosophy and is another important element in supporting an athlete’s intrinsic motivation.

Effective communication is often the difference between success and failure for the relationship between a leader and your staff. What is effective communication? There is a lot to effective communication but here are some things to consider:

• Get to know your staff as people.
• Check in with your staff to make sure they understand what you are saying.
• Explain why you may or may not be doing something.
• Express empathy-be sensitive to the feelings of your staff.
• Communicate consistently according to your personality and training style.
• Learn to be empathic by putting yourself in the shoes of your staff.
• Use a positive communication approach which includes asking open ended questions, encouragement, support and positive reinforcement.
• Display congruent verbal and nonverbal communication.

Good leadership is a combination of things. If you’ve been in the business most of your life, the doing probably comes pretty naturally but the being a good leaders starts by developing your philosophy and from your ability to communicate. From there you begin to realize the potential you have to make an impact. You begin to understand how you can more fully support your staff. Every staff person has the potential for greatness and you can help them get there.

Dr. Michelle

Photo credit: en.wikipedia.org