My Leadership Style: Abhishek Goyal

I’ve been thinking about how to describe my leadership style since my Dr Mandi posed the question. To break this question down, the word “style”, as defined by my Pocket Oxford American English Dictionary and Thesaurus app, is a way of doing something. Leadership, as I’ve come to define it, is the process of bringing a group of people to achieve a goal they would not have otherwise achieved on their own.

When I think back on successful projects, I think about the all of the extra effort especially at the start. I would often go into work early and leave late during big projects. I would begin by analyzing my situation, and meeting with my team to create a clear vision of what a successful outcome would be. Together, we would develop a plan to make our vision a reality. We all worked hard towards our goal, and I delegated and empowered my team so they could learn from the experience. Under pressure, I’ve always been able to make tough decisions quickly, and the quality of my decision making has improved with experience. This has made me confident and assertive in my communication. When I am at my best, the result is on-time completion with better than expected results.

I’ve grown as leader over the past couple years through aggressively pursuing self understating. Writing this blog has helped me deeply understand myself a leader, and thanks to my wife and wonderful (and free) online resources like Manager Tools, I can now succinctly describe my leadership style. Can you?

My leadership style is to lead by example, with integrity and with strong professional relationships. I am decisive, assertive and confident in my communication. I create an attractive and bold vision for the future,  and develop a plan with my team for realizing  our shared vision. Along the way, my team learns and grows so they can achieve their personal development goals. 

My style is of Situational Leader that requires the leader be closely familiar with the intellectual and development level of those being lead.  The model does not address important details like the complex factors effecting motivation.  The model does not include tools for the leader to diagnose a group’s task ability or communal willingness.  It is much harder, or impossible, for a leader to really know all the members of larger the groups and consequently diagnosis and prescriptions for the followers behavior are based on less, or no, personal information.  That is why I believe that situational leadership is better suited to small groups, or for small groups within a larger organization with a single cohesive goal.  Truly understanding the abilities and motivations of the team are vital to and a major limitation to this theory.