Leadership is a multifaceted skill that plays a vital role in guiding individuals, teams, and organizations toward success. It involves not only effective decision-making and strategic thinking but also the ability to inspire, motivate, and empower others. Understanding your personality type is key to unlocking valuable insights into your leadership style to help you enhance your leadership skills. By leveraging your natural strengths and addressing opportunities for growth, you can become a more effective leader.
This guide is designed to provide tips on how to enhance your leadership skills based on your personality style. Navigate to your personality style and find 1-2 bullet points that you can focus on in the coming weeks.
Dominance – High “D” Style
Leaders with a Dominance personality type are assertive, results-oriented, and direct in their communication. To enhance your leadership skills:
- Allow others to do things without excessive or untimely interference.
- Participate in the group without expecting always to be in command.
- Modify your tendency to give orders.
- Enlist others’ input and support through participative, collaborative actions.
- Praise and give credit for jobs well done.
- Let colleagues and employees know that you realize it is only natural that you and others will make mistakes. Be patient when mistakes occur.
- When delegating, give some authority along with the responsibility.
Influence – High “I” Style
Individuals with an Influence personality type are charismatic, sociable, and persuasive. To enhance your leadership skills:
- Improve your follow-through efforts.
- Monitor socializing to keep it in balance with other aspects of business and life.
- Write things down and work from a list, so you will know what to do and when to do it.
- Prioritize activities and focus on tasks in their order of importance.
- Become more organized and orderly in the way you do things.
- Get the less appealing tasks of the day over with early in the day.
- Pay attention to your time management.
- Check to make sure you are on course with known tasks or goals.
Steadiness – High “S” Style
Leaders with a Steadiness personality type are reliable, patient, and team-oriented. To enhance your leadership skills:
- Stretch yourself by taking on a bit more (or different) duties beyond your comfort level.
- Increase sharing of your thoughts and feelings with others, preferably in the moment, if possible.
- Speed up your actions by getting into projects more quickly.
- Desensitize yourself somewhat, so that you are not negatively affected by your colleagues’ feelings to the point of affecting your own performance.
- Learn to adapt more quickly to changes or refinements of existing practices.
- Bolster your assertiveness techniques. Ask for what you need, and even push back sometimes when things seem overwhelming or cause an increase in tension.
Conscientiousness – High “C” Style
Individuals with a Conscientiousness personality type are detail-oriented, analytical, and systematic. To enhance your leadership skills:
- Modify criticism (whether spoken or unspoken) of others’ work.
- Check accuracy less often, or only check the critical things (as opposed to everything), allowing the flow of the process to continue.
- Ease up on controlling your emotions; engage in more social/connected interaction.
- Accept the fact that you can have high standards without expecting perfection.
- Occasionally confront a colleague (or boss) with whom you disagree, instead of avoiding or ignoring them (and doing what you want to do anyway).
- Tone down the tendency to over-prepare and practice flexibility when opportunities arise.
Remember, leadership is not a one-size-fits-all approach. Being aware and adapting your style to suit different situations and individuals is key. Embrace self-awareness, continuously learn, and practice your leadership skills to become the best leader you can be.
If you are interested in hearing more about how this powerful tool is used to increase the productivity of you and your team learn more about the DISC assessment HERE.
At Write a New Story, we offer individual leadership coaching sessions as well as package programs. When you commit to going deeper to work on your personal development goals you can accelerate your plan of growth from where you are now to where you want to be. Learn more about our offerings HERE.
