What’s Your Leadership Style: Push or Pull?

For this article by Jo Ilfeld, Executive Leadership Coach on leadership style, the image shows a push cart, with a boy sitting inside, and one girl pushing and another pulling the cart.

When you think of your leadership style, how much do you pull information from the people on your team and how much do you push information and decisions down to them?

I read a recent article in Harvard Business Review recently on leadership style.

Leaders who push decisions, data and action plans down to their teams, their people have more confidence that the organization will achieve their goals but lower satisfaction at work.

Those teams whose leaders pull them to collaborate and coalesce around data report more job satisfaction, yet less confidence that their organization will succeed.

When you have a leader who can both push and pull well equally, as we expect, their team is both confident in their organization’s success as well as being satisfied with their work.

What kind of leader are you? Do you push or pull more? 

I find that we instinctively lean to one side or the other.

My challenge to you this week is to see if you can strengthen the side of your leadership style that tends to be weaker. How? Watch my video for advice

Jo Ilfeld, PhD

An executive leadership coach, Jo helps C-suite leaders, executives, and high-potential managers develop the flexibility, skill, and frame of mind to meet the challenges of the next five, ten, twenty years…. and beyond. She works with individuals, teams and organizations on four core areas of leadership development. Check out Jo's bio page for more information.

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