Leadership Types

I found this very helpful matrix for understanding the kind of leader you are as well as the type of leaders you have around you:

The eight archetypes I have found to be most prominent are:

• The strategist: leadership as a game of chess. These people are good at dealing with developments in the organisation’s environment. They provide vision, strategic direction and outside-the-box thinking to create new organisational forms and generate future growth.
• The change-catalyst: leadership as a turnaround activity. These executives love messy situations. They are masters at re-engineering and creating new organisational ‘‘blueprints’’.
• The transactor: leadership as deal making. These executives are great dealmakers. Skilled at identifying and tackling new opportunities, they thrive on negotiations.
• The builder: leadership as an entrepreneurial activity. These executives dream of creating something and have the talent and determination to make their dream come true.
• The innovator: leadership as creative idea generation. These people are focused on the new. They possess a great capacity to solve extremely difficult problems.
• The processor: leadership as an exercise in efficiency. These executives like organisations to be smoothly running, well-oiled machines. They are very effective at setting up the structures and systems needed to support an organisation’s objectives.
• The coach: leadership as a form of people development. These executives know how to get the best out of people, thus creating high performance cultures.
• The communicator: leadership as stage management. These executives are great influencers, and have a considerable impact on their surroundings.

Working out the type of leader you are and what kind of people you have on your team can work wonders for a team’s effectiveness. It helps in recognising how you and your colleagues can each make their best contributions. Designing an effective executive role constellation will in turn create a culture of mutual support and trust, reduce team stress and conflict, and make for more creative problem solving. Thus by using the psychodynamic approach, paying attention to the underlying drivers of interpersonal, group, and organisational cultural dynamics, individuals, teams, and organisations will benefit greatly.

Manfred Kets De Vries is the Distinguished Professor of Leadership Development & Organisational Change at INSEAD and the Programme Director of The Challenge of Leadership, one of INSEAD’s Top Executive Development Programmes.

Read more at http://knowledge.insead.edu/leadership-management/first-know-yourself-then-your-team-3510#keYg7aUgiXrI6xWR.99