One of the courses I attended during the MBA program at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile was called Leadership of Entrepreneurs, where we went through the different leadership styles (grouped broadly as transformational, transactional and laissez faire) and the benefits and downsides of each style. Our final assessment was writing a personal essay reflecting upon our leadership styles and basically what we took away from the class.
Below is the (slightly modified) paper that I submitted.
Throughout the duration of this course, I found quite a few things to be interesting revelations. I, of course, had my own preconceived ideas of how a leader should be, what leadership means, and how one goes about leading people. These ideas shaped my behaviour in situations where I was the leader. In order to reflect on my own personal leadership style and what I have learned over the course of the last few months, I thought it best to adopt a narrative approach with analysis to highlight the before and after of my enlightenment.
Let’s start with the first time I was officially chosen as a leader.
In school, we had always had class ‘monitors’ or representatives.
In some schools, we had full blown student councils, bodies supposedly formed to further the interests of the student body.
In others, there were only representatives for each individual class for internal class issues with no connection between these different representatives. I had been representative in these independent roles once or twice. Basically, what this person does is be in charge of the class when the teacher is away and act as their assistant in class sometimes. For the representatives on the student council, there were real elections. I participated in the first such election when I started the tenth grade. After a rigorous campaign, I won. I was the leader of the year tens and I was part of the student government of the school for a year.
At this stage, leadership did not mean much to most of us. We saw this as an opportunity to lord ourselves over the rest of the school. We won the elections on fake promises. Actually we genuinely meant everything we said but we also knew that we probably couldn’t deliver (such as promising extra holidays and international school trips). We sought the counsel of our friends but were strict/cold/curt with the rest. As far as I can tell, the council and I had a transactional style of leadership. I think that is to be expected because the transactional style was one of the main attractions of the council. As a teenager, nothing is better than being able to boss your fellow students around with the blessing of the school administration. In fact, the school actively supported our style. If students complained about us, they would get the standard replies: do what they say; they are the elected representatives, go talk to them; and such.
This little anecdote has quite a huge significance. It was my first formal brush with leadership, however limited the impact of that might have been. My behaviour, the behaviour of the other leaders and of the students all showed an acceptance of transactional leadership. People accepted that style and sought to replicate it themselves. It instilled in me the belief that the leader was always right, had (almost) absolute power, and was on top of the food chain or the pyramid. What this also meant was that you needed to be at the top if you were to be somebody, if you wanted to make yourself heard and heeded. The effects of that time are still evident in my behaviour today, sometimes.
As luck would have it, I got to experiment with other types of leadership, that is to say, leadership in different contexts. Now, we fast forward to my first year at university.
When I started university, a couple of months into the semester, I found an advertisement for the post of coordinator of the senior buddy program, SBP, at Stockholm Business School (SBS), where I got my bachelor’s degree. I applied and got selected as the program coordinator. The position entailed being in charge of all the exchange students at SBS. Since they do not already have friends in Stockholm, it was my job, when they arrived, to make sure that they got a proper welcome, that they got to know each other, that they had guides for the city and university and probably most important of all: social activities.
This opportunity to be a leader was vastly different from what I was used to. In the period between my high school leadership stint and the job as head of the SBP, I was part of various teams in different capacities. As do most teams, we also had our captains. These captains had different leadership styles. Some preferred a close friendship with their teammates and others cordial relations. Yet others segmented the teams and established rigid hierarchies. I have worked with people at university who refused to listen to what I had to say unless it went through the ‘proper channels’. I found that to be unnecessarily cumbersome. But I also learned that leadership does not mean the same thing to all of us. That is why, once I became head of the SBP, I adopted a style of leadership different from my high school days.
Leading is, in part, about how you deal with others but also your own actions. Micromanaging the work of others is also a bad trait I got from my time under constant transactional leadership. I sometimes do not think people capable of getting their jobs done and that I need to supervise them to get the optimal result. I think that is due in part to my own insecurities, partly because I think myself better, partly because I think them unreliable. All of these reasons are only valid in my head and are, at times, not a reflection of how capable the people I am working with are. I think it stems from my own feelings, that I am indeed better than others, which is a complete conjecture of my imagination. In order to lead people, one must trust them.
That is another aspect that I am working on to improve my leadership skills. Letting the people work as they please until I have a reason to suggest otherwise instead of imposing my way on others from the get go.
Why I mention this in connection to my experience at the head of SBP is important. Mainly because I want to highlight the transition from the kind of leader I was during my time in high school to the kind of leader I think I am today to whom I want to be as a leader.
In my experience in life, limited as it is, I have noticed that people tend to believe in a certain type of leadership and that is the transactional kind. For a very long period, I thought that was the only true way to lead. I was a transactional type of leader in school. It was important to me to be in the council, to be a leader for a number of reasons: my position in the school social ladder; the perception that people might have of me; the relationship that would develop between me and the school (council members were known to get a few extra privileges). To sum it all up: my ego. I had to be a leader for my own good more than for others.
The foremost priority for me was what I could get out of it and not others. It was also important then that people obey what I say, just like that.
But since then, including university, I have mostly been doing projects on a voluntary basis where basically the team did everything behind the scenes and presented the finished project for display, whether it is the SBP or other programs. And working on these volunteer projects taught me a lot. The glory and satisfaction does not come from outshining others but from the result of your collective efforts. In situations such as these, I think it is important that the team band together to do their best for the sake of the task at hand. Establishing hierarchies in situations such as these appear pointless — nigh futile — to me.
So being a leader means everyone going ahead together, with help being offered to those who need it.
This brings me to my main point, and the reasons why the preceding paragraphs were background information.
For me it is quite important that a leader, whether it is me or someone else, is generally of the transformational kind. I say generally because I understand that it is not the best type of leadership. But that also ties in with my own personal perceptions. I understand of course that folks in the military wouldn’t be too keen on an overly ‘democratic’ leader, which I associate with the transformational type of leadership. But I am of the opinion that one should only lead those that want to be led. This can be done in many ways.
Mr. Wolf, Vince, and Jules clean up a murder!
Allow me to qualify that. Let’s take the example of a movie we watched in class: Pulp Fiction. In the sticky situation that the main characters found themselves in (video above), they called their boss Marcelo who then talked to his own clean up guy, Mr Wolf. Mr Wolf was then dispatched to clear up the mess that the other two guys made.
People’s reactions to leadership styles might even depend on their own perception of their self-worth. Let’s take Vince’s reaction to Mr Wolf’s instructions. People might feel inferior if someone is always claiming to know better than they do. Vince is a man who takes pride in his work and at being the best. He had made a name for himself around that reputation. Then in strides Mr Wolf feeling all superior and bossing Vince around. His reaction is something I have done myself previously and something I actively try to resist and suppress within myself.
Perhaps the resistance occurs when people do not understand what they are doing, why they are doing it and there is no ownership, on their part, of the task at hand. But we also need to understand that there was a need for Mr Wolf’s service. And we see that even with his curt style, he got the job done exactly as required.
Like I mentioned before about my own school experience, I think transactional style creates a lot of resentment even in the workplace. You make yourself feel better by bringing down others. You try when you are in power, in turn, to replicate that and to make up for all you suffered at the hands of other. Your gain is the other person’s loss. Such a style is not sustainable, I believe, because a work place with such an environment is toxic and harmful for all present.
Some people find it hard to obey or follow as it negatively impacts their own self-image. This is the kind of thing I would like to be able to tackle as a leader. Being able to get people to trust me to the point where confiding feelings (such as insecurities regarding the job) would not leave the other person feeling like a lesser or weaker person. Sometimes people resist offers of help and are vicious in their rejection. And having been on the other end of that already, I’d like to be able to look past that. In the past, I have taken things said in frustration as attacks on me personally. I’d like to develop an understanding of why people act the way they do and appeal to that when leading.
Quiet leadership is one response that comes to mind. This does not necessarily mean that one has to be in the middle of the work pyramid to be such a leader. Even if I were at the top, I’d like to be able to relate with the people I am working with. I think I could mould myself into that type of leader with a bit of effort because I already do things the way that is typical of a quiet leader. Even right now, when I work with people, I try my best to always give examples from my own life when trying to nudge them in a certain direction. I feel such anecdotes help us understand each other and relate to one another which then makes the decision to move in a certain direction that much easier to take. In other words, inspiring each other to attain your collective goals.
I have also come to understand that communication is critical.
I’d rather know what a person is thinking, good or bad, than have the person tell me what they think I want to hear. I have come across leaders who try as a leader; it would aid me in deciding which approach to adopt in rectifying the problem or situation at hand. I think the structure of hierarchies sometimes pre-empts this, which is one more reason why I am hesitant about being a transactional leader.
That being said, I will freely admit that I myself sometimes prefer it when I am dealing with a rigid structure. I do not think my self-discipline is strong enough at all times to just be left to my own devices. I sometimes do not like doing things that I should be doing just because I don’t feel like it. But at the same time, when I know the consequences of what I am doing or not doing to be exact, it motivates me to work faster. This is also one of the problems I face as a leader. I think there are people who behave the same way as me.
I noticed a need for transactional leadership already when I was in high school. Most of my life, I went to private school. With that came a lot of rules and rigidity. For example, I had to wear the school uniform properly every day. You could not come to school without a tie, or if your shoes weren’t properly polished and shining black. Even your hygiene was checked, that is, how clean your clothes were, whether you combed your hair, whether your nails were clipped. Some days, you’d only get a warning, some days punishment and other days, you would just be sent back home, which was a big deal. All of this was inspected at the morning assembly where we performed military-style exercises and there were recitations. I grew up in a strict environment where transactional style of leadership was the order of the day. I think it is because of that that I grew up wanting to replicate that.
Because of the authority that comes with this style of leadership.
Perhaps you will be able to glean from my flip-flopping that while I definitely have a preference for the transformational style of leadership, I cannot definitively choose one side over the other because I think both have their uses. They are very situation dependent and whatever my personal thoughts on the matter, I think the situation dictates when to adopt which style of leadership.
One of the main components of being a good leader is to understand when a situation is hopeless and when one should simply give up and not waste more resources, time or others, to rectify that situation. Some things simply cannot be fixed just like that and it is would be a useful skill to know when and where to draw the line.
This reflective essay in its entirety is my takeaway from Leadership of Entrepreneurs. I do not think I would have been able to analyse or assess my behaviour in this way before our discussions in class. Not to say that I had no clue that there were different styles of leadership but that I did not realise there so many different ways of doing it. I got confirmation that my decision to not be a leader like before was correct and that thoughtlessly replicating the previous styles was wrong.
Another of the key conclusions that I have drawn from this course is that one simply cannot expect to lead others without understanding oneself. Therefore, starting now, I will try to apply and implement everything I have learned. After the SBP program, my next leadership stint is running the TEDx program at Stockholm University. I hope to be able to demonstrate, to myself more than anyone else, that I am indeed capable of leading others to a successful project.