Les McKeown's Predictable Success Blog

  • December 9, 2011
  • minute read

What's your style? 

In my book, “The Synergist: Leading Your Team to Predictable Success” I show that all leaders exhibit one of three natural leadership styles:Take a look and see if you can spot which you are. (When you’ve had a guess, take the free quiz at the end to see if you’re right.)

The Visionary operates at 30,000 feet, is most comfortable working on long-term, strategic issues, embraces change and risk, and needs frequent exposure to both in order to feel satisfied and useful. They are often charismatic, are great communicators, and seek to build a tight, loyal team around them.

The ‘V’ style is typically freewheeling, energetic, visionary, creative and fast.

The Operator works at the front line translating strategies into action. They bulldoze their way past obstacles and are most fulfilled when overcoming problems by devising practical, if improvised solutions. ‘O’s are uncomfortable with a vacuum, preferring clear direction, and despite being highly motivational often find it hard to delegate, instead depending on their team to act as self-starters.

The ‘O’ style is typically task-focused; energetic; results-oriented; short-term; fast.

The Processor thrives on systems and processes, delivering success and growth by iteration and constant improvement. Risk-averse and skeptical by nature, the Processor lives for data, eschews intuitive leaps of faith and bases decisions only on measurable, objective criteria.

Not as naturally gregarious as the other two styles, the Processor will often build a tight team of like-minded individuals who together put in prodigious hours crunching data and running scenarios. The ‘P’ is typically Technical; analytical; task-focused; short-term; slow and steady.

You can take the free quiz to see what your natural dominant and secondary styles are here.

When you view your results, you’ll see something else in the mix – ‘The Synergist‘. This is a fourth, learned style. It only rarely shows up as a ‘natural’ style like the first three, but is in fact the secret to effective teams and groups.

You may show trace elements of the Synergist style in your results, or you may be one of the (very few) ‘natural Synergists – take the quiz to find out.

Next week I’ll share more about what the Synergist style is, why it is so important, and how to develop it.

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