How would you navigate working with differing leadership styles in this role?
People who worked through the ranks to high-level positions vary in leadership style and approach. Refresh yourself on the differing classifications of leadership styles to speak effectively about your experience working with each. Share your individualized approach to training those leaders to improve their employee engagement. As DDI says on its site, "In a world where every employee is re-evaluating their relationship to work, people are looking for more than just a job. They want to work where they make a meaningful contribution. That's why employee engagement is essential to your talent retention and attraction strategy. Solving the employee engagement problem is really a culture problem. And fixing it requires some major changes in leaders' behavior."
"I have received training on working with the most common leadership styles in the sales industry: transformational leadership, transactional leadership, autocratic leadership, bureaucratic leadership, and democratic leadership. I also fully understand the characteristics and personality traits that leaders in each style display. I have experience training an autocratic leader to promote teamwork within his department due to low morale. For this leader, it was important for me to personalize my approach by teaching him about his leadership style and the pros and cons. After that, I focused on his team and their performance and how his approach could help impact that positively. Moving forward from our training, his team felt a positive uptick in their morale and production."
"Having worked with leaders across my current organization, I quickly realized that every leader works in and is motivated by their own unique set of circumstances. And because of this, I need to take a personalized approach to training. I've worked with leaders who had a hard time delegating work and ruled with an iron fist. For these leaders, a direct approach and a focus on teamwork and recognition were crucial. I've also worked with leaders on the opposite end of that spectrum who approached leadership from a very hands-off perspective and were successful more on the administrative side of their roles. With these leaders, I emphasized establishing standards and procedures for their departments and promoting their involvement with their teams. I think my versatility would be an advantage here at DDI."
