The ideal leadership blend for Stage 4 is Coaching, Affiliative, and Pacesetting.
Primary Leadership Style: Coaching
The Coaching leader communicates a belief in people's potential and an expectation that they do their best. The coach regularly provides feedback and instruction and is willing to put up with short-term failure if it furthers long-term learning.
The Coaching style is critical in Stage 4 because it supports the development of professional managers. Stage 4 requires the leader to personally involve themselves in the growth of their direct reports, including investing time developing the management team.
In the Professional stage, developing a professional management team—or at least making progress in that direction—is the most critical requirement.
Secondary Leadership Style: Affiliative
Affiliative leaders build tremendous loyalty and strengthen connectedness by recognizing that employees have individual value. The Affiliative style is needed in Stage 4 to create an emotional connection between the employees and the organization because the number of employees has increased so rapidly. A leader can use the Affiliative style to affirm that no one has become “just a number.”
The organization should have successfully completed the owner-centric to enterprise-centric transition in Stage 3. In this more established phase as an enterprise-centric business, the Affiliative style serves to heighten team harmony and improve communication.
Creating a harmonious environment where employees feel valued is critical as the organization continues growing.
Tertiary Leadership Style: Pacesetting
Pacesetting leaders hold and exemplify high standards for performance. They set the bar for success and show through their actions both what it looks like and that it’s achievable. This is critical to set clear expectations for a management team that is taking on more responsibility in Stage 4 and beyond.
Without a leader continually finding ways to improve and grow people in the organization, a larger organization can become stagnant. In Stage 4, a Pacesetting leader is needed to keep the organization moving forward and constantly improving.
The most common misalignment in Stage 4 is a leader who fails to adopt the Affiliative style. This can be a challenging style to learn, especially for leaders who excel in the Commanding or Pacesetting style. The absence of the Affiliative style results in a team that does not feel connected or loyal to the organization or the work, which can result in high turnover and disengaged employees.
The second most common misalignment is an over-reliance on the Commanding and Pacesetting styles. While Stage 4 does recognize Pacesetting as a tertiary need, leaders who employ Commanding or Pacesetting as their primary leadership styles at this Stage will be less effective. Developing a capable management team that leads strong departments is critical, but good candidates for those management roles may choose to leave if they are being led with Commanding and Pacesetting styles.
Leadership Style Blend Misalignment
The CEO of a skincare company has grown the business successfully to 49 employees. She is proud of her company culture and the fact that everyone’s voice is heard, no matter their position. Despite the increasing size of the business, she wants to hold on to some of those core values that they started with. That’s why she makes it a priority that no big decisions are to be made without consensus from the entire team—especially decisions regarding the products themselves.
While the staff are appreciative of the importance placed on their opinions, the managers are becoming increasingly frustrated. They don’t have clear direction on initiatives and it’s almost impossible to make decisions. Their frustration comes to a head when the rollout of a new product line is delayed. Despite months of conversations, deliberations, and compromises, production was halted at the last moment when the CEO decided there wasn’t enough unity of opinion to move forward.
This CEO is still trying to lead using the Democratic style, which was necessary in Stage 3. It is no longer serving the best interest of the company, however. With nearly 50 employees, it’s simply not practical for everyone to have a say in every decision. If she continues in this direction, she risks losing her management team, which is struggling to get anything accomplished. The company cannot handle continued setbacks in getting new products to market.
The concepts from this article were taken from The Professional Stage: Organizational ReWilding Rules for Business Growth. Available through The ReWild Group and Amazon, the book explores in-depth this and other concepts while providing illustrations to help business leaders incorporate the ideas into their organizations. Get your copy today to learn the rules for growth for companies with 35-57 employees.