How to become an even better and more effective leader

From a formal meeting to an informal coffee moment: every gathering asks a different kind of leadership from a manager. There is no one-size-fits-all approach for every situation. A manager who thinks ‘the other person can just adapt to me’ does not survive long in the role these days.

Ask for feedback regularly

Effective leadership, which is what we are talking about here, starts with taking responsibility for your own behaviour and then developing it to the highest attainable level. To reach that goal, you as a successful manager regularly ask your colleagues for feedback on what is going well and what could be better. On the basis of their information you look in the mirror.

To begin with, know your own drivers

To be able to look in that mirror properly, you have to have knowledge of your own drivers. A MyDrives personality analysis based on the MyDrives colour theory provides clear and indispensable insights here. You learn what your most important drivers are, which largely determine your behaviour. You also find out what your strengths and pitfalls are and how you can avoid those pitfalls.

Five tips

These five tips help you become an even better and more effective leader.

1. Know what your own drivers are and those of your colleagues

Knowing your own drivers, with the strengths and pitfalls that go with them, sounds logical in theory, perhaps even stating the obvious. But then there is still practice. Try asking someone what exactly they want, or what their strong and weak points are. Or try describing yourself clearly. There is a good chance you will not come up with an all-encompassing answer straight away. The MyDrives personality analysis helps you develop your self-insight. Once you have that self-insight, you are ready for the next important step: understanding the people around you better.

2. Sharing the same drivers is recognisable, but beware of exaggeration

When the team you lead has the same drivers, there is a strong chance of exaggeration. That is the case above all when a team is under pressure. Teams with a predominantly green driver, for instance, then start communicating more, and teams with a predominantly yellow driver start analysing more. As a manager it is then advisable, with one-sided teams working under stress, to prevent team members from displaying, usually unconsciously, more of the same behaviour in order to solve a problem. What works well is looking at the solution to a problem from different angles, that is to say from different drivers.

3. Strong leadership starts with positive behaviour

Positive behaviour is helpful behaviour that contributes to achieving objectives. Your colleagues usually experience your helpful behaviour as a manager as positive too. Negative behaviour, by contrast, they see as unconstructive, and you then have to take all kinds of irritation into account. In that latter case your most important drivers can be your biggest pitfall. A manager with a predominantly red driver, for example, is alert, quick and action-oriented. The pitfall can then be that they start displaying impatient and forceful behaviour that startles others.

4. Do not put yourself or your colleagues in a box, but discover personal qualities

A MyDrives colour profile shows crystal clearly who you are and, above all, what you want. Although one colour suits you better than another, there is never a single colour that sums up all your drivers. You are not a bright red jumper, a deep blue summer sky or a vivid yellow egg yolk. You are, like everyone else, a many-coloured human being. So do not put yourself in a box, and do not do it with your colleagues either. Do look for the personal qualities that characterise you as a manager and your colleagues. And appreciate those qualities too. An example: respect the extremely meticulous way of working of someone with a predominantly blue driver, and do not see it as nitpicking.

5. Adapt your behaviour

When you are aware that in a particular situation you are looking through your own coloured, and therefore subjective, lens, you can estimate in advance what you will make of that situation. You can also, as it were, predict how a colleague sees you once you understand which coloured lens that person is looking through. Then you also know how to adapt your behaviour. That can only benefit the collaboration.

In summary If you put these five tips into practice you have a solid foundation for developing leadership further in yourself and in others. So that a culture arises that lets people and organisations excel.