Leadership and the Adaptive Self with Dr Richard Claydon.

Have you ever been asked to discover your own leadership style? I know plenty who have. But what lies behind it?

Leadership studies has been long dominated by the idea that there are different types of leader that need to fit the situation they are leading in order to be successful. The classic binary was task-oriented and relationship-oriented leadership.

• Task-oriented leaders should focus on doing things
• Relationship-oriented leaders should focus on developing people.

This was termed contingency leadership. Over time, this became increasingly more complex, with academics identifying more types and more situations to fit more and more types of self into. For example, Vroom’s Normative Model of Decision-making has five types of leader to fit into seven different situational variables.

The problem?

While this worked in laboratories, it was too complicated for real-world leadership environments. I can tell you from experience, it is horrible to teach.

Today, the call to know your personal leadership style relates to the strengths-based leadership assumptions that there are an almost infinite number of types of person and that everybody can lead as long as they develop their core strengths effectively.

The problem?

The strengths you are developing might not match at all with the environmental context. How you are trying to lead might toxically clash with the situational requirements.

In this DD, we will discuss three very questions (which might have complex answers).

• Why does leadership theory assume a fixed self?
• Is the self adaptable and flexible?
• Can an adaptable model of self deliver far more effective leadership practices? 

Dr Richard Claydon is the co-founder of EQ Lab, and the designer of the Future of Leadership module at Macquarie Business School’s Global MBA Program (ranked #6 globally by CEO Magazine).

He was awarded the highest achievable marks for a Ph.D in behavioural science. A Harvard Top-200 Management expert and business columnists for the Guardian newspaper have described this research as “a touchstone for the future work in management and organisation”, “outstanding in daring imagination” and “at the forefront of modern discussion and debate.”

Richard is a tier one tennis player, have coached tennis professionally, and also designed the tactics creator for the multi award-winning and world-leading management simulation, Football Manager.