What is your type of leadership?

Being a leader is not the easiest task in the world. If you are a leader, you will face a lot of challenges: engage your team, make sure everyone is heard, measure success, steer your team into the right directions, represent the principles that should be followed and the hardest of all, admit when you are wrong. Being a tech lead has even more challenges, besides the common ones, you have the understand the stack your team is using and why you are using it.

But different situations may require different kinds of leadership. In my three years working with various extension groups during my college, I became familiar with both the leader and the led roles, and in these experiences, I could divide those leaders into 3 types:

Idea Leaders

This type of leader has followers because he/she represents an ideal, him/her followers wanna be like their leader. The leader is an ideal of its area, he/she has a broad knowledge of the field. This knowledge is very useful for them, because even in situations that they aren't 95% sure of what they should do -- nobody is 100% sure of what they should do next, but this is a topic for another post --, they come up with various possible solutions, and discuss with their teams the best ones. These leaders are the ones thinking outside the box, these are the geniuses.

Tech leads show this type more regularly because most of them are specialists in what their team is doing. They understand every look and cranny of the application, they know how to optimize every bit of it and what you should do in an emergency situation.

Kindness Leaders

The main feature of this leader is its kindness, besides the common ones I listed in the beginning. They become leaders because they care about other people, their feelings and well being in a special manner. These are the most humane leaders, their followers feel like they could be in any situation, personal or professional, and the leader would help with it, or at least comfort and care.

In the tech industry, this type makes your life more pleasant, he/she helps you being productive by making you feel like you're at home safe and sound. They make enjoyable being at work, and they know how to create the best working environment possible.

Courage Leaders

These people arise in times of crisis and big uncertainty, they are the people with the guts to take on any problem, big or small, simple or complicated. The courage type has its strength in action, people follow them, because of its efficiency and relentlessness. They are not viewed as a goal to achieve, unlike the idea category, they are viewed as people who lead other people into battles, solve the big crisis and reinstall the calm state. If we were talking in medieval terms, the "idea leader" would be the strategist of the battle, predicting every possible outcome of the battle, while the courage leader would be the one to lead the warriors into battle.

This leader type is the best one to make tough choices, they are the pioneers in the tech industry, they enjoy being in the frontier of knowledge. For them, it feels like a battlefield, where they can show who they really are, and bring not just results, but the best result possible.

Conclusion

A good leader should be able to see through a crisis, help him / her team to overcome obstacles while caring for this team. If you are a leader, tell me: What kind of leader are you? Do you believe people can transit between different types of leadership? I do believe it, and more often then not, they show 2 out of the 3 types simultaneously.