E101 The UC Playbook : Discover Your Leadership Identity with Rich Hopkins

Ready to unlock the secrets of your leadership style? Get ready to revolutionize your communication skills as we dissect the world of leadership with our guest, Rich Hopkins. In a candid discussion, we shine a light on the main leadership styles - authoritarian, participative, and delegative - and how they shape the way we interact in the workplace. It doesn't stop there; we're taking things up a notch by delving into seven unique styles including autocratic, pace setting, transformational, coaching, democratic, affiliative, and delegative. We even touch on the laissez-faire leadership style and how it involves granting some autonomy to your team members.

Understanding your leadership style isn't just about being a boss, it is about connecting with others effectively. This episode serves as a guide to taking the reins of self-awareness and influence. We explore how knowing your leadership style can completely redefine the way you understand and communicate with others. This is more than just a podcast episode; it's an invitation to a journey of self-discovery. So, gear up for an eye-opening discussion, gain a deeper understanding of yourself, and prepare to make a bigger impact with your enhanced communication skills. Unearth your leadership style and transform your workplace dynamics today!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
You want to talk right down to us and a language
that everybody here can easilyunderstand.
What we got here is a failureto communicate.

(00:21):
Welcome to the UncommonKinecator Podcast, where we are
here to bring enlightenment tothe topic of communication.
Today, in today's UC Playbook,we're going to be discussing our
discussion with Rich Hopkinsand leadership and communication
.
We're going to dive into acouple of topics today talking
about leadership styles, alsotalking about some of the other

(00:45):
things that were brought upduring our conversation.
We'll leave that for the endand possibly an apology from the
Uncommon Kinecator, but let'sdive right into this Now.
Rich talked about leadershipstyles.
Now, one thing that I think isone of the most important things
that anybody should do,especially self-developers, is
know your leadership style.
That's where I recommend thatyou start To really know your

(01:08):
leadership style is really goingto help you understand other
people's leadership styles andhow to communicate better with
them.
Know yours first.
One thing they always recommendare the traditional formal
assessments.
I've taken several of them thedisc method.
I've also done one that didn'treally have a name.
It's very similar to the BriggsMeyer test.

(01:30):
Also, a great test to take isthe workplace genius Lencioni,
through his workplace geniuscomes up with some, really some
styles that really fit the workscenario.
I really enjoyed going throughthat.
All of them have a similarmessage.
That's one of the mostimportant things that you can
get is you can assess them allthese different ways.
They should be a common themein there.

(01:52):
That gets you to the pointwhere you really understand
yourself.
Then also, it helps youunderstand those a little bit
better, outside of thetraditional formal assessments
or the quality of kind ofself-examination, measuring
within yourself the presence oreven absence of different
leadership characteristics.
That all comes from reallytaking those assessments and

(02:13):
understanding those.
Now, through some research, theyhave really shown that there's
three main styles of leadershipAuthoritarian, which is that
autocratic.
Participative, also known asdemocratic.
And the delegative, thelaissez-faire, which what a
strange word that one is.
But anyways, I feel like thereshould be streamers and banners

(02:34):
and a parade or something, but Idon't know.
That's what I get when I seelaissez-faire.
Somebody doesn't care, but it'snot the case at all.
But one thing I really want topoint out is, within those
research, those three mainstyles the authoritarian,
participative and delegativethose all are really in line
with what Rich shared with us,which was leading from the front
, leading from the middle andleading from the back.

(02:56):
So, diving a little bit deeperinto those kind of topics that
we talked about, I think it'sfine to separate them into three
categories.
It's simple.
It separates them that way, butwe fit them into those three
categories, but we don't operatecompletely within those boxes.
So it's important to take thoseassessments and understand what

(03:17):
your styles really are so youcan understand yourself a little
bit better.
Then I'm going to go throughseven of them.
I've seen variousrepresentations that show eight,
that show 10, that show four.
Everybody's got one, but pickone that connects with you.
But I've got seven of them andas we talk through these, listen
in to see what you see inyourself and then also what do

(03:39):
you see in other leaders.
So you can now begin that kindof classification and
understanding how other peoplelead.
First one we start with is thatautocratic leadership, and we
talked a little bit about thatat the beginning.
It's really known as thatauthoritarian.
It's a leadership style that'salways characterized by an

(04:00):
individual control over alldecisions, little input from the
group members.
That is the guy in charge.
You see this a lot, you knowthem, you're thinking of them
right now it's a guy who'salways in charge.
Autocratic it is certainly aleadership style, and there's
been world leaders, dictators,good and bad, that have led the
world in this autocraticleadership.
The next one is pace settingleadership.

(04:23):
Now, pace setting is kind of aresults oriented style of
leadership that asks teammembers to match or exceed the
standard shown to them.
So you're setting the pace.
You're out there showing howthe work is going and people are
coming along with you andyou're leading them.
That way, you're pace setting.
Now, transformationalleadership that is the one
that's probably the mosteffective in bringing about

(04:45):
lasting change.
Here's a couple of names oftransformational leaders Henry
Ford, martin Luther King Jr,steve Jobs, people who have
transformed industries and ourworld.
That's that kind oftransformational leadership.
It's very effective in bringingsome change to this world, but
it takes a certain individual tobe able to lead that way.

(05:08):
Coaching Leadership CoachingLeadership is a style that
involves recognizing teammembers' strengths, weaknesses,
motivations, anything that helpsthat individual to improve.
You're looking into them andyou can see all the positives
and the negatives and then,within those motivations, you're
even learning what motivatesthem and what motivations they

(05:28):
need to improve, and that's animportant part about coaching
leadership.
The next one is DemocraticLeadership.
Now, democratic Leadership,also referred to as the
Participative Leadership.
It's a management style inwhich decision making is shared
among the team members.
Democratic it comes along withthe word that we talk about,

(05:53):
affiliative Leadership.
Now, these individuals portraytheir leadership traits through
promoting harmony and conflictresolution among teams.
They're the ones who's bringingeverybody together, bringing
the teams together and reallygetting everybody to come to
kind of a collaboration thattheir collaborators, the
affiliative leadership styles,are.
And the last one is theDelegative Leadership, and this

(06:15):
one we talked a little bit aboutit early on.
They are known as the LASA,fair Leadership.
I like to think of it as kindof that cool.
He's the laid back cousin ofthe Leadership Family.
Really, in a nutshell, he'shanding over the reins at least
some of them to your teammembers and letting them take
the wheel.
He's delegating, he knows howto hand the reins over and know
that that individual is alsogoing to learn from taking those

(06:38):
reins, and so they'resupporting that kind of
leadership.
Now, out of those seven stylesof leadership, three of them
kind of repeated off our threemain ones, remember, the
Autocratic, the DemocraticLeadership and the Delegative
all fit within that bubble ofthe three main ones, but we
operate in those other ones.
And which ones of those, whenyou heard that, did it click

(06:59):
with you and think that's me?
The other thing that mightcross your mind is I don't know
if any of them are me, andthat's fine, because now you
need to really dive into andunderstand what the traits are
of each of these individuallyand you can find out which one
you fit.
And here's, I think, the mostimportant thing in any form of
leadership.

(07:20):
Yes, leaders are born.
That is a true statement.
People have the natural abilityand skills that just fit them to
be any one of those styles ofleadership, but every one of
them can be learned.
Every one of them can transformyourself into that new person
to lead that way that you wantto lead.
Because that's the other sideof really being on.

(07:41):
That quantitative side ofassessment is do you look at
leaders and think I want to belike them?
Well, that's a great example towant to learn and change your
leadership style.
I know that my leadership stylehas changed over the years and
even in taking the tests theyhave changed in my even
self-assessment of myself.

(08:01):
But the results are changing aswe develop different leadership
skills to meet the needs of thepeople around us, and one of
the things that was reallyimportant, as Rich talked about
in our podcast, was you reallyneed to fit your style to the
group that you're leading, andthat's one of the most important
things and understanding allthese different leadership
styles is to really be able totransform how you lead to fit

(08:28):
those that you are leading.
Sometimes you need to beleading in front, sometimes you
really need to step back andgive somebody the reins to let
them shine, let them grow, letthem learn and this is a quote
from Rich as well, too Militarystyle.
Let's talk about that type ofleadership.
Generals typically aren't goingto lead their troops from the

(08:48):
front because they're consideredtoo valuable.
You know you have ranks andthose ranks aren't going to be
leading in the front.
You're going to be sending thecharge, giving the directions,
having the work be done by thefoot soldiers.
So that style of leadership,even though you are the general
of the military, you are stillgoing to delegate and you're

(09:09):
going to lead differently, andthat's okay.
It's really about leading withinfluence and leading with
impact.
One thing we briefly talkedabout was leading upward and
Rich had to have me clarify thatone a little bit.
But really leading upward meanshaving influence From any level
of your position, whateverlevel you're at.

(09:31):
In learning your level ofleadership, one of the things is
knowing that you can and haveinfluence on those ahead of you
If they value your input.
You may not have the position,but you will have the influence.
Now jump it into Rich's story ofDan and Jaya.
Now, dan and Jaya was a speakerwho won the International
Speech Contest with Toastmasters.

(09:52):
Now, rich had mentioned, wentthrough his story, which is
really neat.
I mean, they did a movie abouthim, they did a documentary.
You can get it on Amazon Prime,I think, for 199 or something
like that but it walks throughhis journey of becoming, and
working towards being, on thestage for the International
Speech Contest at ToastmastersInternational.

(10:14):
And here's a gentleman that henever met, saw the video and
said you know what, I'm notgoing to give up.
And Rich has this win anywayattitude, he has this win anyway
idea, which is just soinspirational.
But he found this out from thisDan and Jaya, that that's the
reason that he went on and thisguy won the International Speech
Contest and Rich has got closeand we're still rooting for Rich

(10:37):
.
Rich is going to get therebecause Rich's message is
amazing.
Win anyway.
But the idea from that is thatthere is influence that goes out
, that you lead in our leadingpeople without even knowing it,
and your influence and impactcan have an incredible effect on
the world.
Now, one thing this is wherethe uncommon apology comes in.

(11:00):
When I quoted Rich at the end ofthat episode, I quoted him
wrong, and not only that.
When I took a sound bite, I dida sound bite of myself quoting
Rich Of course I wanted to hearmyself say it and I quoted him
wrong again.
Now the quotes are very similar, but, just for clarification,
rich said this at the end of hisspeech.

(11:21):
He says are you living a lifeworth watching?
And that was all in tied tothis reference to Dana Giant and
people following and leadingare you living a life worth
watching?
Are you having impact?
Are you influencing?
Now, where I quoted Rich was,as I said, are you living a life

(11:41):
worth repeating?
Very similar though, and I'mgoing to attribute both of those
to Rich.
Rich gets the gets theattribution for those quotes,
because both of those things areimpactful for our lives, and I
don't want to go anywherewithout thinking about the power
of that.
In fact, during our session, Ihad to pause and think about it,

(12:02):
because it really did.
It had an impact on me.
Are you living a life worthwatching?
Are you living a life worthrepeating Now?
Are you seeing moment for today?
First, let's do a quick summary.
We did talk about the differentleadership styles.
You have to know yourleadership style, and when you
know your leadership style, youcan assess others, and then

(12:23):
you're going to know how tocommunicate with others.
So it's very important to knowyour leadership styles.
I challenge you to go out andlook into what is your
leadership style.
The next thing is know aboutinfluence and that you have
influence on people.
Even when you don't know it,even when you're not trying, you
will be influencing people,especially if you are living a

(12:46):
life worth watching.
So, are you see moment fortoday is this know yourself
first, then you will know othersbetter.
And that's all I've got fortoday.
See you, bye.