The ideal leadership blend for Stage 2 is Coaching, Pacesetting, and Commanding.
A Stage 2 leader captains the team, exemplifies a standard of high performance, and exerts influence to achieve success. This ideal blend results in the best of both worlds: a team that is being developed and encouraged by a leader who demonstrates high performance and conclusive decision-making.
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.
As a coach, the leader of a Stage 2 company needs to be someone who develops the team, identifying and grooming strong performers who can grow into the supervisors and managers that are needed as the company grows.
In the Ramp-Up stage, having a coaching leader who focuses on and builds the team’s potential is important to attract and keep high performers.
Secondary Leadership Style: Pacesetting
Pacesetting leaders set the bar for success and exemplify high standards in the organization. In Stage 2, this is important to keep momentum going.
The Pacesetting style ensures the organization understands how to properly deliver the products and services to customers based on the leader’s personal expertise and experience.
Tertiary Leadership Style: Commanding
Commanding leaders exert forceful direction to get results and make decisions. This is an important style to round out the leadership style blend because an organization in Ramp-Up mode needs to continue advancing, and a decisive leader allows them to. Without Commanding as the tertiary style, the company can easily become stuck while waiting on important decisions to be made. A leader employing the Commanding style takes charge to lead the organization through the fast-changing environment that can typify the Ramp-Up Stage.
Leadership Style Blend Misalignment
The CEO of a company that restores classic cars got into the business because it was his passion. As someone who lives and breathes automobiles, he never minded working long hours or making personal sacrifices to keep the business afloat. Now he has a thriving business with 13 employees and is excited to keep growing. He has big plans to add additional shops and expand to new locations.
As the business has grown, though, some things have changed. The like-minded employees he started out with were always able to meet his high standards and shared his same vision. With a bigger team, he finds that he is double-checking their work and settling disputes with dissatisfied customers. Quality has slipped. His solution is to gather his core team and give them pep talks—remind them of why they love this work and what they’re shooting for—but they complain about a lack of structure, guidance, and the personal development needed to grow additional leaders.
This CEO’s natural Leadership Style is Visionary, which served him well when he started out on his own and was recruiting investors and his core team. With a bigger team, though, he needs to start building into his employees more through the Coaching style. They need more than just a vision to do their jobs. Primarily, he should be developing two to three supervisors, because by mentoring them and developing their understanding of the business, they could implement structure that would bring clarity and focus to the staff.
The concepts from this article were taken from The Ramp-up 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 11-19 employees.