Task vs People Leadership

Knowing your leadership style is knowing how you relate and influence others. And it's super important as we build our personal meaningful revolutions to know how we interact with people. Because the leader that knows their strengths, knows their weaknesses, knows where they might have blind spots, is going to be the most effective leader that they can be.

And if you don't know, you fall into. The stakes or decisions that don't help serve your costs, and we want to make sure that you're maximizing the good that you're putting out in the world. So it's important for everyone to know their leadership style, and especially between two different poles, task oriented or people oriented.

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Transcript: 

 Knowing your leadership style is knowing how you relate and influence others. And it's super important as we build our personal meaningful revolutions to know how we interact with people. Because the leader that knows their strengths, knows their weaknesses, knows where they might have blind spots, is going to be the most effective leader that they can be.

And if you don't know, you fall into. The stakes or decisions that don't help serve your costs, and we want to make sure that you're maximizing the good that you're putting out in the world. So it's important for everyone to know their leadership style, and especially between two different poles, task oriented or people oriented.

Hey everyone. I'm Shawn Buttner, certified high performance coach and host of the Meaningful Revolution Podcast, and today we're gonna be talking. The leadership style between task and people oriented leaders. And why is this important? First off, there's a million different ways that you can define leadership and measure leadership or think and discuss about it, but I think it's really important to know that task- oriented people, oriented leaders are needed for any organization, right?

Task leaders. Really focus on driving results and, managing resources and timelines. And they're a hundred percent dedicated to realizing organizational goals. And you need people to get stuff done. So that's why task leaders are super important. People leaders tend to think about developing talent and your people and support of achieving organizational goals.

So it's a little bit more hands off maybe in guiding results. But the overarching theory is if you develop people to be better professionals, to be better leaders themselves, that you'll get those results. And again, both are needed in your business, in your team or company. Because if you're too task focused, you get people that will, you'll miss the warning signs essentially that people are burnt out or.

They'll get fed up and they leave at critical moments in the organization. If you're too people focused, you might not make those unpopular, but necessary decisions to help keep the business hold, help keep the project on, track, or to help you advance at a reasonable level of progress. So thinking about which type of leader are.

Are you more task oriented, right? Or are you more people focused? And I bring this up because my first tech job at Walmart, I had a really great set of examples of, different types of folks and I, that's where I first heard this concept of task versus people oriented leaders. And so I had, I was part of a team and there was

leader. This guy Frank, and I'll say his last name, he was a really great guy. He is a former Marine and he led our development team for a little bit. He was a new manager, I think at the time, years and years ago. But Frank, being a Marine, being very mission focused was very, put everything on the line type of a manager.

So you. We'd have a project due, we'd expect everyone to stay in the office until it was complete, which could mean like 80 to 120 hour work weeks, which is not an exaggeration. Like it was really crazy on, oh, we gotta get this done, all hands on deck. And then you're expected to still show up, eh, not take any recovery time.

And, which is fine, like it was really good for getting that project done. But when you push people too, And you don't give them that, that chance to catch their breath to, to rejuvenate after a hard push people burn out, right? And so you stop loving your job. You stop giving forth your best effort.

You start to minimize what you're doing day to day because it doesn't matter if you do your best or not. Like you're just going to feel tired all the time in that particular example. So that was a little bit of an. And as part of his learning process, I think he got better as time went on.

Versus another manager. I had Joe, who, Joe knew that if you were up all night on trying to fix a problem for one of the, clients that you needed some time to sleep because that'll help you make clear decisions. And Joe was really good at, making sure people were getting what they needed.

And we're, also taking opportunities to grow at the same time. So those are two different kinds of, leaders. Joe was very people focused. And so again ideally if you're a leader, you're a little bit of both and you have a good mix of that. If you are too people focused or task focused, again, it's gonna be really tough for you.

So again, this comes back to, are you more of a. Oriented leader or more of a people oriented leader in that type of role. And that leads me to the first point, right? As we're talking and thinking about leadership styles. So we're thinking about what is your deep purpose, your deep mission that personal, meaningful revolution that you're doing for your business or your you're doing because it's a cause that's close to You What is your leadership style? How much do you lean towards task versus people? If you had any blind spots are they, does it tend to be, oh, I never noticed that people were overworking and weren't getting what they needed and so they pulled back. Is it? I can never get the projects in on time.

Cuz I'm too focused on how much people feel. From my personal experience, Wal Walmart had a good mix of both types of leaders and so depending on who you were working for at the time, you'd have a good balance. And at Apple is actually pretty interesting. They tended to be more task focused, so a lot of my work as a software engineer on the team was kind checking in on people when there was a.

Event at work where people got angry or whatever Hey, are you okay? What's going on? And so making sure that people felt heard and felt like they were contributing to the team or felt didn't feel like nobody saw the terrible behavior that went on was part of what I, feel like I was really good at there.

I tend to be a little bit more people focus. But again, like I strive to be more balanced in that you have to get results, you have to get your projects in on time. As a solopreneur, as someone that is doing this content and trying to get people into my coaching business and my meaningful revolution community.

Part of being more task focused is making sure that things are getting finished and advanced. The business can make money. So that's again, another example why you need, you want a mix of people. And so when I hire my first employee, it will probably be someone with a little bit more task focused to help balance out my people focus.

Make sense? Okay. Point number two. And guys, I just talked about it. It's to identify a counter style person on your team to hire that person. Make sure you're having regular meetings and make sure that not, you're not butting heads, but that all the different types of perspectives are addressed when trying to make a decision.

And it's not to slow you down. It's not, again, to prevent you from leaning into the style of leadership that you have in this two pole type of framework, again, task where people ran it, but it's to make sure that you can identify areas where you might not see there's a problem. Like sending your whole team to go on a training when you have a deadline in two days is not a great thing.

It's pretty obvious it's those types of things where maybe if you're inclined to just say yes to training, that having someone to be like, Hey, like we have this thing do. Maybe do that later so I think that's really important. Third thing that, in trying to identify your coaching style and this dual framework is to actually find a mentor coach.

And at Walmart I had a senior manager who was helping me talk through how I was showing up as a leader. And, oh, this is something that's also really important. Everyone is a leader. It doesn't matter if you have formal authority as the boss at the job or you just are on a team when you work with people in, when you're in your family if you're a parent, if you're a kid, like there are opportunities for you to take leadership in that relationship.

And then again, for me, I had a, senior manager that helped helped me. Explore my leadership style and explore oh, are you more people? We're task focused. Okay. What do you think about this scenario? And, so that's another reason why and a great reason to hire a coach.

And if you are, like, huh, in my business, I don't know my leadership style, I haven't done the work to do the personal develop. To increase my leadership skills. That's a great reason to hire a high performance coach. And you'll find in the link below this video a way to check out a strategy session, and that strategy session will take a look at what you're going after, walk you through the high performance process, provide some high performance strategies and habits for you, tailored to what you're working.

And you'll have a plan to walk out after that. And so there's two options after you fill out the application if you're interested. And I'll just do this really quick, if you're interested, you fill out the application. You either choose a free option where I record that session, and we'll cut it up and put parts of it on YouTube to just highlight how awesome coaching is.

Or you can pay for a private session and you get to make that choice after you fill out the application. So hit the link globe if you wanna explore your leadership style a bit. And if not, cool, just go through the rest of these points moving on, then know about the style you need to be effective, right?

So a task oriented leader and a people oriented leader have different strategies, different ways of communicating that can help them be more effective and. For example, if you are task for oriented, you have to be very clear at setting the goal and connecting that goal to the organization's goals, right?

And so you have to be constantly communicating so that people aren't guessing. How does this task right here relate to the picture as a whole? As a people focused person, for example, you might want to be identifying, what skills does the team need to really deeply succeed? Increase the pace of work or increase the amount of progress that the team can get done, and then move people towards those types of trainings and skill buildings or hiring people that have those skills that can help level up the group.

E like I said, each style has its own set of strategies that are, really great. And again, as a coach or a mentor it's really great to, to hit a coach or mentor and to try to suss that out for you. So make sure you, again, check that link below. If you wanna hire a coach or engage your network for people that are really great in your field.

It might have an opposite style from you to, to help check you that in that area. And then from the podcast, from a lot of the work I've done with clients, really great leadership. Regardless if you're task or people oriented is you have to really understand your blind spots. You need someone that will speak to the best of who you can be without having an agenda, right?

And so sometimes if you're talking about leading your family your spouse or your kids have a particular way that they wish you were, and we'll lean on you to be that versus what's actually good for that, the family are great for you or great for. So having someone who is fighting for the best you doesn't have that agenda, just wants you to be as productive and happy and confident as you possibly can is really great.

A lot of it's called a blind spot cuz you don't know. And if you don't know what you don't know, then you can't fix things. So again it's really important as you think of yourself as a leader in all these different contacts at work, at home. You're trying to figure out like, what am I missing?

What information am I not getting because of, cuz I'm the dad. I'm the mom, and the kids don't feel like they can say what's on their mind. That happens a lot. So how do you get around that? And that's a really common thing think, and in organizations and, family that can really come up.

Yep. Think about that. So understanding your leadership style. Is essential to becoming a great leader, and it's essential to really getting people on board your personal meaningful revolution. And so again, it's important y there's a, again, a bunch of different types of leadership servant leadership, which can be an umbrella under both of these people versus task focused.

There's so many different facets of, leader. Which is why it's such a big topic and why people love to study it, and there's so many different books you could read, but I, I think sorting people into people versus task oriented leaders is a tool that can be helpful and can help, really help you accelerate your business, your career, and your leadership.

So if you guys love this video, make sure to check out last week's video on relationships up over. Love to check that out. You can see that on my YouTube channel too. If you're get catching this on the blog. Again, there'll be links in the show notes to the strategy session. If you are wondering what type of leader you are and you want someone to talk you through that or you just wanna level up your life, I'd love to do that for you.

That's up guys. We'll see you next. On the Meaningful Revolution Newsletter, this is Sean Butner signing off. Go out there live with more joy, more personal growth, more impact in your communities, and we'll see you soon.