Corporate employees would know that assertiveness and authority can only get a small portion of work done by a small group of people. The real power lies in the leader’s ability to increase productivity without losing their cool or becoming bossy. Gentle leadership is what helps achieve and exercise this power.
This leadership style differs significantly from other styles, including its approach. The following sections will explore these and provide a comprehensive idea of the leadership style.
This article examines the importance of leadership skills, especially those that represent gentle leadership. Let’s begin!
What is Gentle Leadership?
Asking what gentle leadership is and how it fits the modern workplace, is common. Gentle leadership is a fresh way of leading people within the corporate space where the leader practices empathy and focuses on collaboration.
This leadership is rooted in compassion, humility, and kindness, and these skills guide the leader through decision-making and other administrative processes.
The hierarchical power dynamics are shunned in this leadership style and replaced with a supportive and inclusive environment. This carries the team towards success on all professional fronts.
Gentle leadership focuses on solid relationships and inspires team members. Contrary to popular belief, gentle leadership does not represent weakness or indecisiveness. It is a way to put respect and compassion at the core of decision-making as it is a strength.
In contrast to the authoritative leadership style, gentle leadership is about building community within the organization. Emotional intelligence is also kept at the center of gentle leadership. This enables leaders to engage with their team and understand them better.
This does not promote making decisions through emotions but prioritizes compassion where necessary. The following section discusses the characteristics of gentle leadership.
Characteristics of Gentle Leadership
The following list shows the characteristics a gentle leader must display to shun the bureaucratic leadership style. Check out the following:
Emotional Intelligence
This forms the solid support system of this leadership style that looks at conflicts and issues. This is more than just useful when weighing the options for conflict resolution; it has a significant role in motivating team members.
Leaders with high emotional intelligence can establish trust within their team and adjust their leadership style accordingly. Emotional intelligence is an individual’s ability to perceive, understand, use, and manage emotions.
Thus, a leader exhibiting this leadership style is great at judging how their emotions and actions may affect the members. They can comprehend and empathize with the feelings of their team members. This makes the leader appreciate the member’s experience, leading to psychological stability within the team.
Communication
This is a big part of this leadership style, where the leader’s ability to communicate improves due to emotional intelligence. They become better at communicating needs by keeping emotions and humility at the core.
This is particularly helpful when the leader must clearly understand the situation. This is when the leader’s ability to explain the issue and the solution improves. Leaders also become better at ascertaining when to talk and listen—a refreshing change that helps the decision-making framework.
Respect
This is an essential part of this leadership style that differentiates it from transformational vs transactional leadership. Seeing leaders respecting members’ opinions in traditional leadership styles is challenging. Even basic respect for the members’ time and emotions is amiss.
On the contrary, gentle leadership prioritizes respecting the individual’s opinions, suggestions, and overall person. This helps create a harmonious and inclusive workspace.
Regardless of the background, position, or role, there is respect for the members. This is important for a team that collaborates and achieves goals together.
Active Listening
Did you know active listening is one of the least used skills within the corporate sector? This is also one of the most significant contributors to the conflicts and issues that arise in the workplace. Especially between leaders and members or between members.
Active listening is essential for non-corporate individuals to ensure minimal conflict among everyone. Differences of opinion are unavoidable – however, a conflict is due to misinterpretation. That’s avoidable.
How can you better comprehend what the other person is trying to say? You practice active listening. For any leader, active listening is essential as it helps comprehend verbal and non-verbal messages.
Leaders become better at giving and receiving feedback with the help of this characteristic.
Resilience
Gentle leaders are resilient corporate sector professionals who can successfully handle situations. Irrespective of the nature of the problem, their resilience helps them see through it and develop a plan of action.
Their willingness to accurately assess themselves and learn from experiences helps them navigate difficult situations.
Leaders perceive the situation nicely and handle themselves by adjusting their leadership style to fit the situation.
Delegation
Delegation is another characteristic of gentle leaders that sets them apart from others. Of the 7 definitions of leadership, gentle leadership makes the best use of this skill.
Their emotional intelligence and decisiveness help them delegate tasks to team members. They can effectively help their members with tasks and enhance their skills as they recognize talent in people.
They can focus on developing talent instead of just fulfilling a task. This is how emotional intelligence in leadership can help improve the task force.
Vision
This is another one of the characteristics of a leader that helps achieve company goals quickly. This allows them to navigate their actions according to the requirements, which, in turn, helps them guide the team members.
Their strong vision helps create shared goals that align with the company’s values. They are better at articulating the task needs, which helps keep the team on track.
These were all of the characteristics of gentle leadership that can help a leader better guide their team with emotional intelligence.
How is it Different from Other Leadership Styles?
The significant difference between gentle and other leadership styles is the guiding force behind all the actions. Even the decision-making process is dependent on emotional intelligence.
This helps create a nurturing and supportive environment that promotes solid relationships. Moreover, this helps create a robust and reliable relationship between team members and the leader.
In addition, there may not seem to be many characteristics of a gentle leader, but they foster mutual respect between both parties.
Because their approach is solely based on positive reinforcement and inspiring members through encouragement. This creates a drastic difference between the two types – traditional and gentle leadership styles.
Why is Gentle Leadership Important?
Gentle leadership is necessary in the current scenario of an autocratic corporate environment due to increased psychological instability among employees. There is a rise in mental health issues such as burnout, depression, and even anxiety in corporate employees due to poor leadership.
This is why gentle leadership acts as a breath of fresh air that helps create an environment that fosters innovation and creativity. This style helps create a work environment that’s more inclusive and positive.
Don’t get this approach wrong – this style maintains and improves the leader’s authority. This is because they are providing support that’s not condescending, boosting productivity.
Emotional intelligence is the primary tool for gentle leaders as they work on creating an environment that increases the team’s productivity.
As per the above list, delegation is one of the critical characteristics of gentle leaders. This sets them apart from other leaders as they delegate in a way that makes members feel valued.
Gentle leadership recognizes the skills and talents of each team member, which helps the leader delegate tasks and responsibilities effectively.
Another one of the reasons why gentle leadership is essential in the modern workspace is the approach. Any task or action under this leadership is done through empathy and sincerity in understanding perspectives.
A boost in productivity is what employees under gentle leadership experience; this, in turn, helps boost the revenue of the company.
That’s how gentle leadership contributes to the modern workplace and helps employees stay motivated.
What are the Steps to Becoming A Gentle Leader? How do You do Leadership Right?
If you are a leader looking for tips to improve leadership skills and the overall work environment to achieve better results, here’s how you can do it right. Follow along to learn how you can master gentle leadership:
Lead by Example
It would help if you modeled the behavior that you want your team members to embody. For instance, if you want your team to be empathetic, practice empathy and show them how it’s done.
Practice Active Listening
This is a crucial aspect of this leadership style as it helps you understand the team members better. This is also how you know the perspectives of your members, building connections and understanding.
Create a Safe Environment
It would help if you focused on creating an environment that is safe for everyone. This concerns the expression of opinion and how it helps people engage. A secure environment also helps make it clear that you welcome questions and ideas. This enables you to create a safe environment that promotes innovation and communication.
Develop Emotional Intelligence
When you focus on developing your emotional quotient, you foster this leadership’s core values. Emotional intelligence helps you understand others and make sure their needs are met. To be a gentle leader, you must develop empathy, emotional control, and self-awareness.
Practice Self-Care
Caring for yourself in this aspect implies caring for your emotional health. A significant part of this leadership style depends on the leader’s ability to utilize their emotional quotient.
When you practice self-care, you are aware of your emotional boundaries. This helps you prevent compassion fatigue and burnout.
Be a Mentor
To be a gentle leader, you should invest time in coaching team members to develop their strengths. You must encourage and motivate your members by providing feedback.
This helps them grow professionally and have a learning mindset that allows them to positively approach any feedback. This also means you must take feedback graciously – remembering it’s not a personal attack.
Conclusion
That was all about gentle leadership and its various aspects – from its characteristics to what sets it apart from other styles. Gentle leadership is usually seen as a weak style that’s not impactful – this article proves just how untrue this is.
Using empathy and emotional intelligence to guide your decision-making and leadership style helps drive productivity. The primary factor is the healthy mental health of the employees.
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