Innovators

Innovators are allies of change by their nature. If you, as a manager, need to make significant changes, such as introducing a new corporate tool or changing the product positioning, the first people to contact are your team innovators.

Innovators are real transformation ambassadors. If the business goes into stagnation and begins to close in itself, consult with your innovators. Most likely, they already have dozens of ideas on which direction to move and where to start the transformation. They also know how to infect others with this idea and help the whole team to cope with the need for change.

It is also useful to look up to innovators when it is necessary to pick up new practices and adapt to market trends. They are real trend indicators. They like to try everything and are not afraid of the hard way. The focus of their attention is not inside the company, but outside, unlike, for example, protectors and integrators. This allows innovators to select the best experience, the best market practices, which, in their opinion, will bring the company to the top.

Their constant pursuit for new things in some cases is not good for the company. They should not be allowed into the processes associated with the methodical repetition of the same actions, where scrupulousness and exact adherence to instructions are important.

For an innovator to be effective, he needs a field for experiments. It is important to understand that an innovator most values the beauty of an idea and does not always adequately weigh risks, so one should treat their failures philosophically and help them learn valuable lessons from bad experiences.

Integrators

This leadership type has a very developed empathic component: emotional intelligence, listening and empathy skills.

If innovators are allies of transformation, then integrators are team building ambassadors. Integrators attract people. They come into emotional resonance, and therefore people trust them and willingly talk to them about both problems and successes. This makes it easier for integrators to build teamwork than for other types of leaders.

If a lot of conflicts arise in any department or during the project implementation, or if employees simply do not communicate with each other, call the Integrator for help.

The integrator will listen to everyone and find a constructive solution to make a group of people a real team.

Integrators are great intermediaries. It is useful to involve them in complex negotiations, in which a delicate approach and attention to the interlocutor's emotions are really crucial.

Integrator's skills and empathy are indispensable for tasks such as onboarding and adaptation of new employees. If the team has an Integrator, then newcomers will not be left to fend for themselves.

Like any leadership style, integrators have weaknesses. Integrators value human relations over benefits. There may be a situation when an integrator employee builds excellent relationships with customers, but does not sell.

Another situation, when the integrator is so involved in other people's problems and difficulties that he does not have time to fulfill his own tasks, is also possible. It is important to watch over this and timely warn the integrator that he is losing efficiency, since for this leadership type this is one of the serious burnout drivers.

Dominants

As a rule, pronounced dominants are ideal crisis managers. Their dedication and the “I see goals, I see no obstacles” attitude towards tasks helps to inspire and organize people. Dominants don't get lost in difficult situations: their determination and pressure really make history, and not only in business.

Dominants are irreplaceable in negotiations when the outcome depends on the ability to convince and attract with personal charm.

The most important for dominants is victory. Losses hurt them more than other leaders, so to be successful the dominant needs a “cardinal”, a confidant who has the ability and, to some extent, the privilege to remind that losses happen, that losses are normal.

Why is it important? Dominants breathe competition. But if it happens so that two strong leaders, pronounced dominants, do not agree in their opinions, they can direct their energy not to achieve common results, but to overcome the enemy. It is not beneficial for the company.

To prevent this from happening, the company needs integrator's skills, which will help to establish a dialogue and remind that all employees of the company are in the same boat, and the sharks of competition are outside it.

Protectors

The undoubted advantage of protectors is that they understand the range of application of specific tools and, accordingly, their limitations, better than other types of leaders. They are excellent at building step-by-step sequences and create systems with no internal contradictions. So protectors are irreplaceable when you need to create an instruction, safety standard or production technology.

To a large extent protectors are the keepers of the company's tradition. They remember many successful and unsuccessful stories, see the weak points of new concepts better than others. This allows them to protect the company from undesirable scenarios: losses, unnecessary risks, repetition of past mistakes.

For a protector, Ideal positions in a company are where you need to maintain processes according to instructions. Such protector's qualities as attentiveness and scrupulousness are good for accountants, lawyers, security personnel, logistics specialists, and heads of production departments.

Talking about the limitations and weaknesses of protectors, then these people perceive changes harder than others. It can be difficult for them to understand the need to upgrade the work technology. Because of this, protectors can be toxic and subject to harsh criticism of the generally good ideas of innovators.

You probably already realized that integrator's skills will be useful for establishing a dialogue, and dominant's skills - for organizing work and achieving results.

Experts

Experts are leaders who identify themselves primarily from a professional point of view. Every company needs them, as they are the bearers of knowledge about achieving the best quality of a product or service, the best models of promotion or ensuring security.

In teams, experts become mentors for new hires, which is useful if you want your company to develop a culture of peer learning.

Experts are the people who will help innovators' out-of-the-box ideas to find specific solutions on how to implement them.

Like the protectors, the experts are quite conservative, but this is due not to adherence to tradition, but to rich experience. In the framework of their profession, experts had time to test everything and offer the company the best practices.

But, due to their dedication to the profession, experts are quite indifferent to areas that are not directly related to their scope of interest.

They can become detached leaders, invisible leaders, and be reluctant to engage in team building and integrative initiatives.

Their value system is based on functional expertise, so an expert may show low loyalty to an employee who, in his opinion, is low-performing or does not want to develop. Such assessments are not always fair, so an expert needs help to communicate if he lacks his own integrator's skills.