Seven Ways of Leading: Which is Yours?

If you saw me anytime in December, I was probably dropping the Harvard Business Review article Seven Transformations of Leadership into my conversation. I read it and couldn’t stop thinking about it, wondering what my own leadership “action logic” was, and where I saw leaders with different action logics.

Authors David Rooke and William R. Torbert say that leaders are made, not born; that there are seven leadership “action logics”; and that with intention, coaching, and practice, one can develop one’s leadership skills along the action logic continuum.

Starting at the bottom and working up to the top leadership style, they list:

• The Opportunist
• The Diplomat
• The Expert
• The Achiever
• The Individualist
• The Strategist
• The Alchemist

While the Opportunist, at the bottom of the scale, “wins any way possible” and is self-oriented, the Alchemist – the pinnacle of the leadership scale – “generates social transformations”.

The good news? Rooke and Torbert believe that anyone can move up the scale and progressively develop their leadership abilities, one step at a time.

What type of leader are you now? What type of leader do you aspire to be? What is your next leadership step?

(Thanks to Sandy McMullen and Mary Stacey at Context Consulting for passing along the article.)