What’s your leadership style and how did it help you effectively manage a team?

I think everyone has their own leadership style but I think some of the best people I worked with had things in common that I will share below.

• Care about people under you (and really mean it) and be ready to help instead of just giving orders. I have so many senior people saying BS like you should get some rest, hope you have a nice weekend and then slamming me with deadlines or weekend work.

• Communicate deadlines very clearly and always say when something is not necessary to be done over the weekend. As an analyst, if someone doesn’t say so im constantly under pressure of delivering. I try to ask but not everyone gives straight answers

• Empower people and give them credit. Let them speak for their work especially on client calls when possible. Help them work on themselves professionally in a constructive way - offer to look at emails or discuss what they will say over a call or make them lead a call. Juniors are buried in desk work and then all of sudden get promoted and find ourselves having to talk more and interact with senior people when we haven’t been trained to do so

• Let everyone do their work in their own way. Don’t micromanage. Always offer references and examples but let people have their own styles

• Share best practices in a non threatening way and say why. When you give comments or make updates, always explain why you did it, you would think some things are so obvious but junior people may not have heard it before

• Never embarrass or disrespect anyone or point out their mistakes in front of the group. Be accountable and lead by example, if someone on your team makes a mistake, own it and say it is your fault then discuss later how to prevent it. When an overworked analyst makes a mistake, they are already torturing themselves for it every second so no need to add to that

• Finally be the link between them and senior people and clients, loop them in every conversation. Help them understand big pictures think and to look at client relationships as a whole