Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 90 - What Type of Leader is a Travel Advisor?
Transcript
- Rachel K: It's day of the Travel Agency in your podcast. I'm your host, Rachel K. with elevatewithrachelk.com and today's episode, let's make it easy, peasy, squeezy, but probably not. This is actually supposed to be day 89, but I had to break up an earlier episode into two parts. ⁓ Types of leadership that you may or can embody in your travel business. So I'm going to go, I'm going to list a bunch of them. So I pulled this information from Creighton University and Harvard because I don't think I have any of my old, I'm pretty sure I got rid of all my old textbooks from college by now. It's fine. Maybe I've got a couple. I don't know. All right. Types of leadership and I'm going to list some and then we're going to go through what they are and just listen, maybe make a note if you're sitting around, not driving and be like, Oh, I like this style or I resonate with this. I feel aligned with this type of style. You will most likely change leadership styles as you learn and grow. It's fine. So we've got transformational, transactional, autocratic slash authoritarian, democratic, laissez faire, bureaucratic, servant, situational. Let see if I got anything for charismatic. Charismatic, I don't really have notes on that one. And pace setting. Understanding the different leadership styles in relation to who you are. can aid in self-awareness and how you behave in moments of conflict and crisis. So some of these you might be able to adopt for conflict and crisis. Some of these might be day to day. And you might really only resonate with one style of leadership. So transformational, this was like the hardest thing for me to understand in my degree because they're like, you have to be fully self-actualized to truly be a transformational leader. I'm like, well, self-actualization is like a lifetime process. So to me, I equate it to being like super enlightened, and then you change the lives of others. So basically, whatever religion you are, whatever you worship is probably transformational for you. Jesus could be a transformational leader. He might also be a servant leader, Buddha, transformational. Anyway, so transformational inspires positive change in individuals and in situations. The aim for transformational leadership is to stimulate and motivate by encouraging the development of new skills, voice a contrasting opinion, or try a creative solution. So, That's what transformational leadership is. I'm trying to think if there's I shouldn't have touched on it's been 10 years since I graduated with this program. It's fine. So if you've ever had a boss that was transformational, they would kind of like take you under their wing and know what your weaknesses and strengths are and they would help you develop your strengths even further. ⁓ Voicing a contrasting opinion. That's going to be like change, transformation on an industry level. Trying to create a solution. I feel like I do that of those three. I'm like, let's just be crazy with it. All right. Next up, have transactional leadership. Quid pro quo. If you don't know what that means, I'm sorry you don't know what that means. But it means something for something. Rewards and punishments. are granted in exchange for meeting or failing a goal. If this is the type of leadership, like you do this, I give you money. That's it. I don't care about anything else. As you scale, this is the type of leadership that would be good for an employee model, not necessarily an IC model. because it will allow more supervision for you to be like, these are the things I expect you to do. Here's the rewards. Here's the punishment. You can't really totally punish an independent contractor for not hitting sales goals. You can say, after your first year, there has to be a minimum of $5,000 in sales, or the contract will not be renewed, something like that. But it's easier with an employee model because then you can have a full employee handbook and PIPs, write-ups, all that fun stuff. Next is autocratic slash authoritarian. Decisions are made without suggestions from others. And if there are others involved, it's like a handful of advisors, like a handful of people that the leader truly trusts. ⁓ This style of leadership relies on the self. I think this is a dangerous style of leadership because it's just like, I'm always right. I know what I'm doing. I'm the best. I make the best decisions. I don't need input from anyone. I don't need input from the peanut gallery. Everyone else is beneath me. ⁓ Hitler was a very authoritarian, autocratic, you do as I say. not as I do do it or I'm gonna getcha. ⁓ You don't like how I think I'm gonna ban you, I'm gonna kill you. That's very Hitler, that's very autocratic, it's very, very dangerous in my opinion. If you wanna be autocratic, great, but just know a lot of people aren't gonna like you probably. Like, no one on your team. Democratic. This is the opposite. Democratic welcomes input for decision making from everyone. So think of like, you have worked in a corporate office setting, maybe in the 80s, 90s, maybe early 2000s, there was a suggestions box and anyone could write down any suggestion and the leader would read them and make decisions for the betterment of everyone with everyone's input. the leader still provides the ultimate decision and direction. Now this can also be dangerous because if you open it up to everyone, regardless of their experience, yes, you might be able to get some really good innovative ideas. And also you could be getting some ideas from your team. They have no business contributing to. Like an accountant being like, you should market like this. Sir or madam, CPA, you have no idea how to market. I think just as dangerous to allow everyone to have a voice because not everyone may be aware of the full situation. I like a nice blend between all of it. Then there's laissez faire. ⁓ This is all, you're like, what? I don't like this leadership style either. I mean, you could do it. ⁓ So laissez faire just means, ⁓ I can't remember, it's French. Hands off approach, basically. ⁓ This really depends on your level of trust with your team and or your clients. Okay, so think of this from a client perspective. Autocratic is I'm only gonna send you one option and you better book it or you're not gonna do business with me. That's a really dangerous situation because that puts a lot more liability on you as the travel advisor instead of we make decisions together as a team. Democratic is, here's 17 options, and get back to me when you can with what you think. And if you come up with anything, that's great too. That's not going to get you any sales. Think about it like that. L'as-et-faire, this can be good for repeat clients, because I know you guys are like, I'm never going to scale to have a team. Why are we doing this? L'as-et-faire can work for repeat clients, because it's more of a hands-off approach. But think of it as just spamming an affiliate link. for a supplier or travel insurance company and then you just get the reports and collect the commission. It's totally hands off. Conversely, repeat clients will text you, here's the dates, here's the hotel we want or the cruise, whatever. We already know it costs this much, it. that's pretty hands off. This is also if you want to have people on your team in the future down the road, better for an IC model than an employee model because you don't want to be hands off with employees. You've got to train them to be consistent with your business. Then there's bureaucratic, which are the rules followers, processes and procedures. Everyone has defined roles and responsibilities. I hate bureaucracy because that's every government office and the way they operate. And it's really annoying because it's like, what do you mean I have to fill this out in triplicate again? Because somebody in the file system process messed up. So, ⁓ but bureaucratic. They have their rules, they follow the rules, everyone has their processes and procedures. This can be great if you want your business model to scale to the point where it's like very departmental, like you have groups agents, you have honeymoon agents, you have, I don't know, cruise agents. This can be a good model, except they don't have to be employees because you can't force them to follow your exact processes and procedures as an IC. Servant leaders, the role is to serve others and to promote shared growth. I feel like a lot of advisors listening to this is gonna, you're gonna resonate with this one the most. Personal interests are set aside for the greater good of the organization or the group. So this can get you in trouble. because the personal interests are set aside, you need to be very careful with this and understand that the organization needs money too. So your personal interests of I need to make money, a good way to spin it if you are leaning, you're probably gonna lean people pleasey with the servant leadership is to say this commission or this fee isn't for my own personal gain, it's for the greater good of the organization. Now, we've got three left. There's situational, charismatic, and pace setting. These are the three that I'm done talking about leadership styles after this. Situational, the style adapts to the situation, duh. Like, you could become autocratic because everything is chaos and people are scared on your team or your clients are scared and you just say, listen up, this is how it's going to be. take it or leave it. Autocratic and authoritarian is really good in emergency situations if you need somebody to set up, you need somebody with that mindset. This is going to be X, Y, Z, no ifs, ands, ands, buts. Bureaucratic, you could have specific processes and procedures to onboard. It just depends on the situation. Charismatic means you're cool AF. My battery's about to die on my laptop out of nowhere. And then pace setting is leading by example, where you value results, you have high standards, and you think under pressure. OK, so those are the different styles of leadership. Feel free to comment wherever you're listening to this. Which one resonates with you the most? And I will see you. I hope you had a great first quarter, because we're starting Q2 tomorrow. Have a great day.