Great leaders shift fluidly between command and collaboration. This works in business, volunteering, and even parenting.

Although most leadership literature focuses on individual aspects, leadership is a multi-faceted business: Team, mission, and organization all play an important role.

The same applies to leadership styles. One of the rather daft questions in hiring interviews goes like this: “Can you describe your leadership style?”. Well, speaking for myself, my leadership style can vary widely depending on the nature of the problem, the circumstances, and yes, the behavior of a person.

In this article, let’s look at two specific aspects of leadership: Command and collaboration.

By command I mean the leadership style of telling people exactly what to do, and what not to do. This leadership style is often seen negatively, but I don’t think it is: Never forget that most people like it if somebody gives them clear directions of what they have to do. Of course, most people don’t like you yelling at them all the time, but you can be directive or commanding in a tone other than yelling.

By collaboration I mean the leadership style of involving people in finding the best course of action, even if they have widely different interests and opinions. In such a scenario, commanding won’t work.

So as a leader, you will have to constantly zoom into a single person, and zoom out into a group with widely different interests and opinions. That’s not an easy task and takes a lot of practice.

Let’s look at some examples from my work as the Founder & CEO of Yonder, a B2B SaaS company.

1. Team

Our engineering team probably best shows the fluidity between command and collaboration. When we specify new features and find technical solutions for those features, the predominant style is collaboration. Everybody is encouraged to offer his or her opinion. It’s about the best technical solution, and not about who proposed that best solution. Once we’re done with specifying solutions and breaking their implementation down into individual tickets, the style becomes more commanding. “Can you please take care of this ticket and implement it in the next sprint?”, or “Can you please pull this bug into the sprint and work on it right now?”. If such commanding instructions are offered in a constructive tone, they are followed almost all the time.

Besides engineering, I also switch between collaboration and command with other teams. I hate it when things are discussed repeatedly, with no clear way forward. Discussions are necessary to find good solutions, but when they go in circles, you need to stop discussing and start solving the problem. Even if the solution is not perfect, it’s better to solve the problem in a non-perfect way than debate forever about the perfect solution. When such situations arise in our company, I often switch from collaboration to command and decide on how we will address the problem. Sometimes this leaves some team members baffled, but hey, if we debate the same issue multiple times, somebody’s gotta make a decision.

2. Customers

Our customers use our highly configurable product in many different ways. Therefore, a lot of collaboration is required to develop the product in a direction that generates value for the majority of our customers and users. Product discussions with customers involve a lot of back-and-forth, as the interests of the customers need to be balanced with the technical aspects of keeping the product performant, maintainable, and error-free.

On the other hand, on some occasions, I had to use the commanding style with customers. This was the case when some customers repeatedly asked for things beyond the contractual agreement, technically impossible things, or permanently failed to pay their invoices on time. In such cases, a clear “no” without any further explanation is what a commanding leadership style will yield.

Last but not least, in only two cases in my entire career, I had to ask customers to have their point of contact for us replaced, as those two individuals terrorized the entire team. This was even more commanding than just saying “no”.

3. Volunteering

Switzerland cherishes the active reserve system that’s used not just for defense, but also for local politics, school councils, and various associations.

In a federal democracy like Switzerland, almost all leadership work has to be collaborative. Federalism doesn’t like authority and command leadership. So if you want to be active in local politics or association boards, you’ll have to hold your command leadership traits back.

4. Kids

Last but not least, what works in business, also works in a family. Collaboration works great with kids most of the time, leaving room for their different interests and needs. At the same time, sometimes kids need a directive hand.

I remember our two boys deliberately destroyed their sandbox in the garden some time ago. I threw them out of the house and told them they could only come back in once the sandbox was fixed. They cried and found it totally unfair, but at some point realized that Dad was dead serious. So one of the boys said to the other: “Maybe we just have to do what Dad says now.”

Exactly.