This course contains the use of artificial intelligence.

Leadership styles are usually taught as a list of six names. People read it, pick the one that sounds most like them, and then apply it to everybody equally.

Why one style stops working

It works fine until the team changes. A style that suits a confident senior specialist lands as neglect on someone new, and the style that steadies a new joiner reads as micromanagement to the specialist. Both people conclude the manager is bad at their job, and the manager concludes the team is difficult. I ran a team like that for a year, defaulting to the same approach because it had worked before, and it took a very direct piece of feedback to notice.

What this course actually covers

Six blocks. First, the style model itself: what each style does, how to choose one for a specific person, and when to switch. Second, personality typologies — MBTI, DISC, PAEI, Belbin, Hogan, Big Five — because choosing a style for the person requires reading the person, including without a test. Third, emotional intelligence, which is what makes an authentic style possible rather than performed. Fourth, motivation: the twelve engagement factors, why incentives stop working, and what Motivation 3.0 replaced them with. Fifth, mentoring as a distinct leadership mode: matching, the first meeting, boundaries, and ending the relationship properly. Sixth, eight lessons on teaching all of this to the managers below you.

A note on two of the blocks

Fourteen of the forty lessons sit inside a people-management frame — motivation across an organisation, and developing managers as a programme. That is the level where a style stops being your personal manner and becomes something a whole layer of managers copies. If you lead one team, those blocks still apply directly; if you lead leaders, they are the reason the course goes there at all.

Who is teaching this

I am Mike. I built the people system at Preply as it became a unicorn, and I have worked at Wargaming, iDeals and Alfa-Bank. More than 1.6 million students have enrolled in my courses across 185 countries, and over 150,000 specialists have gone through my programmes. I hold PHRi and SHRM-CP certifications and represent HRCI in more than ten countries.

What is included

• Lifetime access to all 40 lessons

• Active instructor support in the Q&A section

• A Udemy Certificate of Completion

• Working material: the style model, six personality frameworks compared, the twelve engagement factors, the mentoring cycle, the manager development programme

• Assessments you take on yourself rather than read about

Where to start

Think of the two people on your team you find easiest and hardest to manage, and write down what you do differently with each. If the honest answer is nothing, that gap is the entire course. Enrol now and start today.