In training courses, academic lectures, and from reading management books, we learn about different leadership and management styles. Among the most popular are:

• Ken Blanchart’s situational leadership
• transformational leadership
• servant leadership, much promoted in the Lean world and in the agile approach
• charismatic leadership
• coaching leadership (here my note that in Blanchart’s situational leadership, there is also a coaching model)
• extremely popular recent leadership in the world of VUCA*.

From my experience, several decades, there is another leadership and management style. Quite commonly used. I was looking for an appropriate name for this style, and the term that fits me best here is: management in the fashion of the Greek gods on Olympus.

In this next, the sixth episode, of my podcast, “How to be a true leader,” I decided to describe this leadership style.
In it, I tell you the story of the gods on Olympus, which we know well from mythology. I tell you this story again, only that it is in the reality of today’s business world. In my opinion, the story described in Greek myths is still relevant today. And many supervisors, managers, directors, CEOs, take on the role of Zeus, Athena, Apollo. Sometimes Prometheus will happen, but it is not guaranteed.

I encourage you to listen to this episode. Share your comments. And above all, do some reflection on your own organization. About how it is managed. And if you yourself are a supervisor, manager, leader and will listen to this recording, ask yourself which character from Greek mythology you yourself play. Are you Zeus, Athena, Apollo? How about Prometheus?

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The acronym VUCA was borrowed from the U.S. Army’s experience to describe the extreme conditions soldiers experienced in Iraq and Afghanistan:

• Volatile
• Uncertain
• Complex
• Ambiguous