Management Style
What is Management Style?
One approach to answer this question is to categorise the alternative styles, for instance: autocratic; permissive; democratic; consultative; coaching; persuasive; directive; authoritative; visionary; affiliative; paternalistic; participative; pacesetting; people-oriented; task-oriented. There are more.
A one-word answer is not very useful, though, and the subject is not that simple in any case. While it may be meaningful to say that one manager’s style is more consultative than another’s, say, your style will actually be a composite of a number of factors and will be influenced by circumstances.
Factors which contribute to what we might call management style include:
- Personality – how you interact with others, charisma, confidence, optimism, directness, tenacity;
- Integrity – your fairness, honesty, humility, courage, consistency;
- Methodology – what management philosophy, processes and “toolkit” you espouse;
- Structure – influenced by methodology, how do you view departmental vs. value stream organisation, roles and responsibilities, training and empowerment;
- Company culture – this is a product of the established behaviours of staff, the organisation’s history and leadership.
This illustrates how difficult it is to distinguish between style, training and prevailing culture. In addition, a leader’s style will be intertwined with their knowledge, skills and experience.
Personality and Effectiveness
A leader cannot be passive to be effective or to create change: some people naturally feel comfortable giving instructions and ensuring that they are followed. For some of us, however, there are a number of potential reasons why this can be difficult at first:
- Natural deference and respect for others’ opinions favours a democratic approach
- An inventive mind might see several possible approaches, creating uncertainty of direction
- Change may be opposed by strong will or blunted by lethargy
It becomes much easier to have the courage of your convictions once you have seen and experienced relevant best practice first hand. With the confidence that comes by knowing how the future will look, it becomes easier to communicate the vision clearly and to provide instruction and training accordingly.
In an interview situation, the question, “what is your management style” might be posed to ascertain the balance between directness and the inclination to introduce and grow best practice. The emphasis will depend on the employer, but your answer should couch your “can-do” personal style within a framework of the management processes and structure you think will be appropriate to the situation.
Your predominant style may not be the same today as in the future. Personality traits change with time, experience and training, and as you become more confident. Courage and tenacity will continue to be required, however, depending on cultural or personality-related resistance to change.
Also, an experienced manager may exercise a wide spectrum of styles and personas to suit a variety of situations.
For instance:
- Environment – pre-existing company culture and pervading management processes will shape managers’ approaches
- Circumstance – a military officer will adopt profoundly different styles of communication when issuing commands in action compared to when leading a debriefing session;
- Audience – using a mentoring and encouraging approach will suit trainees and inexperienced staff but will serve only to patronise an expert audience.
Does management style matter?
Given such a broad definition of what style means, covering a large portion of management practice, there is no doubt that it does matter.
In the context of a large, successful organisation with a well-defined culture and established management philosophy, an individual’s style will, to a large extent, need to conform to the environment. Personality and integrity traits will still impact immediate colleagues in terms of motivation and morale, however.
Such an organisation is likely to recruit individuals who they feel will be able to fit into the culture, and have the potential to become leaders in their own image, so to speak. In Toyota, there is an emphasis on recruiting future leaders based on their appetite for self-development, and then guiding this development via the mentorship of internal sensei.
In smaller organisations, a leader brought in with relevant training and experience from elsewhere can make a profound impact. However, for such transformation to be achieved sustainably, it is not sufficient for the leader to simply hand over knowledge, set targets and watch. In lean turnarounds, for instance, experience shows that top leadership must demonstrate personal commitment and support to the principles and practices and be directly involved in growing the right behaviours up and down, and across, the organisation.
Is there a “best” management style?
As already alluded to, the “best” style will depend on circumstances. For instance, you might not want a surgeon to suddenly adopt a democratic approach if you were on the operating table. However, we can sometimes see signs that prevailing style or culture needs some adjustment. For instance:
- Staff are frustrated; they feel trapped in a “Groundhog Day” world where no change seems to be achieved;
- Talented members of staff feel micromanaged and unheeded; they perhaps tend not to remain long in the organisation;
- Month-end sees a huge injection of energy as heroic expediting rescues orders from the jaws of missing their shipment targets;
- Weekly management meetings are characterised by a combination of tactical minutiae or inter-departmental sniping: metaphorical grenades being lobbed over silo walls.
The “solutions” to these maladies will again require both an effective style of leadership and appropriate improvements to management process. As ever, the two are not completely separable. Best practice should guide the vision and leadership should exhibit the courage, energy and tenacity to see the changes through. For the above examples, we may wish to: clarify the vision, put customers first, develop and enable staff and replace silo-thinking with end-to-end process thinking.
To effect long-term change, we cannot do it on our own. Our team members must have the vision, training and tools to achieve the goals, grow as leaders and be given the opportunity for self-development and training. I like this apocryphal conversation between a CFO and his CEO: “What if we train all our employees and they leave?”, answered by, “What if we don’t and they stay?”.
To contact Mark Chapple directly, or to request a free initial consultation, email mark.chapple@emcltd.co.uk or call 01273 945984.
Read more in this series on operational management…