Management Styles
Leadership
Tip of the Month by Ron Jasniowski
There are three primary management styles: The
"Boss," the "Buddy," and the "Leader."
"Bosses" manage employees with a domineering management style.
They tend to focus on the negative and all too often take positive
things for granted. This manager is hard to please, causes high
employee turnover and fails to reach his/her full productivity
potential.
"Buddies" focus on being nice to their employees. They avoid
confrontation and dealing with negative issues (such as, under
performance and behavioral problems). Buddies often get taken
advantage of by poor-performing employees and lose top performers
because they are burdened with covering for poor-performing
employees who aren't properly corrected. Often
this is the source of what employees call favoritism. However it
really is a lack of aptitude on the buddy's ability to deal with
poor-performing employees.
"Leaders" are nice, but are firm when they need
to be. Their ability to motivate and empower employees to
excel is the key to their success. People enjoy working for
leaders. They have the highest productivity and retention
rates of all the management styles.
"Leaders" have the fortitude to act decisively because they
have a clear conscience about acting in the best interest of
all concerned. Leaders don't treat everyone the same. They
think through issues and people's backgrounds to respond
appropriately. Experience and training enables them to wisely
respond to the unique circumstances they encounter. And, most
important, they are proactive and lay the foundation for nurturing
employees to bring out the best in them. Leaders do this, in part,
by wisely addressing performance and behavioral problems. This
develops the untapped potential in employees and increases profits
for the long run!
What
if you are a "Buddy" or a "Boss?"
First realize they are very common management styles
with little sophistication. Being nice or tough, in and of them
self, doesn't make one a good manager. Many leadership skills
aren't natural and must be developed. But since many managers
don't get the resources they need to develop their leadership
skills, they default to one of the simpler management
styles.
Most
managers can become excellent leaders if they are supplied with
books and training that help them develop their leadership skills.
The best book I can recommend for "Buddies" is The One Minute
Manager by Dr. Ken Blanchard. The best book I can recommend
for "Bosses" is the classic, How to Win Friends and Influence
People by Dale Carnegie.
Amazon.com sells both.
I
fully understand it is hard to break old habits. And sometimes we
keep doing things the same old way, because to change would be a
tacit admission that we could have done better before. But we
can’t fool our employees about our leadership
shortcomings … they already know them!
Managers, you have a greater impact on the
productivity of your employees and the quality of their life than
you realize! I
encourage you to be humble and apply character-based leadership
skills with your employees. If you don't know where to start, just
have a short meeting and say, "In the past I tried to manage the
best I could by examples from my previous managers, but that no
longer is good enough. I’m learning about character-based
leadership and I want things to be better. Feel free to hold me
accountable to be a better manager." Then take pleasure in how
much things improve under your leadership!
Future issues will provide you with
more details on how you can reach the next level of leadership
success.
You
may want to print this tip on
management styles and discuss it at your next leadership team
meeting.
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Jasniowski specializes in training managers and supervisors at in-house
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about character-based leadership skills. Managers learn how to develop
the untapped potential in employees and keep them! Learn more from the
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