After 10 years as a manager and
then a LOT as not a manager I have had a unique point of view of different
skills, styles and personalities of managers who have worked in pretty much the
same industry. I worked security as a younger person and became a manager and
then, after university and collage…I know I know….I was a manager and
supervisor in a customer service industry and then stepped down to be a regular
CSR for the last 20 years. I have to say that as many managers as I have had,
only a handful were what I would call GREAT and a few good, mostly however, and
unfortunately, I have been under some very incompetent and misplaced managers.
I have, by no means, been perfect myself but this is what I observed over the
last 30 years or so of my employment history.
The first thing you need to know
is that not everyone is set up emotionally, mentally and character wise to be a
good manager. I have seen people who the power goes to their head, or they see
it as a excuse to slack and blame others, or worse in some cases to rob the
company they work for blind. None of these are good but the damage they do to
employees can be catastrophic for a company. It costs a great deal of time and
money to train and set up an employee, and one bad manager can throw that money
away and give the company a bad reputation.
Currently I have five managers, four team leads and a manager that I
report to and of the five….two are great, one is okay and two are in the wrong
position…but I will get to that.
The key management styles that
people take on can only work well if they are in the correct position and the
style fits the employer in general. Having taken my share of business courses
and having the experience I have I can tell you that some of the management
styles I’m going to talk about work much better than others, and some are just
poorly applied. Not all managers or their styles will work in all jobs and some
jobs DEMAND that you have a specific style.
Also, a manager should never feel stuck in one style, they should flow
and move between them depending on what needs to be done. Not all managers do
this however and the attempts fall flat.
We have all seen them on TV the wrong manager style and the wrong situation
and the person looks like an idiot or an overbearing putz. Here are the styles and some insights on when
and how to use them.
First off we have the natural,
first level of management. The one that most managers go through and then come
out the other end after a short period of time realizing its not perfect at
all. The “Authoritarian/Autocrat” often called the Tyrant by those that are
being managed to heavily by this person. The manager naturally holds power over
others and can make important decisions, they expect staff to behave and listen
to them, however it is easy to overuse this style and become a dictator. This
style or Level 0 is demotivational and the person risks removing themselves
from conversations and being ostracized by the team as they are seen as heavy
handed and…well a dick!
This level is important because
a manager has to have the ability to make decisions with little to no input and
when things go sideways you have to be able to drag this out of your
personality to manage those who are off the rails, but to much of this and you
will be looking for new team members…and possibly a new job. When I did
security, I could identify as being a Authoritarian manager, but it was often
only in the times when the situations were tense, and I had to dictate quickly
what was happening. Only once did a guard not respond to me as a manager, an
older guy who thought he knew it all…he was asked to move on. In some situations, the Authoritarian is
important, but most of the time its just to much, back off and pick a different
approach.
Most good martial arts
instructors maintain a level of authoritarian but with, as my instructors used
to say, a level of benevolence to the authoritarian dictatorship. This does not work well outside the Dojo mind
you.
On the opposite side of the
Dictatorial authoritarian is the Democratic or Participative manager. This
manager likes to get the team involved in all decision making and values their
input and engagement. The running of a department is more a collaboration than
a directed one. This works very well if the manager is managing other leaders,
but it’s a horrible idea if you are doing this with a front line staff. The first thing you lose is respect and most
people see this approach as a cop out and shucking of responsibilities. Again,
some times you can have a vote or collaboration, but it should only be a vote
based on multiple choice not an open ended question. Yes you should listen to
your staff if they have complaints or ideas, but not a general “How should we
do…anything” kind of approach. I have to tell you this is the most annoying of
the management styles if done wrong. The “leader” is anything but a leader,
they become a prisoner to the staffs whims and often find that they themselves
are gone when upper management realizes that they are…for all intensive
purposes….not managing.
To avoid this kind of issue, one
should always half make up their mind as to what is going to occur, what the
choices for the staff will be and when listening to staff do so from a position
of authority not one of handing your
authority away. It also only works if you have a mature and seasoned staff, a
manager of new staff should NEVER give up their authority in order to try and
find some kind of acceptance with the staff.
The next is the most ineffective
style I have run into next to a pure authoritarian, the Delegative or
Laissez-faire manager. It’s the hands off, trusting the team to run themselves
and the “don’t bug me, IM busy” manager. Of all the managers this one is the
most depicted on TV for some reason. The guy with the magazine under his arm as
he goes for a 2 hour break to the bathroom or the guy that is always on coffee
break, but okay to sit and chat when you want to talk non- work things. This
style can work if you are not 100% set on hands off, if you know your team and
they have been around for years doing the job well you can be a bit more hands
off, but a incompetent person will fall into this or the dictator slot easily
as it covers their tracks and makes it impossible to nail down what they did
that day.
I once worked for a big, at the
time, sport company and the manager I had would be what I would call a skilled
delegative manager. He trusted everyone, after they were hired and trained. He
knew I was a good sales person and he gave me everything I needed to know the
products inside and out, he would call me up and say “come in the rep is here
and you can get a free pair of shoes and he will educate you on them” and then
he would let us learn and go to work, he did not tell us anything other than a
“Good job” once and a while. He worked on his own sales and he was not a great
dictator, it worked for him, but he also had assistant managers that were DOGS
and would hound you till your sales were up to the minimum and any discipline,
he did not do it! I also had some very wishy washy managers in other jobs who
hid and did not do their jobs. This is a weird management style because it CAN
work but only in specific situations.
The Coach is the perfect manager
style for employers who have a high turn over, who need guidance in an every
changing environment and honestly it should be the go to for ALL managers, or
at least the one in the back pocket of ANY successful manager. My own management style tended to be the
coach. I used to pride myself on helping people that others felt were not going
to be successful and make them excellent. The coach is always thinking long
term, mentoring others, and looking at way to train and gently motivate others.
I have had a few people who fit into this style who helped me along the way and
actually more so helped others and that motivated me to learn how they did
it. The coach is not about charisma its
about really helping others to understand and to want to push the limits
themselves.
A coach would work in 99% of the
environments but to be a successful manager your coach should be kept to
between 30-40%. If a manager is to much
of a coach at the wrong times then they are basically a trainer with now push
to manage others, just to motivate and train…again, a good coach is hard to
find and in my experience most of them do transition into training only. I was a good coach and always tried to keep
that focus with my team as we ramped up four times a year then slowly, through
attrition and letting people go due to call volume would level off and then a
new team would come in for training…and honestly I was looking to transition
into training and just never did it.
Transformational managers or
“Messiah” managers are great for inspiration and motivation…but they often come
across as frauds and weird religious leaders.
At first, they are looking to motivate and create a cohesive approach to
innovation, change and drive towards a shared vision. All gas and no breaks,
they are the kind that give you goose bumps listening to them. If they stick to
this the whole thing gets hold and the approach dies on the vine.
This one is one of the weakest
actual styles because it’s a flash in the pan, all flash no substance. It is important to have the skills to be
transformational when you are looking at driving a team during times of change
or at start up when you want cohesive approaches and energy behind them.
However, if you maintain this “You can do it” mentality with out showing
someone how to “Do it” or letting them know why…its sad and will lead to people
ignoring you. Don’t get me wrong, a good “Spiritual leader” of the office can
be popular and as a owner of a business can create loyalty in clients, but its
not real and those using it can fall into the same traps as other styles that
simply stop working on the team.
Next to the coach the Servant leader is
perhaps one of the most effective and helpful styles you can create. They
prioritize the team and each person’s well-being, in this case it’s the leader
serving the needs of the team. This style works best with long term campaigns
or ongoing projects. The Servant manager is good with existing teams and those
that need ongoing support, in fact it’s the second style I liked to take up. I
always thought of it as “the way they work reflects on me” so I would support
the heck out of my team and anything they needed I gave them, and that often
came with extra coaching, going to bat for them with higher ups and working
with people who needed a bit of help.
The issue with this type of
manager however is when its exclusively the style that someone uses it can be
seen as spineless! One should never see
all team members as irreplaceable and you should never put your business ahead
of a single team member, or even the whole team. This is a good way to get
canned yourself. The Management style
however is one that will endear you to any team member struggling to get stuff
done who is still trained well and doing their job, but facing issues that come
up on a daily basis in any job. This should
be the default for a good manager that is looking for long term team viability
and one should phase in and out of this style as needed.
“what have you don’t for me
lately” that’s the Transactional managers mentality. You have to prove yourself on the daily with
them, either you are positive for them and you get rewarded or you have dragged
the team down (in their mind) and you are getting punished for it. Sales managers tend to be use this type of
style as it fits into the goals of the team.
The focus is on performance, more so in some rouge cases its more
perception and nonfunctional things. I
had a manager, a Karen, who was like this and the style that seems to fit best
with this, she was a transactional dictator.
You were never as good as her but if you made her look good, or made her
feel like you idolized her or were just on her side she had your back and spoke
nice about you to the higher ups knowing you would also do the same. She bent
the (broke) the rules for me and my wife so many times it was not funny and
just because of the mentality she had. But the second we did anything that critiqued
her or her job as a manager, we became enemy one on her dart board at work. You
could actually draw a straight line between her feeling we were on her side and
our getting special treatment (the wife called me her golden boy) and us
telling her boss the truth about how she treated others and us being her
targets.
The positive to this style is
that you have a very tangible reason for rewarding your team and it can
motivate sales or performance, but the flip side is you often have a tangible
and real reason for punishment, not that punishment is a good thing at work.
The motivation can be off the charts depending on how its used and the focus of
said rewards. However, as with most of these the style has a very real
downside. Even if you are rewarding those that are performing well some
managers fall into rewarding the same team members over and over again. A reward can be anything from monetary
rewards to prizes to recognition via trophies and other stuff. The danger is creating a “Popular kids” club
and causing others to see the whole thing as a scam to ensure the “Popular
kids” get prizes and recognition while the worker bees get nothing.
Transaction styles are great for
small campaigns or for short term sales promotions. Its something you can use
but ensure its fair and that you spread the wealth when it comes to actually
rewarding people. I would avoid the punishment part as well simply to avoid the
whole idea that you favor specific people and push the rest. I had one manager
when I did security who tried his best to get rid of specific people. He gave
them the worst shifts and sites to drive them away and when it was noted he
said it was punishment for being poorly set up to deal with the public. He did
not last long.
Another Mesiah complex style is
the Visionary or Authoritative style. This is best left to high level CEO or
managers near the top. I have worked under a few of them and they vary a
lot. One ran a hotel I worked at he
shared his vision and set the direction for all of us to work in and it was
very well received as the managers under him were all inspired, but his hands
off approach was kind of like throwing a motivational bomb into a room and
closing the door, if we all did what he wanted it was amazing, if not it was a
lot of dysfunctional managers trying to run their departments and make the
owner happy, but stepping all over each other.
He could charm the hell out of you and would tell you one thing, get you
going and then tell someone else the same thing and have you thinking
differently then the other guy, thus we worked against each other a lot.
Our security manager was hired
away from a security company when I was just a guard, he was told to clean up
the place, make it safe and secure, he took the cool aid and ran with it so to
speak…he ended up finding out that one of the other managers was stealing
things from his department and when he tried to have him fired…he was fired
because not matter how good a speech…family is family. The visionary is a great upper level boss,
but consistency is important. And at a
lower level the style leaves a lot to be desired. Those that try to be visionaries at the lower
level are never taken seriously and worse, they rip teams apart by leaving to
much to interpretation.
A good CEO will set up a vision,
set out directions and loose ideal and standards to gage success then let loose
the managers to work towards the goals, often just checking in to bump up
moral. This is the best use of this
style of management. Let yourself be the messiah and the visionary but don’t
expect to be precisely followed or seen as anything more than a visionary. And
most CEO’s that fall into this category are great leaders in that they pump up
the teams and give very loose objectives then let their more skilled underlings
do the hard work….think Elon Musk!
The last style is one that most
managers dream of being and fall far short most times…the pacesetter! The pace
setter works best if you are the kind of manager that gets in the trenches and
pushes to be the best, set the performance standards and expect the same from
your staff. You may be a bit demanding but you are pushing the pace from the
front of the pack. The Pace Setter is great for someone who works in a car
dealership as a sales manager who needs to show the staff how its done, or as
was my case, a sales manager who works in a retail industry. The Pace setter
sets a standard and works towards it constantly…it can be motivational or it
can be deflating to the staff. Also, it can become abusive and problematic if
the manager is either never hitting standards, cheating to stay ahead or
bullying staff when they don’t win or push the pace….excuses also seem to fair
well with this manager.
Far to often someone gets a team
lead position or management position and become a ghost when it comes to
performance of duties, its an excuse to STOP doing the job. This is okay if
they pick up the other styles, but often they walk away from being a team
member to coach, motivate and punish only. But if you put them back in the
position to try and support the staff you realize they are woefully incompetent
at doing the job they are asked to manage. To avoid being a demanding manager
and also to avoid being seen as totally incompetent, a manager should jump into
the job and get their feet wet regularly. In my current position I would LOVE
and have loved seeing managers take calls and help clients. Its often painful
as they forgot what its like and need some coaching themselves, but it creates
respect and shows that they are trying to help. I also see a lot of team leads
and managers abandon the actual work and when things get busy they try and
shift things around with out doing anything themselves. I totally do not
respect those that don’t pitch in with meaningful hard work when the cue is
huge and we are trying to help others. As a manager, when I worked in the call
center, I would take a minimum of 10 calls a day, as a security manager I
parked cars and did patrols with the guards and put myself in the worst sites
when I worked in a site based firm. I made a lot of inroads with guards and my
call takers in the phone centers.
The key to being a good manager
is knowing what style to adopt for different situations and to push to always
focus on the goals of the team to help push them forwards. The art of it is in
flowing in and out of styles and not getting set in the wrong one or using the
wrong one for a situation. You have to be very self aware of your abilities and
character as well. If you are ill suited to be a messiah for the company or its
totally not your place then avoid this style. If you are not a great coach
maybe leave that to someone else and lets face it…if you have a track record of
being a bad manager but you rock in other places…don’t put the burden of your ill
fitting place on others, leave the managing to others.
At times I have had family
issues or other issues that made me a bad candidate for a management possiton
and I will be the first to admit that I am a far better fit for some styles
than others, the down side to them however is more when you don’t realize this
and you take on a roll that you are not suited for. I have also seen these
styles and probably a few others described in courses and thought “that’s a
great way to put that” or” that’s much better than the last guy stated it” does
not matter!!!! These are just more common ways to see them and honestly its
more about finding your knitch as a manager than wording. If you suck as a
manager….get a different job or strive to be better and find a good mentor…not
one that just thinks they are better too.
I equate all these to Karate
instructors as well because of my interactions with some of the best…and worst
in that world and essentially Karate instructors are a micro cause of these
titles.
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