Managing styles of different managers…

Every person has different behaviour and habits and if we considered managers as personJ, then they have strange behaviour and habits.  There are few managers who start their work after office hours. When you want to leave the office at sharp 5.30 pm, they will call you and will spoil your evening.  Some walk faster than employees, some have habit of staring out of the window while talking to employee, some managers let you give answers, some hide information and there are lot more other variations. Here are these different types of managers explained that why they do stuff they are used to do in front of employees.

Walking faster than employees: You will find these mangers in passages and corridors always walking fast than you. They are very busy and always ask you to run.   “We’ll have to talk” you can hear them say, just as they have disappeared around the corner.

Staring out of the window: These managers you usually meet with their backside faced to you with their hands in their pockets. When you talk to them, their thoughts keep staring out of the windows.

Managing by post-it’s: Some managers forget everything. They want to impress you with their busyness by continuously writing on Post-it’s while you are talking.

Managing by delegation to the secretary: These managers just delegate everything to the secretary. If He/She is good, He/She knows what he must do.

Managing by knowing nothing: These managers don’t really know anything at all. They let YOU give answers. Meanwhile they fill the time with nice anecdotes of irrelevant cases.

Managing by conceptual thinking: These people try to explain the present from a theoretical view of the far future. The idea that this never will work, completely satisfies them: They will always have something to talk about.

Managing by hiding information: Information hiders are aware of the market value of strictly secretly kept information. You must be very thankful to get any information at all. Beware of stimulants from category 5!

Managing by doing exactly what the boss says: These managers prevent their bosses from creative thinking. Else they got more work to do.

Managing by walking one foot behind the boss: In hierarchical organizations you can watch those groups walking in the corridor. The more equal managers are directly followed by the lesser equal managers, and so on.

Managing by smiling and wearing nice suits: If you drink beer with them, lunch with them, smile to them and also wear nice suits, nothing can stop your career anymore.

Managing by studying: Despite their continual attendances of all kind of studies and congresses, they still belong to category ‘MANAGING BY KNOWING NOTHING’. The longer they learn, the further they get from the practice.

Managing by creating vague overhead sheets: Do you know them? Those sheets with some big arrows, boxes or circles? These sheets provide the ultimate proof of their overall brilliance.

Managing by open door and empty room: This is a major improvement of the older ‘OPEN DOOR’ management style. Now you can really walk in and out anytime you want. Nobody ever knows where these managers are.

Managing by speaking with other managers: This kind of managing is very popular. It will give them within a few hours the same information as an employee can tell them in 15 minutes.

Managing by having a non supporting infrastructure: In an organization with a hopeless infrastructure, managers are really necessary. These managers will naturally prevent the organization from having a better infrastructure.

BUA management (by using abbreviations): This management style is ATRASACWOC. (Adopted To Reach A Shorter And Clearer Way Of Communication )

Managing by using buzz words: These managers like to bluff your head off with hip, nearly undefined, terms.

Managing by reorganization: If they think there is nothing more to organize, they reorganize.

Managing by believing: These managers must be spiritually educated, because they have no clues at all.

Managing by forgetting promises: If you remind them to one of their promises, the priority of that promise is to low to remember.

(Adopted from different sources)

Style as per the situation: Situational Leadership

Once you identified the style of learning or performing of your tem members, the real challenge is to tune your (leadership) style with their style.

Sometime you may decide just to instruct and direct the person, however sometimes you may be supportive. You guide him; support him so that he would take the right decision. Key factors are how you are directive or how you are supportive in your leadership style. Most of the times, manager use the same style with all employees and they fail to motivate all.

Directive style (low support and high direction):

As mentioned in the table, you may use the directive style if the person has low competence and high commitment.  Showing and telling the person what to do, how to do it and when they need to be finished by. The leader provides as many explanations as are needed, but there is no discussion/debate on what must be done. Problem-solving and decision-making are initiated by the leader. The team member needs this type of direction to get them started.

Coaching Style (high direction and high support):

This can be used for the person who has some or low competence and low commitment. This person needs motivation.  The leader gives a high degree of direction and is still the centre of the universe for the team, and the individual. He leads with his own ideas, however he is also explaining why things need to be done the way requested and seeking much more input from the team members. Two-way communication and support is increased, but control over decision-making remains with the leader.

He can do it by selling an idea, testing or consulting the idea.

Joining Style (for reluctant contributor):

This style is useful when the person has the competence and he doesn’t need direction, but needs support and motivation.  The focus of day-to-day decision-making and problem solving shifts from the leader to the team member. The leader is operating more as a resource and facilitator.

At this time the leader and the team member discuss and jointly decide.

Delegating (for perk performer: - high competence and high motivation):

Here person has competence and enough motivated to perform the task. Such types of people are high performers in the organization. These employees need new challenges, freedom to work and want involve in decision making process.

Here all tasks are handled with little input from the leader. The team member directs their own behavior and decides how tasks should be accomplished and how often to involve the leader. The team member is willing – even wants – to work by him or herself with little support or supervision. The leader is focused on strategic issues and works with the team to rapidly implement changes that enable the team to remain competitive in the marketplace.

Once you have chosen the appropriate style to use with this person, in this situation, you then monitor performance. Making decisions to shift your style as the person either grows beyond the style you had chosen, or lacks suitable progress and requires you to maybe step back a level.

You can use the following tool to assess and willingness of your team and decide your leadership style.

Coaching is like parenting and asking to eat bitter-gourd

Most of the times, managers refer performance cases to their bosses and HR.  Imagine the situation where issue is put on the table of HR head. Employee says, “I am not aware, nobody told me that I am doing anything wrong.” Line manager says,” I have given you the hint when we discussed last time.” HR head says, “Have you documented the discussion?”

The result- Communication is not clear, expectations are not clear. Employee says, “Sir you never told me that.” Boss says, “We meet everyday, but you never discuss with me.”

Why such situations arise?

It is good to keep HR in loop, but then managers forget responsibilities towards their employees. Sometimes, employee may have performance or behaviour issues. Handling non performing employees is always a difficult task. If employee is old in the organization, then such issues may create lot of confusion among interested parties. If these issues are not handled properly, they become, perpetual.  The perpetual issues affect the productivity. It also disturbs the culture. Here HR has the prime responsibility to develop managers as effective coach. Coaching is the key. One of the HR responsibilities of line managers is to focus on the performance of employees and be the coach for their employees.

Coaching is a mean for learning and development. It also includes manager’s role of guiding to achieve goals and experience sharing. However most of the times, it is misinterpreted for correcting behaviour, directing somebody or forcing the expertise. Coaching asks what is right as well as what works. It is ongoing procedure. As rightly said by Galileo Galilei, you can’t teach a man anything. You can only help him discover it within himself. Coaching is exactly supporting employees to discover their potential within themselves.

Here manager’s act as a good model. His direct reports may be mimicking his behavior. Sometime managers are directive and sometimes supportive. This should also need to reflect in coaching style.  

Employee needs coaching in following circumstances.

• If he has performance issues
• If he has behaviour issues
• If he is being bored with routine job
• If causing frictions with team members
• If he is stumbling while working.      

Every person in his life plays the role of coach; coach for his kids. In profession, though you can’t treat your employees as kid, but you can pick your style to develop them, guide them to develop their performance.

What do we do at home when we don’t get desired behaviour or results from the kid? My wife uses a unique technique of coaching.

In past my son, Atharva had an issue of eating sabjee of bitter -gourd. She tried to understand the reason by listening well. Initially the response was “I don’t like that”. Then after continues questioning, he told his problem that the subzi tastes bitter and hence he doesn’t like that. After few days she advocate eating bitter-guard explaining him certain reasons, like it is good for heath etc etc. She also made some changes in the recipe so that it would taste less bitter. Child started to taste and gave good feedback. Finally he agreed that he would eat the same. She did not forget to reward him for this improvement.     

What skills she used here?

• She listened actively,
• She asked right questions and reasons,
• She advocated her opinion,
• She received feedback and gave her feedback,
• She built agreement
• She rewarded kid.

If you want to be effective coach, you required to develop above skills. These are right skills required for coaching. We all have these skills, only need to uncover the same.

Now just see the methodology she adopted.

She identified area: Areas is to guide the child to eat subzi of bitter-gourd.

Identify desired outcome: Child eats subzi without hesitation is the expected outcome.

Take stakeholders in confidence: She took the child and me (!) in confidence by convincing him that it is good for health.

Identify difficulties: She identified difficulties and change the recipe if required.

In whole process, here her role was supportive. Here directive coaching style would have been failed. We should be very clear about the circumstances about using these styles. If employee is totally inexperienced and need coaching, directive style would help.

Coaching has purpose and objective. It is not just directing or guiding. Here results are expected. I personally believe that if we work as coaches than managers, we can easily expect more results from our employees. Literally it is like parenting. Parenting what my wife did, call it as coaching as well!  

And of course, it is same like asking employee to eat bitter-gourd.

Weird Management Styles!

“I am fade up with poor jokes which he cracks. I have to laugh unnecessary. I never liked that.” one employee had told me the reason behind his resignation. I don’t know the real reason behind his resignation. People sometimes share peculiar things about the organization, team and their bosses when you speak informally with them on a lunch table. Sometimes their comments are weird, but can help you a lot to improve the behaviour of managers.

“He is so perfectionist that I can not tolerate it more. Does the font size & colour matter? He asked me to rework 3 times on data due to this reason!” One employee shared. There are different management styles people follow. I am not talking about the formal and professional management styles. There are different customized styles; managers adopt to survive in the organization. Nourishment of these management styles are done by the culture of the organization.  

If you are in a canteen, cafeteria or near water cooler, you will listen comments similar as mentioned below.

“He likes YES MAN and I am not a YES MAN, hence I decided to change the job.” – Isn’t it Yes Sir Management Style?

“I don’t know what I am doing. He calls us for the meeting and speaks for a day. These all are sermons. Are we here for listening sermons? After the sermons, we ourselves have to do the work.” – Management by Sermon!

 “Whenever I go for asking something to him, he tells different reasons for not doing that. He has lot of excuses with him for anything.”- Management by excuses!

“He called me yesterday at home in the morning and wasted my 2 hours. He spoiled my Sunday. My husband was very unhappy with this.” One women employee had shared with me sometimes 3 years back. The person had to call employees (mostly female employees) to get the information about other employees. – Isn’t it Management by (only) Networking?

“See his style; he knows everything about his boss. He knows his favourite food, likes and dislikes. As he does this all for, he also expects same from us.”-  Management by cheering

“He does not know the market, he believes only on paper and everything in black and white. He should understand that there is gray colour also in this world. He knows only policies, procedures and rule book and insist them on us” – Management by rules? 

Employees try to adjust their styles with these management styles. But when such styles become habits of the person, employees get frustrated while tuning their style with others. This is tagged as unprofessional and can be the reason of leaving the job.