Managers Need to Own Their Management Style and Hire Accordingly

 

Recently, I sat listening to the Vice President of a Medium sized company describe his management style. I could barely hold back my comments.  He was going on and on about how he takes great pride in giving people a ton of leeway and independence.   He described how his managers know that they can come to him if they have questions but other than that he really leaves them alone to do their own thing.

I asked him how he felt about the way that his boss, the CEO, manages him.  He responded, "He is a micromanager!"  He continued saying that this CEO constantly wants reports, spreadsheets and check-ins on how projects are going.  He explained that this is a constant source of frustration to him.  He then told me that he could hardly wait for the CEO to retire so he could get a new boss who had a better handle on managing people.

It was clear that I was talking to a person who valued a very independent management style.  His boss, the CEO, valued a more structured management style.  As a result, both parties were projecting out and using the style they appreciated with little or no consideration of what style their direct reports appreciated.  To take it a step further, they did not even consider there was another effective style. 

 

As managers, how do we know what style our people prefer?  How can we accommodate their needs while meeting the demands and structure of our organization? 

Here are a few ideas:

Understand self:  We first need to know where we fall on this bell curve.  If we look at the population of workers, most of us fall "somewhere in the middle" meaning we can adapt to hands-off or hands-on management styles.  If we are "somewhere in the middle" we are going to relate to most people and have the most success with being ourselves and using our natural style and approach.  The more we fall to the right or left of the bell curve, the smaller the population becomes.  This means, if we lean way to the left of the bell curve and prefer a hands-off approach we are only going to relate to people that are like us or on are on the left side of the middle.  People that are on the right side will find our natural style aloof and non-supportive.  If we lean to the right with a more "hands-on" approach, the people that lean more to the left will view our style as micro-managing. 

Understand our team:  Next, we need to understand the individuals on our team and where they might fit on this bell curve. One way we can do this is by asking questions and spending time with people.  A way to get this information faster is to use assessment tools to measure ourselves and our teams, view the team distribution, and adjust our approach accordingly. 

If we find that we lean far to the left or far to the right we need to be cognizant of this and make sure we hire people who can fit into our culture and structure.  As the top leader in our organizations, this culture and structure is strongly influenced by us.  If we are very self-motivated and independent, and value these skills in others, we need to hire people that are moderately independent so they don't try to take over our direction--but at the same time don't require a lot of hand holding and structure to be productive.  If we are more structure focused, we need to hire people that are comfortable working in a more structured environment so they won't feel micromanaged when we ask them for updates. 

 

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