Oct 16 2006
Management Styles
We have been discussing management styles this past week and when I look back over my career, I have experienced a number of different styles. I have also adopted different approaches depending on the maturity and experience of the people I was managing.
There are various ways to define styles of management. Five classic styles are:
- Dictatorship The manager decides on his or her own
- Benevolent autocracy The manager decides, the group advises
- Democracy The group decides, the manager advises
- Laissez-faire Nobody makes proper decisions
- Consultative Manager asks, group contributes, manager decides
All styles have their place depending on the situation. Indeed, the situation must always be considered. In many instances what is needed is a blend of more than one style. Ultimately a manager’s style must play to their strengths, be acceptable to their staff – and aid effectiveness.
From there, we went on to further investigate what I term “Management Personalities” and Merrill & Reid call “Social Styles” in their excellent book “Knowing About Social Styles” – you can read my latest article on the subject: “How To Identify And Use Your Social Style” here
There are four types of management personalities or social styles – Analyticals, Drivers, Expressives and Amiables – and all four have their own unique approach to business, their own language, thought process etc. As a consequence, the very best sales professionals have become adept at recognising which personality they are dealing with and adapt their approach accordingly.
In every boardroom, you will most likely find all four personalities and I have discovered over the years which personality is likely to fill which position on the board. However, rather than reveal all here now, I will expand my theory in a full article which will appear in the November newsletter. We will also give you the opportunity to take an interactive assessment and discover which of the four personalities you most closely match – it is incredibly accurate!
Last week, I was singing the praises of David Bain and his excellent site www.buildyourownbusiness.biz and you will remember that I said David’s site specialised purely in business related topics – as the name suggests.
I am also an admirer of Chris Wright’s EzineArticles site: www.ezinearticles.com because it is quite simply the most successful and with more than 37,000 contributing authors, the largest. Despite its size, the whole operation is run extremely professionally. I have been particularly impressed by the efficiency of the editorial team and also the statistical data available, so well done guys keep up the good work.
Next week, I will refer you to articles by other authors that I will be reading this week, which I consider worthy of a mention but before I sign off, I did promise you an update on the lost domain saga. There has been a significant twist which will leave all but the most cynical of you, open-mouthed in disbelief but I need to obtain legal clearance and I will then share the whole story with you – and yes, I do intend to use every opportunity available to me to “name and shame”. At least it may prevent this sort of thing happening to any other innocent business owner.
Have a great week - JF
