Are you a leader or follower?
Recent events have made me ponder as to why certain people are great leaders and others not so much. My career allows me the greatest opportunity of all; going into other businesses and assessing what it is they are doing that is benficial and non-beneficial to their business. This is the greatest job ever! Not only do I get to analyze other people’s businesses; in the process I learn more and more everyday what is good common sense business practices and what is not. We will look strictly at the soft skills side today.
The focus of this blog is management styles. The most common types seen is micro management and macro mangement. Neither is preferrable, it is preferrable to be a manager that is involved in every day to day business that provides a source of leadership but is not above doing the most menial tasks. An attitude of helping the many not the few is necessary; as well as to lead by example. In this matter the question is: if you are not willing to put the effort in doing whatever the task requires and be engaged fully in the task, then why should your employees want to put in the effort?
1) This matter requires much attention if you are running a business and not achieveing the goals you are wishing to achieve. If as a manger you take the attitude of menial tasks are beneath you my experince over the last 7 years of my career has shown me this results in macro management practices. This results in a very lax and dis-associated form of management and the manager is not aware of what the everyday processes of your staff are. This also leads to staff creating their own business processes to take care of daily business even though they may not congrue with management or stakeholder’s goals. What you need to do as a respected and valuable leader is lead by example; and support and provide confidence in your team. Also very important… if there is grunt work to be done and you are a manager get involved! No one likes doing grunt work but do not delegate out of sheer attitude of “oh, this is beaneath me” and request the work to be done by staff while you sit in an office somewhere not doing much.
2) Do not micro manage! Micro managing and not believing in your team is demoralizing and condascending to say the least! It is like being in your teens and having parents always looking over you shoulder not trusting you. This is very detrimental as it makes employees not want to excel at and feel passionate about their job. If they were hired based on attitude and qualifications then allow them to prove their qualifications at what they were hired do.
3) Be a calm and level headed manger that instills an attitude of leader of the pack and show love and respect for your co-workers; you will notice that they are more than willing to ablige to complete the daily tasks at hand. Be a compassionate human and an inspiring leader at the same time.
I hope this discussion sheds some important points to light. Until next time happy networking.
Abundance and prosperity.
Saverio
