Management Styles

Running head: MANAGEMENT STYLES

Management Styles

Management Styles

Reflections:

To be a better supervisor it's important to know the different management styles generally employed, and which one is the best fit for the manager's personality. There are many opinions and much writing on just what the various management or leadership styles there are. In my opinion the following list best categorizes the different styles. The three basic styles are:

* Authoritarian or autocratic

* Participative or democratic

* Declarative or Free Reign

But a more complete break down would be:

Leadership by:

* Coaching

* Competition

* Data

* Empowerment

* Example

* Exception

* Model

* Objectives

* Process

* Relationship

* Teamwork

* Vision

Most effective leaders employ a combination of different types of management styles to reach different types of employees. As an example a manager using the coaching style of leadership will act more as a trainer than a boss. That manager will have employees practice tasks and try to motivate them to learn more, unfortunately that type of management can be very time consuming especially if one employee is a slow learner and requires an inordinate amount of the manager's time. Overall a coach type manager can be very effective in the right environment but will suffer from lost productivity in the wrong environment.

A manager that motivates or leads through competition can create a very productive workplace. By inspiring an environment where employees compete with each other for recognition, bonuses or related the manager can squeeze the maximum potential from employees. The problem with this type of leadership is that it is best suited for sales environments, and will be the most effective on type a personalities. Other personality types will find this environment threatening and possibly too stressful for long term employment satisfaction.

A "Data" leader provides information as the method to motivate employees; he or she will use percentages, graphs, and performance figures to allow employees to know where everything stands and what needs to be done. This type of leader will generally give the employees a great deal of latitude in how there work is completed. This leadership style is effective for competent, experienced employees who work well on their own; other employees might get lost in the data or simply not be self motivated enough to perform in this type of environment. This type of leadership is best suited for a numbers driven type of person.

One of my personal favorites is leading through "Empowerment". An empowering leader will encourage initiative from the employees, trust their employee's judgment and when there are problems or decisions to be made this leader may form committees to seek resolution. This type of manager will provide the employees with plenty of information and allow the employees to accomplish their tasks in their own way. This type of management can also lead to a "rats running the ship" situation. It takes a competent manager to ensure that projects stay on track in this type of environment, however many major companies have literally turned their operations around by incorporating empowerment into their management styles. This is a good fit for someone who trusts their employees.

A leader may choose to simply lead by example; this type of leader will set themselves up as the ideal performance model for the employees. This is an effective leadership style with many types of employees as they have a role model to follow. The down side to this style is that employees will rarely exceed the example they are following and as such will be limited to the level of their boss. This is a good fit for someone who is a strong enough personality to maintain the perfect example for employees.

The "Exception" leader simply sets the goals and only wants to be informed if things are going to miss expectations. This is similar to empowerment but with out the strong guiding hand to ensure things stay on track. It allows employees to reach their full