Every leader has a unique style of overseeing and assisting their teams, and any management style a leader uses will directly impact their staff. As a leader, what about each style can help you deliver the outcome you desire? While there is no right way to manage, some styles can be more helpful in particular industries or when working with certain staff teammates. When developing great managers, online training leadership programs are immensely helpful. For now, to examine different styles and their uses, read on!
What Makes a Great Leader?
Leadership techniques and tactics change, but there are certain qualities everyone in corporate leadership should work towards. Those qualities, according to the Northeastern University graduates, consist of:
- Prioritizing personal development: leaders should always be learning and find ways to adapt to changing business needs and be open to getting feedback and upgrading their management styles.
- Develop others: working on themselves while consistently helping others by acting as a mentor for employee development.
- Encourage innovation: create a roadmap that teams are on board with and have a hand in the decision-making.
- Ensuring ethics: Being authoritative is great, but making sure leaders are following business practices and common sense is just as important. Being open and honest with teams will go a long way to gaining loyalty and trust.
- Cross-functional communication: leaders know how to bridge gaps in communication across divisions and departments, keeping open lines of communication and offering help to ensure everyone is on the same page and working towards the same goal.
Now that you have the skills for providing excellent leadership, you can look at these different core management approaches. Managers sometimes suffer from creative fatigue and need to reevaluate their way of leading; there is no “one size fits all” way to manage. Each of the following management styles has a specific function that will help you provide the best guidance towards your objectives. Knowing when to use them is crucial to ensure that processes improve and your organization is working at its best.
The Strategic Management Style
Focusing on strategy helps reach your goal. Creative vision is at the heart of this management style – it involves developing roadmaps to success and providing clear expectations and instructions to staff. Communication is a significant factor in ensuring that you stay connected with your team and updated on progress. Working on a strategy means understanding every player’s role and ensuring everyone has all resources necessary to fulfill their duties. As a manager, you would utilize this management style for specific projects that deal with many tasks to achieve targets. Industries that work especially well with a strategic management style include construction, manufacturing, and engineering.
The Quiet Management Style
Putting trust in your team is a management style some leaders use for a more hands-off approach; giving teams the tools they need and then allowing them to make decisions independently and complete their due diligence. Giving employees complete ownership of projects and tasks also gives them control of implementation. If you choose this approach, understand you are taking responsibility for all mistakes made by your team. Giving them the freedom to choose how to complete tasks can be very useful and give you more time as a manager to oversee more projects with less work. The quiet management style does not work well with more task-driven industries like retail or customer service. However, it can be beneficial in more creative industries when managers have highly experienced employees they trust with the ability to work freely.
The Instructive Management Style
If you’re a well-organized expert in your field, the instructor management style may be best for you. Managers who are knowledgeable in their roles and have a more hands-on approach to their work can provide coaching to assist and instruct their teams through their tasks and projects. Managers using this style are very structured, understanding that they may need to help employees, essentially holding their hands through each step. The instructive style is a traditional way to manage teams and works well when managers have less-experienced teams, such as entry-level workers.
The Experimental Management Style
Forward-thinking approaches sometimes come with experimentation. This approach works best for fast-paced, dynamic work environments where people need to take the initiative to give teams the freedom to try new things. Leaders will provide employees with resources to get started, but then allow them to hit the ground running. Then, teams will work to brainstorm ideas, develop strategies, and put them into action. As a result, they have more decision-making authority and thrive in the ability to think outside of the box. The experimentative style is beneficial in industries where managers can trust employees who have extensive knowledge in an area and can be given the freedom to experiment. Here, understanding how to manage your team’s individual talents comes into play. Industries this works best on may include technology-driven fields like design, web development, and writing, as well as creative sectors, such as film, television, and fashion.
Which Management Style is Right For You?
Tailoring your management approach is vital when determining the best possible leadership style for your team. This blog serves as a beginner introduction to management styles. However, it’s important the work doesn’t stop here. Make sure your organization has a solid leadership training program with engaging courses that shrink the management skill gap. Staying open and adaptive to your employees’ needs, understanding and developing their talents, and encouraging a positive and uplifting environment will encourage high performance. Get to know your teams and keep open-minded as you cater to your managing style to achieve your goals. Y
ou may start with one type and eventually graduate to another. There is no one way to manage, so you can try more than one to find what works best. Talk with an eLearning expert for free to learn how your organization can use online training to increase employee knowledge and skillset, keeping your business the best it can be.