It’s not uncommon for company owners and employees in management positions to query the need and effectiveness of management training. This in part stems from staid conceptions regarding management techniques, their implementation and a lack of understanding regarding the true value that managerial training and courses can add to both small and large corporations.
When asking ourselves what management training can achieve in the workplace, we first need to understand the core roles of a manager in the modern workforce. Unfortunately, ineffective managers have tainted the perception of their role in a company to a wide variety of people. Including the people who could, in different circumstances,benefit from an awesome leader at the helm of the team.
OK, so what the heck does a manager actually do?
Management, in a nutshell, is the act or role of making decisions that directly affect subordinates in a company. Someone who is effective in a managerial position understands how to achieve the maximum amount of productivity from employees in an organisation by deploying a variety of management styles that ensure that people produces at a maximum efficiency. Typically this involves providing subordinates with a work environment in which they feel they have are comfortable, challenged and have a structured workflow which ensures that productivity targets are met.
Management Styles
As mentioned earlier an effective manager understands and implements a variety of management styles or techniques to get the most out of his or her team. Lets have a look at some of these styles and how best to employ them.
Autocratic
An autocratic managerial style is one that is made without much regard to the subordinates of an organisation. This type of style can project the image of a confident and empowered company decision making process; however,competent and knowledgeable subordinates, especially those with specialised skill-sets, often feel disgruntled in these situations as the style often does not take into account realistic restrictions or viable alternatives to projects. As a result, a company that employs a purely autocratic management style often has a high rate of employee turnover and those employees which it does manage to retain are often unhappy and produce below their maximum potential.
There are two types of autocratic management styles:
1.**Directive autocratic style** makes decisions unilaterally and closely supervises the workflow and process of the subordinates tasked with implementing the project.
2.**Permissive autocratic style** makes unilateral but allows subordinates a large amount of freedom in managing their own projects and production processes.
Of the two styles a permissive autocratic style typically achieves better results.
Consultive style
A consultive style is typically one that one that can be seen as benevolent dictatorship. Decisions are still made by the managerial team; however, management communicates down the chain of subordinates and takes their input into consideration before implementing a decision. This style typically promotes increased understanding of the process involved in a making a decision as well as the methodology involved in the implementation of a decision from a production standpoint. As a result, this style generally creates a happier workforce and increases productivity when compared to a strictly autocratic management style.
Democratic style
In a democratic style of management managers involve subordinates directly in the decision making process. This style of management can be extremely effective when employed in complex decisions; however, if can come at a cost as decisions can take more time to make than the styles previously mentioned. In the same way that an autocratic manager can adopt two approaches to implementing their management styles; either permissive or directive.
What really works!
In this day and age it’s ridiculous to expect one management style to be applicable to every single situation. As with most things in life, selecting the appropriate tool or skill-set for each application generates the best results. A manager that’s received comprehensive training in the field not only understands this, but knows which particular style to employ in each situation.
To illustrate the point, imagine a yacht and its captain. If the yacht springs a leak and starts to sink the yacht’s captain needs to employ a directive autocratic management style to ensure that the boat stays afloat.
To extend the metaphor, when replacing the yacht’s rigging, a consultive management style should be used as the yacht’s captain typically has more experience, however, the yacht’s crew works with the rigging on a daily basis and may be aware of solutions which could improve efficiency or speed. In this type of situation the captain is aware of the direct requirements of the project, but the decision may or may not be enhanced by the yacht’s crews’ input.
Finally, when making decisions regarding shore-leave a democratic management style is needed, as finding dates and times which work for everyone will enable the boat to achieve more time at sea with a full crew, allow the yacht to strategically book into a dry-dock, and ensure that the crew moral is kept at it’s maximum by being able to effectively coordinate its shore leave with family leave or personal engagements.
