Your Management Style: Hopefully It’s None of These

Mr. Or Ms. “Over-Does-It” Says Too Much, Too Harshly 

The team can barely breathe around them. They’re the kind of manager that wants their employees to generate great ideas and innovative solutions. But they oppress the atmosphere and then wonder why nobody comes up with anything interesting.

Most of the time Mr. or Ms. “Over-Does-It” is not coming from a bad place. They just want to keep a handle on things and the business moving forward.  Mostly, they don’t want a team of employees who are wasting time and money and who neglect the core business.

They know how to keep the doors open, but struggle with making room for creativity.

Mr. Or Ms. “Head-In-The-Sand,” The Manager Who Never Addresses Anything

They’re everybody’s friend and nobody’s leader. The team enjoys their company. They can think around them. They can laugh and be silly. They can be themselves, good—bad—or indifferent.  They may be their favorite person, until there’s a problem.

Because Mr. or Mrs. “Head-In-The-Sand” never addresses a single issues, their team can often be undisciplined and disrespectful to one other — and them. With a leaderless leader as the head of the team there is no true voice of reason. Small issues tend to fester because they’re never addressed.

This can impact your company’s ability to innovate as the more creative team members may not feel safe enough to develop or promote their ideas.

Mr. or Ms. Depressed and Mr. or Ms. Overly-Ambitious

One is clearly in the wrong career path and barely hiding their sadness and disconnection from the work it takes to lead an effective team. The other is operating from the wrong motives, looking for countless opportunities to relentlessly promote themselves instead of the business, the customers or the team.

Remember, successful teams don’t manage themselves. The manager/the owner has to set the atmosphere for creativity, innovation, a little laughter, timeliness and respect. The goal is to have room for all those great ideas and a system for actually getting something done after the ideas come.

No business can dream all day. Somebody has to oversee the business of turning those dreams into reality.