Management Styles

[Rainman]

Hey everyone, I was talking to my roommate (also served in the Army together for 4 years) about leadership and management styles. We were comparing our experiences with our leadership in the Army with those of our past and current civilan jobs and we both arrived at the same conclusion.

Being a jerk in a management position = almost always results in more getting done and the approval of those above you in the company, but also earning the hatred and fear of your subordinates. I do not want this to be true, but in my own experience it is. Whenever I was in a leadership position in any job, military or otherwise, and I was a cool and relaxed boss, stuff never got done right or on time and I would catch hell for it. But when I was raging asshole, angry all the time and sometimes downright mean to my people, my dept/unit would exceed all expectations and I would be lauded with praise from on high.

I'm sure there has GOT to be a middle ground here, but I've never seen someone who can pull it off. My question is: Have any of you ever had a boss who was effiecient and liked? And if not, which style do you think is better in the long run?

[csquared]

I think it is two way street. If you surround yourself with excellence, set high expectations and provide praise, rewards and support, your employees will deliver. My boss does not have to yell and scream to get us to get things done. He has our back. He has shown us that. We want to take care of him.

I am guessing that you did not get to pick your subordinates,and by your description, I would say that they were not the cream of the crop. They may have been good, but "self motivated" they were not.

It not so much which management style is best, it is which style works with which employee.

[MoonCat]

I had a boss once who started in the same job as mine (ad sales). She worked her way up and became the manager of our dept. We all respected her because she knew the job from the ground up, and she didn't have that attitude that so many managers have of thinking she was better, smarter and more important than the rest of us. We also liked her because she was fun to be around, had a very dry, slightly naughty sense of humor, cared about us as people, and when she wanted something done, she presented it more as "You guys are great at what you do, let's get this done." For bosses like that, you work hard, because you want their respect and praise. It's win-win.

I've also had bosses who treated us all like crap from the day they walked into the place. They used vulgar language, dismissed every concern and question we had, and acted like we were lowlife scum who needed constant micromanagement. For bosses like that, you do the minimum, because it's human nature to react defensively when you feel you are under attack, and/or you are disrespected and treated with contempt. Sure, you do your job, but you don't go the extra mile because you know it's not appreciated.

[Bronzebow]

I think the point was nailed about the kinds of people that get hired in the first place. From personal experience, I can tell you about a couple different managers and how the workers interacted with them.

The first was a local supermarket chain that I could write a whole diatribe about. The management hired high school kids for three month stretches before letting them go. Did I mention that the kids were only paid about 3/4 minimum wage on a three month "training period," which was legal (as we were told--still no clue if it actually was)? We were chewed out and talked down to for any myriad of things. High school kids being high school kids, we were all jaded by the end of our "terms" and did less than bare minimum. Some guys slept in the back, we usually broke the floor buffer so we didn't have to do it (the owner's daughter was too wrapped up in shadowing and fussing us all day to know how to do any of our jobs, including maintenance on the thing), and the one working camera in the whole store was in the back area so we could be spied on in their little manager loft.

Needless to say, they reaped exactly what they sewed. In all fairness though, it was a combination of incompetence and nastiness that kept that store nasty.

The next nasty DM was at a fast food burger place. She liked to visit us often. She was competent--as in, she knew everyone's job and exactly how to do it. This, of course, meant that none of us knew a thing on how to pull it off. When she was gone, the work day was fairly stress free and stuff got done. When she was in store that day, it was a full day of yelling, chiding, derisive rants, and belittling. It was almost like an old curse: she got exactly what she was expecting. Turnover could be charted by her visits.

The next fast food pizza chain had a nice guy manager. He was mostly competent, though he had a few failings. Drama was only really caused by a couple of the stupid drivers, and he and the AM were pretty good at at least keeping it to a minimum. I actually enjoyed working there because of it. He taught me every step of the pizza making process, from the morning prep to boxing the results. It let me take it as a personal challenge to bounce around the store and help in whatever was needed whenever there was a lull in the phones. It was a lot of fun and damn was I motivated.

My current boss rivals only one other person as top manager in my book. He's incredibly competent and personable, and I've been developing code under him for years. We have occasional moments where we don't see eye to eye, but by far I trust his judgement and I want to make him--and our product--succeed.

My partner has his own set of stories. He was working as a (damn good) stylist at a big chain salon. The store had this one guy, R, manage it for years. R did a damn good job of keeping control of all of the drama that just seemed to spark itself in the store, and the money pulled in rivaled the highest in the district (cities with 2-4x the population). He was a good manager and really easy going--people just had to ask to have days off, or shift changes, or whatever else. He never said no, and the stylists rarely took advantage of that. He always thought that if he kept people happy, they'd be productive, and their numbers reflected that.

Well, after so many years of keeping the drama llama's in check, R got worn out of it. He practically begged another stylist, D, to take on the mantle. D had some management experience, but she always said no. So, she decided that, even though she could have the management position at any time she wanted, she was going to go to the DM and act like a mole on the inside, report every time that someone asks off or breaks this rule or this or that, throwing R under the bus. She manages to get a Christmas party cancelled and cause all sorts of ruckus. One day, the DM forces a phone conference with D and R together, and R "decides" to step down and let D take over manager.

It's worth noting at this point that DM is across the country in CA. She's never met any of these people, nor has ever stepped foot in the store as far as I know.

After she walks out of the meeting, literally everyone working gets a write-up. She orders boxes of write-ups. Late five minutes? Write-up. Ask off? No, and write-up. Sick? Write-up. My partner has a disability that occasionally causes him to be hospitalized (have a post coming about the hospital staff...), so he was out for two days while this was happening. He walks in to work, clocks in, and gets two write-ups.

Long story short: the stylists leave in droves. The store has 20 stylists optionally. It went from 18 employees down to 10 in about a month, and slowly down to six currently. Numbers are not even close to being hit, and now the DM is riding D like crazy.

So while I agree that a boss really does have to have some backbone, I think that fear is a very poor substitute for respect. I think that you're more liable to lose your good and independent-minded employees in favor of the ones that would rather just do bare minimum. I guess each scenario is different, though, and I've only had five jobs in my life, so I guess I'm not really an expert. I just know that I've stuck around at places where I've liked my bosses, because I wanted them to succeed as much as I liked having rent money and food.

[Kittish]

I don't wanna jinx myself, but the way things are looking, this thread is going to have a lot of meaning for me here very shortly. I got called back to the boom-store that I'd worked at around this time last year, to work at least this season again.

I go in, and the talk is immediately about teaching me how to open the store, and making me a keyholder, and other management type duties. This, of course, sets my brains to sparking and I wonder just what they've got in mind for me here. I'm hoping for a permanent position with the place, it's a fun place to work and the bosses and other employees are mostly great to work with.

So... this past Saturday (not quite a week since I'd been back with them), I'm chatting with the store manager... and find out that today (Saturday) is her last day. Out of state family medical stuff that she has to deal with, and she doesn't yet know if she's going to have to move to the relative or if she can move the relative to her. I hope all that works out for her, for the best. At the news that she's leaving tho, things start going click...click...click in my head, when I put it together with conversations I've been having with the bosses, and comments they've made. I'm being looked at as a possible manager or assistant manager for the store.

I'm getting pretty much daily confirmation of my surmise what with the tasks and duties that are being tossed at me, including being asked to do a write up regarding a new sales procedure describing how I see it working, problems I see with the current system, and how I would fix it. Oh, and being asked to speak to another employee regarding a fairly large faux pas on her part. If anyone wants to know, I did that 'the right way', asking to speak with her privately and calmly telling her what her mistake had been and please don't do that again, along with a positive reinforcement of something she was doing properly.

I've never been in a management position before. I have NO idea how it works though I'm rapidly gaining a clue, from watching the bosses and the assistant manager and getting some direct training from all of them. No one has said anything directly about it yet, I figure they're waiting to see how I handle what they're throwing at me so far before making a formal offer. *crossing my fingers*

[Greenday]

I've learned it's a matter of balance. If you are a hard ass all the time, you are going to be rightfully hated. If you never lay down the law, people are going to walk all over you and nothing will get done. You have to balance the two and make sure to pick and choose when to be easy and when you gotta be a dick.

[ozcatbug]

The absolute best manager I have ever had was a 64 year old former army guy. He spent 20 years in the army, retired, then ended up with a job at a supermarket. When I started he had worked his way up the management ladder, then back down (his choice) to the night fresh produce manager and backup fresh food manager. I don't know his rank in the army, but he did tell me he used to train the new recruits. His management style is something that I have tried to use myself.

John never asked anyone to do anything he wasn't prepared to do himself. If something needed cleaning and he was the only one available, he would do it. He never set targets that he himself could not achieve, and the targets were always well below what he could get. As a night manager, he accepted that he would have to get stuck in and help fill, and he did, always doing more than the 20 to 25 year old staff on his team. Seriously, he was the fastest filler in the store, and at the end of a 7.5 hour shift he would still be working like he had just started. I would kill to have even half his energy and I'm only 35.

John was an Irish guy with a real Irish sense of humour, always joking and smiling. As an Aussie with a similar sense of humour I was always able to tell when he was joking and when he wasn't, unlike most of the other staff. He was polite, never swore, never discriminated, and was liked by everyone. However do the wrong thing, and he let you know. If you made an honest mistake, he would take you aside, let you know what you did wrong and what you should have done, always being very polite. If you made a stupid mistake, but were willing to admit it, he would take you aside (he would always move you away from other staff as it is wrong to confront staff in front of others), tell you that he was disappointed (you never wanted John to be disappointed in you), and give you a coaching.

If on the other hand you made a stupid mistake and didn't admit it, or you made a huge mistake and refused to admit any wrong doing, he would take you aside and then he would get really quiet. Usually he would let people list all the reasons why what they did or didn't do wasn't wrong, and he would keep quiet until they had finished, you know like a teacher standing in front of the class not saying a word until everyone shuts up. When they stopped talking John would start. You know how some people yell or get louder when they are telling people off, not John. He was a quiet speaker anyway, but when you were in trouble he would get even quieter. He told me the reason was when someone yells at you, the instinct is to shut them out, whereas if someone starts speaking quietly the instinct is to listen closely. The only time I ever heard John raise his voice was when he tried to lead a staff member with a bad attitude to somewhere private, and the staff member started swearing at John. John just looked at him, raised his voice slightly (it was enough to shock all the staff from about 6 aisles) asked him if he had ever heard John swear at staff, (that would be a no) and said he would not accept anyone swearing at him. The staff member shut up at that point, obviously embarrassed, and went quietly with John to their private meeting.

I loved that man, and I want to be a manager just like him. Leading by example is always good in my book, but I was told by a management lecturer that successful management styles are dependent on the personality of the manager. Someone like me (quiet, prefer leading by example, hate yelling) could never manage through fear or charisma. I have seen both these techniques being successfully implemented, but I can't do it. No one technique will work for everyone, and techniques should be flexible.

[Rainman]

Csquard raises a good point about not choosing who works for you, I never had control over who was working for me in any leadership position I earned. Most of my experience in a leadership role was when I was a Sergeant in the Army, and naturally we didn't have much say in who we got under us, Regiment would send you new, warm bodies and you were expected to mold them into what you needed them to be. This is really where I got my first taste of being in charge of people (all males, age 18-38, I was 24 at the time)

When I first got my stripes, everyone who the day before had been my friends/co-workers now became my subordinates, and literally all of them had been in the Army longer than me. I never imagined they would hold resentment at my being promoted over them (hey, I had busted my butt and I earned it) but it's really the only way I can explain what happened. Since I knew them all to be good soldiers, I never felt the need to ride them hard or treat them like they were irresponsible. Good lord, I probably got my ass chewed more in the first 3 months than I had in my previous 3 years. My guys let their barracks rooms get nasty, they let their uniform standards drop, just a lot of stupid little things I knew for a fact they knew better, because these problems had never come up before.

So after 3 months of getting my ass handed to me by my superiors because my guys were f**king up left and right, I did a complete 180. I assume everyone knows that standards in the military are quite high, and I took it a new level. I woudn't go apeshit for tiny little infractions or treat them like stupid children, I constantly told them they were grown ass men and I expected them to act as such, but if a mistake was made, the punishments were usually quite hard. (Example, a soldier might have the job of raking all the leaves in the Company area, which is highly visible to senior officers and therefore must always look good to reflect well on the unit, and he tells me he is finished. I ask him if he's sure, and he says he is. I go out and inspect the area, and it's done quite poorly. I tell him to do it again, only now he is not allowed to use a rake, or garbage bags, and he is not going home until he is done. Also note, I would not go home until he was done either because I had to ensure the job was done correctly, so I was there with him the whole time) Yes i know it sounds very harsh, stupid and mean to you all but darn it, I didn't know what else to do.

Would you believe that in less than a week my guys began to fix themselves and do everything right like I knew they could? In less than a month I went from being a huge f**kup to being the model NCO (non-commisoned officer) in my company) and my superiors were telling other NCOs to be like me. Believe it or not I was not at all happy about this

It sucked I had to be such a hardass and run my guys through fear. I didn't want to, being mean and angry all the time just wasn't me, but good lord trying it the other way just made my life miserable. Every time I tried lightening up a little, to try and find some middle ground to my leadership style, it would all start over again and I would have re-strike the fear of god into them. I knew my guys didn't like me at all, but then again, it wasn't my job to be liked, it was to teach them how to be soldiers and stay alive on a battlefield.

I just wish I could have found that middle ground. Clearly in my situation being a hardass was the only way to go, I learned that through alot of trial and error. I am glad so many of my fellow posters here had good bosses that could get it right

You guys think I was wrong? Say so if you do, Im a big boy Looking back on it all I just don't see anything else I could have done and to be honest I still feel kind of bad about it to this day.