The Five Management Styles

To my thinking, leaders are responsible for improving their organizations’ performance. Leaders need to make a lot of decisions and then get buy-in for those decisions. The quality of the decision (was it a good or bad choice) and the level of buy-in for those decisions are critical.

Effective leaders want both. A good decision without buy-in is a car without an engine, a boat without a sail. Good buy-in without a good decision is, well, you can imagine just the engine or the sail all alone. In either case, it’s the combination of these two factors that optimizes the leader’s influence.

I describe this leadership style as Collaborator. I define collaboration as a person’s or team’s ability to build both an effective decision AND buy-in.

It is this combination of both better decisions and better support that provides team decisions, which generate significant business impact.

While there are often many other leadership behavior alternatives at play, the five behavior options/leadership style choices I consider are:

Avoiders don't really want to help and have few good ideas. They often say "I really can’t help now, sorry."  Nothing gets done. Risk-phobia at work.

Accommodators are just in it for the fun of being together with others. When it's time to make a decision they say, " Whatever you say. I’m just glad to help in any way.” They are driven by a need for social affirmation: “I just want to be liked….”

The Competitors would rather do all this themselves. Their mantra is "My way or the highway." Stop signs are for other people. Competitors often have good ideas but when they’re railroaded through teams, the lack of support, or resistance, minimizes or eliminates the benefit. The competitor wants to win.

The Compromisers haven't learned to expect more. They settle for half a good decision and half the buy-in that might be developed. Their motto is "I can live with that." A lazy stopping point.

The Collaborators are the leaders who are good at assembling team members who have something to contribute to building good decisions, AND they work with the teams in such an interactive way that the team members both contribute AND buy in to the decision. This takes advantage of the wonderful principle: People support what they help create. The collaborator wants the best idea to win.

To be sure, all five options may have their place depending on circumstances. For example, a leader may not have the time to collaborate and would need to defer to the Competitor role. A leader may not address an issue that’s their responsibility and would need to defer to the Avoider role.

In most situations, our goal, collaborating, is different. Collaborating is all about learning a better way with a group. With these folks, when they have two options, they've learned the best is always the third.

Collaborating is a key business communication strategy to both improve and innovate.

Settling for less than collaboration is a business decision, and often not a very good one.

Example: Brainstorming with Teams

Leaders working alone and with teams have choices when it comes to generating ideas (brainstorming) that are intended to drive decisions.

So for example, here’s how these five types of leaders would facilitate a brainstorming session:

An avoider will put the meeting off until it may be too late. Or if they call the meeting, they may defer the process to a facilitator and either multi-task through the meeting contributing little, or move in and out of the meeting room, taking care of more important business.

With an accommodator, people would sit around a table, probably round, with lots of snacks and play things on the table (I may be exaggerating for effect) and have a facilitator (who’s attended calligraphy school) carefully list the ideas thrown out by the team members on a flipchart. The leader would likely provide lots of “Great idea!” comments, almost regardless of the quality of the idea. Some work on buy-in, but “for what” is unclear.

With the competitor, people would sit around a table, leader at head of table. The leader would ask aloud for good ideas, encouraging with “Come on, folks, we can do better than this…” We’ve all been in this situation and most often social and performance pressures provide significant resistance to helping the boss. All leave in frustration, asking (out of earshot and in the hallway) for the boss to just make the decision and get it over with. Some work on the decision, little progress on buy-in.

With the compromiser, people would sit around a table, but it would likely be round . The leader would ask for some good ideas, encouraging with “Come on, folks, we can do better than this…” The compromiser would create less interpersonal stress for the participants.  But with the compromiser, the frustration is more with the process. Everybody does not want to settle for a weak decision. They know they want to be more effective as a team, but they don’t know how. Fundamentally, they don’t know how to manage options.

The collaborator-leader would first confirm the purpose of their exercise (scoreboard: success as measured by). People would then begin at the table listing their best ideas for a decision on Post-it^® papers, one idea per Post-it^®.  Five minutes of quiet time. No social pressure. Everyone hard at work. The team next assembles at a blank flipchart taped to the wall and presents their ideas, one idea per person at a time. Like placing cards one at a time around the circle. Lots of conversation about the ideas (robust dialogue). The final arrangement of Post Its could be grouped in columns to clarify the major themes of the ideas. These ideas could then be formally compared to the exercise scoreboard. The big difference here is the focus on the ideas and comparing them objectively to the scoreboard.

A key takeaway from an article like this is you, as a leader, have a choice. And your choice depends on how you think about leading. Who leads and contributes to the decision-making process? Who gets to win?

 
John Canfield is a corporate coach who offers practical tools for strategic planning, collaboration, and innovation. Canfield has more than 30 years of experience working and consulting for organizations around the world. In The Good Thinking Series, Canfield shows business leaders how to improve organizational performance by supporting more deliberate and effective thinking. The Good Thinking Series is available at www.amazon.com. For more information, visit www.johncanfield.com.

Photo credit: Dollarphotoclub.com/ bsilvia