Mastering Management Styles: Expert Guidance for Managers

Harris M Silverman

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781783000470
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Informatica
• Subtopic: Tecnologia dell'informazione

Through insider advice, handy tips and real-life case studies, you'll be quickly on your way to management success. Each chapter will take you through a key element of management style, the impact it can have on your employees, potential traps and pitfalls to avoid, and will round up by applying the technique to the case study so that you can get a feel for how your management choices could play out. Whether you're feeling the pressure of your management role or simply unsure how to bring out the best in each of your employees, this is the instant toolkit you need for management success.

Mastering Management Styles: Expert Guidance for Managers

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Mastering Management Styles: Expert Guidance for Managers

Copyright © 2014 Impackt Publishing

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First published: April 2014

Production Reference: 1020414

Published by Impackt Publishing Ltd.

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Cover Image by Zeeshan Chawdhary (<[email protected]>)

Credits

Author

Harris Silverman

Reviewers

Alasdair Dewar

Carol M. Heller

Project Coordinators

Venitha Cutinho

Hardik Patel

Commissioning Editor

Danielle Rosen

Copy Editors

Tanvi Bhatt

Ameesha Green

Paul Hindle

Faisal Siddiqui

Proofreaders

Simran Bhogal

Maria Gould

Ameesha Green

Paul Hindle

Cover Work

Melwyn D'sa

Production Coordinator

Melwyn D'sa

About the Author

Harris Silverman is a Management Coach and Career Counselor who works on the development of management skills, career planning, and career advancement with both corporations and individuals. He has extensive experience in employee development in both the public and private sectors, and holds an MBA and a Bachelor of Education degree, in addition to a BA.

He is available for consultation both by telephone and in person, worldwide. He is based in Toronto, Canada.

For more information about Harris and to read his blog, please visit www.HarrisSilverman.com.

About the Reviewers

Alasdair Dewar is a highly experienced manager with a vast wealth of industrial and management experience learned across a varied range of industries. Alasdair graduated from Napier University in Edinburgh, Scotland with an honors degree in Engineering Management in 1993. He has worked in electronics, FMCG, Pharma, and traditional manufacturing companies. Alasdair is happily married with three wonderful children, and now lives in Scotland with his family.

Carol M. Heller has more than 20 years of executive level management experience including P&L responsibility and managing large B2B sales, marketing and customer care organizations spanning multiple high technology segments, including telecom, content management and business outsourced software solutions both domestically and internationally. Carol has an outstanding record of consistently achieving defined objectives while creating and implementing effective sales and marketing strategies in challenging market environments. Her ability to lead and manage organizations in competitive environments has translated into market success for the corporate divisions she has led. She specializes in motivating and challenging the employees she manages and developing personal relationships with senior management at client organizations. Carol is highly skilled at contract negotiations with complex accounts.

Currently, Carol is Director of Business Development for the Princeton Center for Education (PCES) focusing on developing new vertical markets for PCES's software solutions. Additionally, Carol works with industry leaders on a consulting basis to increase sales revenue, provide interim marketing and sales support, and other executive functions. Prior to PCES, Carol was the Senior Vice President - Sales and Marketing for ARGI, a privately owned company that sold software solutions to the publishing industry. Before ARGI, Carol was Vice President of Sales at Getty Images, a leading provider of digital media content and imagery worldwide. In the telecom sector, Carol held executive level positions with P&L responsibility at AT&T and AT&T Broadband (now Comcast) from 1995 to 2003. Carol earned her BA from Brandeis University, an MA from Columbia University, and her MBA from the Stern School of Business at New York University. In her spare time, Carol is passionate about "giving back" and is on the Board of Cherub Improv, a NYC-based non-profit organization, and assisting the Union Settlement Association with its fundraising efforts.

Preface

One of the most important decisions you'll make as a manager—and you'll be making it again and again, on a daily basis—is how best to approach and deal with your employees.

Too often, this is a decision that is made by default: managers, especially new ones, don't so much decide on a management style as fall into one, without giving the question much thought: they simply act toward their employees in a way that's comfortable and convenient for them, in keeping with their personalities, or perhaps by modeling themselves on a manager they've worked under in the past. (Some even mimic their parents!)

But this is a big mistake. How you interact with your staff, and indeed with other employees in your organization, will be a major determinant of your success as a manager. It will impact how your employees behave, how they perform, and how they perceive you; and it will go a long way toward determining how your superiors perceive you as well. Your success as a manager depends to a very great extent to how you deal with the question of management style. You should be thinking hard about this question, not simply allowing it to happen to you.

This book will help you to understand the key elements of management style, how to decide when to use each one, and what the advantages and disadvantages of each approach are. By the time you're done reading, you will be the sort of manager who approaches each situation with thought and foresight, rather than one who just stumbles into things.

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Chapter 1. Why Management Style Matters

People don't always stop to think about the question of the precise role and purpose of a manager. They think it's obvious, so they don't bother to articulate it, or even to think about it much.

Actually, though, if you ask most managers, they'd be unlikely to zero in on the one thing that should in fact be guiding their thinking as managers:

The role of a manager is to maximize the performance of the people who report to him or her, in order best to achieve the objectives of the organization.

Take a close look at the preceding statement, and think about its implications. What does it say about how managers should conduct themselves, and about management style?

Many managers, especially new ones, take the position that they're the boss and that it's up to their employees to adapt themselves to the manager's preferred way of doing things; that managers have their own styles and preferences, and everyone needs to adapt accordingly.

But how likely is that approach to lead to optimal performance on the part of employees? For example, if a certain employee does excellent work by organizing the work on his or her own, does it really make sense for a manager to step in and ...

Table of contents

• Mastering Management Styles: Expert Guidance for Managers