What is the most effective management style ?

The best leader is the one who adopts the management style most suitable for each situation, each context, each person or group and for each organization.

From the beginning of my career and through all different roles I held in different organizations one of my priorities has always been to develop the best management style. I read a lot about the subject and I also learned a lot from all the people I had the opportunity to work with at all levels: senior management, team members and peers.

However the examples were really different and there was no pattern showing me the critical success factor as a leader.

I have seen different styles, from democratic to authoritarian in the beginning to directive, supportive, participative and goals-oriented in the last 10 years.

I have also seen that in the last years new management styles have emerged such as charismatic, transformational etc.

Leadership is really an endless source of study and analysis due to the important role played in the organization performance and in the achievement of the goals and results.

Assuming no person is identical, having different needs and motivations, that teams and persons also experience different phases of development and we are absorbed by constant changes, I believe the most correct, above all for me, management style is what Blanchard called situational management style or situational leadership. According to Blanchard the most effective leadership is the one which adapts to the team members in every situation, in other words, a management style suitable with the needs of the team.

The situational management style is based on keeping a balance between the two behaviors exerted by a leader to adapt to the level of development of his/her team members.

These behaviors are as follows:

1.    Managerial behavior, which defines the roles and tasks for the collaborators and also points out what, how and when they have to perform them monitoring the results.

2.    Supportive behavior, focused on the development of the team, fostering the participation in the decision making process, uniting, supporting and motivating the whole team.

As we believe in the people development and we also want to achieve good results in our management careers I think the key to match both interests is to apply a management style suitable in each context, each person and each situation, as I commented at the beginning of the post. Based on that, we, as leaders, have to pay attention to all what happens around us, detecting the changes, movements and emotions experienced by our collaborators and team members.

This adaptation of the management style to the each situation, as required, does not mean, to be a different person, nor losing your personal style, simply means to perform different roles led by the person in the role instead of being led by the environment, the organization or the others.

As a conclusion, the leader should never forget, whatever is his/her management style in each occasion, has to be supported by, what I call, the basic pillars of leadership: authenticity, integrity, coherence, humility, leading by example and foster new leaders.

Management by values

Management is about leading the organization to achieve its goals and objectives.  We can manage a system that could be administrative, technical, financial or commercial, which I could name as the formal system. This system follows rules and indicators very precise, which are also subject to other rules and quantified results. But it is also known that we also manage a non-formal system, which I could call the “human system”. This system is the base for the prior one and it is more difficult to be quantified or measured.

The human system is defined by the persons, their rationality, emotions, freedom, intellectual capital, emotional intelligence and above all their values. You can have the right skills to manage an organization but if we don’t manage properly the human system you are bound to fail.

Without the optimization and proper management of the human you cannot get good results in the technical. Neither the machines nor money or computers work on their own. Behind there is always a person.

In the management by values some elements stand out as follows:

·         It is a strategic and leadership management

·         Aim the values are alive in the organization as a result they are practiced by the persons

·         Allow the practice of values is productive. In other words, it will influence the profits that will be generated by the company

·         Have an impact in the transformation of the persons based on the change in attitude and conduct more than in the information and skills development

·         Foster change management to fill the gap between the present and the future as pointed out by the strategic vision

·         The persons, with their values, are the permanent base of the organization as they create a positive environment for the work

·         The values are the heart of the human system in the company, so if it works, the rest of aspects from administrative to technical will function correctly

The senior management of an organization could fail due to economic reasons, for an internal financial crisis, market loss, competition or for the tax regulations. But behind all these processes, controllable or uncontrollable, there are always the wise or mistake choice of the persons leading the organizational system, their knowledge, attitudes and values, which could impact for a change.

Management by values is actually self-management, self-motivation, self-leadership and self-responsibility, to act, not only by the commands, but aiming to achieve our own best and making sure also the best for the company.

The core of the management by values is to convert the organization in an integrated system of values that can be achieved not only for a declaration of principles related to the strategic planning but for a construction process, that normally takes time, derived from the senior management decision to give the values a real support in the organizational development and focused on the critical aspects of the company such as technical, finance, production, sales, service and quality etc.

As a conclusion I would say that knowledge and information are the new name of capital: a company is worth what the knowledge and values of the employees are worth. The knowledge and values embodied by the persons is the most productive resource of the organization.