What's Your Management Style?

What's Your Management Style?

walking up steps.jpgA very successful business owner is an expert in management.

However, every business owner has an individual management style, and finding your niche could help you lead your employees to success. It is all about your personality, workplace culture, and the people who work for you. When you sit down and understand your management style, you can better tailor the rest of your workplace environment to suit.

Which of these 3 Management Styles Are You?

  1. The Autocratic: The Decision-Maker

Are you the type that makes decisions without consulting anyone?

Perhaps, the decisions of your company are based on your personality, and most projects succeed because you are the one spearheading them.

The Two Common Autocratic Leaders in Business

  • Directive: As the directive, you make decisions unilaterally, and you supervise your subordinates during every turn to ensure your decision is carried out to the letter.
  • Permissive: Instead of hovering over your team to make sure they carry out your plans, you give your team some leeway and allow them to carry out their work with periodic check-ups.

Does this sound like you?  If not, perhaps you are a consultative personality instead.

  1. The Consultative (Paternalistic): Best Interests Come Standard

While your decisions are dictatorial, you still consider your employees and their best interests. You also consider how their interests affect your business.

Communication with this style funnels downward, but you still encourage feedback from your team to boost morale at every turn.

Some say paternalistic is a real advantage management style because you gain loyalty from staff, which reduces labor turnover. Why? Because you care about their social needs and you listen.

If your workers are not motivated, however, you may find your paternalistic style gets you nowhere, and the loyalty is limited.

You implement the open-door policy. You encourage words of positive and negative feedback, and your employees are dependent on your decision-making abilities.

Does this sound like you?

  1. The Democratic: All-for-One and One-for-All

Democracy is your motivator. As a business owner, you look at your team members as equals; not subordinates.

In the democratic management style of business, you let employees take part in the decision-making, and everything is based on a majority -- like the country’s political system. They vote, they communicate, and everyone helps make complex decisions.

The result? You have uniformity when a decision or new policy is made, and less uproar from employees that disagree, because they took a significant role in the decision itself.

If you are using the democratic method, you may have a more welcoming work culture than other companies, because you will have higher job satisfaction among your staffers, and you may even have a boost in productivity.

So, Which Are You?

It is okay to be one or another, or a mixture of all three. However, it is important to define your management style so that you can stay consistent. When consistent, employees understand the culture and function of your business; which may, in turn, reduce turnover due to confusion and inconsistency.

Share your insight on management styles, or tell us which management style you are and why.

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