Ex. 5.3. Read and translate the following text.

 

MANAGEMENT STYLES

 

Every manager will be different, but over the years management theory has established three broad categories of management styles.

First is the authoritarian manager. This person is strict, demanding, controlling and probably too rigid in their views. They take a top-down approach. But some staff like this – they know where they stand and what their responsibilities are. Their jobs are clearly defined. The consensual manager is the second type. This person believes in consultation, and in coaching and mentoring their staff to help them develop. Subordinates usually like this type of manager, but the manager may lack vision and fail to show leadership.

The third type is hands-off manager. This person delegates everything, or just leaves problems in the hope that they go away. They will justify their style as empowerment (i.e. giving control over decisions to other people), but subordinates will feel a lack of guidance and support. Liaison between colleagues (co-workers) will be uncoordinated.

An important point is that management style might reflect the company culture as much as the personality of the individual. So a hierarchical company with a bureaucratic decision-making process will suit one type of manager. On the other hand, a decentralized company where low-level managers can take the initiative can suit another.

We also have to remember that different business situations will require different management qualities. Consider the manager who is methodical, systematic and organized. Is that always a good thing? Maybe there are situations where it’s better to be intuitive and flexible, or to take decisions quickly without knowing all the facts. Consider a manager who is a good team player, co-operative and supportive. Is that always a good thing? Maybe there are situations where it’s better to work on your own, being self-motivated and proactive.

 

Qualities or skills?

 

Here is something interesting to think about: notice that in the text above there is reference to styles and qualities, not to skills. This distinction is important. Qualities are a part of your character and personality – there were present at birth and formed early in your life and you will find it hard to change these things. Skills, however, are things that you can learn – like how to speak another language, or give a good presentation. Skills can be developed and improved through practice and experience, qualities much less so. That raises many issues for training, personal development and career choice.

 

Person specification

 

When looking for candidates for a particular job, many companies produce both a job specification and a person specification. This helps recruitment agencies and/or the human resource department to find suitable people. The person specification will include the skills needed, experience needed and personal qualities of the ideal candidate.

 

How to be a great manager

 

At the most general level, successful managers tend to have four characteristics:

-                 they take enormous pleasure and pride in the growth of their people;

-                 they are basically cheerful optimists – someone has to keep up morale when setbacks occur;

-                 they don’t promise more than they can deliver;

-                 when they move on from the job, they always leave the situation a little better than it was when they arrived.

The following is a list of some essential tasks at which a manager must excel to be truly effective.

When the big wheel from head office visits and expresses displeasure, the great manager immediately accepts full responsibility. In everyday working life, the best managers are constantly aware that they selected and should have developed their people. Errors made by team members are in a very real sense their responsibility.

          Praise is probably the most under-used management tool. Great managers are forever trying to catch their people doing something right, and congratulating them on it. And when praise comes from outside, they are swift not merely to publicize the fact, but to make clear who has earned it.

          It is important to judge on merit, which is a great deal more difficult than it sounds. It’s virtually impossible to divorce your feelings about someone – whether you like or dislike them – from how you view their actions. But suspicions of discrimination or favoritism are fatal to the smooth running of any team, so the great manager accepts this as an aspect of the game that really needs to be worked on.

Strength and resilience are important. Great managers exploit strength, not weaknesses, in themselves and their people. Weak managers feel threatened by other people’s strength. They also revel in the discovery of weakness and regard it as something to be exploited rather than remedied. Great managers have no truck with destructive thinking. They see strength in themselves as well as in other people, as things to be built on and weakness as something to be accommodated, worked around, and possibly, eliminated.

What great managers do is learn new skills and acquire useful information from the outside world, and then immediately pass them on, to ensure that if they were to be run down by a bus, the team would still have the benefit of the new information. No one in an organization should be doing work that could be established equally effectively by someone less well paid than themselves. So great managers are perpetually on the look-out for higher-level activities to occupy their own time, while constantly passing on tasks that they have already mastered.