How to Change Your Management Style: Recognizing Your Management Style
Before deciding to change your management, you need to identify what type of manager you are and determine if a change is needed. There is no one size fits all type of management that works, as each organization is different. But your management style more or less defines your approach to leading others. Also, it's often possible those managers may have qualities from many of the different styles.
"The most effective way to figure out if a change is needed is to solicit feedback from those you're leading or partnering with," Picoult says. "I'm a strong proponent of reverse evaluations and 360 feedback, but it comes down to the environment the business is operating in."
Before you ask your employees about your management style, it's important to ask yourself some questions:
• Are you prepared to adapt your style to become a more effective leader?
• Is a change needed to drive business or can it function as-is?
• Are you willing to ask your staff for more feedback on how to lead them more effectively and then listen to their thoughts?
• What short-term changes can be made?
• What alterations in style will need a more long-term approach?
• Who inside and outside your organization can you enlist for support in this change?
"It's always been about clarity, alignment and focus for us," Heineman says of Sporting Kansas City. "How do we do that? As leaders, by creating a team culture and creating an environment where people are highly incentivized to try things, whether they fail or succeed. We want people to be upwardly mobile and we'd love to create a reputation as a training environment for sports. We really want to empower our employees to be risk-takers."
One of the defining qualities of good managers is that they have more than professional knowledge. They have self-knowledge—in other words, they can look inward to examine their own strengths and weaknesses and they're also willing and happy to listen to outside input on how they can grow and change.
Dig Deeper: Six Sigma Management Guide
How to Change Your Management Style: Making the Management Style Change Happen
So you've taken all the steps to determine if a change is needed and decided that a change in management style is needed. How do you proceed? Think about each individual thing you say and do, and before reacting with your initial thought, catch yourself and do something differently before you fall into your comfort zone. Great leaders are good at adapting to the environment around them, and are good at making changes when they're needed.
"Can people actually change their behavior effectively?" asks Picoult. "That's the big challenge. I think the key element is being self-aware. If you've taken the first step to recognize that something different would be good, that's a huge first step. But you also need to be able to be really objective, step outside yourself and take a candid look at what you're doing today and understanding what you need to differently. So it's not easy, but it requires somebody who is good at making calculated and informed decisions but without an ego. Once you do that, just follow that path."
In making the organizational shift, it is important to take a top-down approach and preach transparency from a leadership perspective. If you are changing your management style, you need to first assess and make the changes yourself (internally, without notification to your employees). Then make it clear early on, or those you lead will anticipate things to remain as they were.
"Internally, it's always been about clarity, alignment and focus," notes Heineman. "How do we do that? When we came in, we created a team culture, an environment where people are highly incentivized to come up with ideas and try things, whether they fail or succeed. We want to empower people to be upwardly mobile and we'd love to create a reputation as a training environment for sports, and that starts at the top."
Externally, if you're changing your management strategy, it's important to be up front with customers and clients. For Heineman, they began by communicating with fans via social media channels (where most of their supporters were anyway) and through a unique membership model that gives customers and brand advocates ways to further connect with the company. Through their successful 2010 rebranding as more than just a soccer club and a June 9 opening of the state-of-the-art LIVESTRONG Sporting Park, a first-of-its kind stadium naming rights deal that directly benefits a charity (ticket sales and concessions will go the cause made famous by Lance Armstrong), the idea that management is no longer doing things via the traditional methods has been made very clear.
Dig Deeper: How to Get People to Change
