Management Styles

May 06 2018
By: Terry L. Mathis

The best approach to controlling management styles is to strategically decide what style you want managers to use in your organization and hold them accountable for moving steadily toward that style. However, most organizations don't do this. They assume if a manager was successful in their last position that they know how to manage, and therefore allow them do so without direction. This can be extremely problematic when a management team has vastly different styles. Command-and-control managers can kill employee involvement, while empowering managers try to engage employees which might undermine strict control.

When employees are subject to managers with diametrically different styles, they are conflicted and unclear about what to do and whom to please. If organizations do not strategically prescribe a management style, they should at least pair up managers with similar styles on management teams to avoid such conflicts.