Management
Empowering Your Manager
Management: Balancing Control, Leadership, and Development
Management is often perceived as being primarily about control, with an emphasis on maintaining order, enforcing rules, and ensuring that processes are followed meticulously. This focus on control can provide managers with a sense of security and predictability, as it allows them to monitor activities closely and minimize risks. In many cases, managers feel more comfortable when they can establish strict controls over various aspects of the organization, from financial expenditures to employee performance metrics. This approach is particularly common in environments where precision, compliance, and risk mitigation are prioritized, such as in highly regulated industries or large, complex organizations.
However, equating management solely with control can lead to a narrow and potentially limiting perspective. While control is undoubtedly an important aspect of management, it is only one dimension of a much broader role. Effective management also involves leadership, which is about inspiring, guiding, and empowering people to achieve shared goals. Leadership requires a different set of skills, such as communication, emotional intelligence, and the ability to foster trust and collaboration. Unlike control, which often focuses on maintaining the status quo, leadership is forward-looking and encourages innovation, adaptability, and growth.
In addition to leadership, management also encompasses the development of both people and processes. This involves investing in employee training and development, improving organizational systems, and identifying opportunities for growth and improvement. A manager who prioritizes development understands that long-term success depends on building a capable and motivated workforce, as well as creating processes that are efficient and adaptable to changing circumstances. This developmental aspect of management is crucial for ensuring that the organization remains competitive and resilient in the face of challenges.
The challenge for managers lies in finding the right balance between control, leadership, and development. Over-reliance on control can create a rigid and stifling environment, where employees feel micromanaged and discouraged from taking initiative. On the other hand, a lack of control can lead to chaos and inefficiency. Similarly, focusing too much on leadership without adequate attention to control and development can result in a lack of structure and accountability. Therefore, effective management requires a nuanced approach that integrates these three elements in a way that aligns with the organization’s goals, culture, and external environment.
Ultimately, management is not just about maintaining order through control; it is also about leading people and developing the organization for future success. Managers who recognize this broader perspective are better equipped to create a dynamic and thriving workplace, where employees feel empowered, processes are efficient, and the organization is well-positioned to achieve its objectives. By balancing control with leadership and development, managers can move beyond simply overseeing operations and instead play a pivotal role in driving their organizations forward.
Giving Your Manager More Power
"So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work." - Peter Drucker
Management: Managing is at times equated with controls rather than leading and developing a business. The manager feels more at ease and secure when they are able to put in strict controls on everything that happens in a business organization.
This is so especially of Senior Managements where the controls and directing becomes so severe that it erodes any creative freedom for the middle managers to work towards achieving the goals set out for them. Here are a few simple prescriptions to get the best out of your managers.
Avoid Centralizing Decision Making This is perhaps one of the best ways to achieve total control. You feel by centralizing decision making you will be able to avoid wrong decisions. While this may be so to some extent, who is to prevent your own wrong decisions. Unless your managers are able to make mistakes and learn from them, you will never be able to develop expertise through experience. Centralizing decision making is also the surest method to kill your business growth.
Provide Working Space The top management often entrust tasks and responsibilities to their subordinate managers. More often than not, any specific time frames which are comfortable to achieve the given responsibilities or tasks are discussed. However in their anxiety or aggressiveness and sometimes over enthusiasm, you start chasing your subordinate for action and results.
If you do it too soon and too often you severely limit the working space of your managers. They may be spending more time in complying with your commands rather than focusing on operational priorities and crucial tasks. If you are not providing sufficient working space for your managers, you are surely heading towards disaster, as important tasks may be getting neglected to escape from your frequent and aggressive follow ups.
Listen to Your Managers While experience is an asset it also makes one arrogant and conceited. Sometimes one tends to believe because he or she is the superior, they are always right. The Boss Is Always Right principle looks good only on posters.
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Cultivate the ability to listen to the voice of your managers. Most times they know better as they are more familiar with the ground realities. If you decide on their behalf and just issue orders, you will have clerks in the guise of managers as you have killed their initiative.
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Don’t Get Into the Nitty Gritties Once broad goals and objectives are set with specific time frames and key results are outlined, leave your managers to perform. If you get into too many details and meddle with the execution at every stage, you may be sure to mess up the entire process and ultimately the results. The key to managing effectively is to empower people across the management structure so that they feel part of the responsibility and ownership.
The Value Of Hiring Good Employees
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