[Alumnus MB shares his experiences of working in management]

When I first had the responsibility of leading a small team at work, I didn’t put much consideration into my approach and thus it ended up being a reflection of my personality. I was casual and flexible. I valued people over procedures. I shared information and consulted my staff regarding the making of decisions. I cared for my staff and paid attention to small personal details like remembering their pet’s birthdays and asking about the outcome of their kid’s school exams. I was first and foremost a nice guy.

I was relatively successful as a mini manager. My staff appeared to like me. We built a cohesive team with minimal turnover and achieved demonstrable outcomes that my overlords living on Olympus were happy with.

However, with time, the limitations of my leadership approach and its true origins became apparent. The first drawback appeared when one of my team asked me to stop bombarding him with so much information. He rightly pointed out that much of it was uncertain, irrelevant and only gave him cause for distraction or worry. Thinking about it, I realized that perhaps my primary motive for sharing information wasn’t to ensure that staff were well informed, but more about me wanting to appear that I was doing everything that I could for staff and ensuring that they noted it.

On another occasion, one of my team suggested that they didn’t have to be consulted around every decision. They were sincerely happy to go with whatever decision I made in the majority of cases– particularly the harder ones. One of the older staff that had been in the business before Over Head Projectors became cutting edge reminded me that that’s why I got paid the big bucks. Upon reflection, it became clear that I had not only been overly consultative in my decision making approach because I valued the staff's opinion and wanted their buy in, but also because I was skirting having to take responsibility for making – and standing by – decisions.

Initially, my communication style with the team was largely successful. I liked meeting one on one and after some discussion, agreeing on commitments and expectations verbally. I didn’t want to be too pedantic or cloister them with too much directive detail. Experience has since proven that this approach is sometimes deficient. It works with some staff because when they’re like a young Rod Stewart early in his solo career – hungry, ambitious and driven. It’s easy when they want to go where you want to go. When utilizing the same approach with staff more like Rod Stewart in his greatest hits phase – comfortable, a little apathetic, and not wanting to change a winning formula in case it costs you the retirement home in Florida – it can be depressingly unsuccessful. People can be both pleasant and polite in their passive aggressiveness and resistance. Sometimes in my experience, they couldn’t recall the details of undocumented conversations and were very apologetic about it. Decisions weren’t followed through with, processes not followed, and I had no recourse because nothing had been formalized into policy. I was left only with my nice-guyness that they could counter with their nice-guyness and two different accounts of the same conversation.

I now know why this was so. It wasn’t just because I was trying to leave room for my team to take initiative and spend their work days based between Blue Skying and Brainstorming-ville. It wasn’t just because I saw the value of healthy informality and dreamt of work stations peppered with table tennis, coffee machines and employees who wore white sneakers and addressed me as ‘Dude.’ A lot of it came down to my default ‘style’ of managing that was largely a reflection of my personality. I liked being liked. I wasn’t a fan of conflict. I also tired easily of detail and documentation. In short, it was hard work for me to operate otherwise and I didn’t have the discipline. It was laziness masquerading as concern for my team. As a leader, I looked like a nice guy on the surface but my approach was flawed and my motives dubious. At least Tony Soprano got results and you always knew whose best interests he was acting in.

So now in managing I try to remain mindful of two things: in order to do the most loving thing for staff and the organization I need to have a variety of styles and approaches in order to ‘best fit’ the individuals I deal with – not just the most ‘natural’ or easy for me. This is primarily a pragmatic issue.
Secondly – and more importantly – I need to be more ruthless and honest about the motives behind my style or approach. There’s nothing inherently wrong with being nice. But I can’t let my likeness for being liked be the main driver behind my actions – that’s actually the furthest thing from being nice in the long run. There’s obviously a place for informality and flat decision making processes but they shouldn’t be a front for laziness and apathy. This is primarily a discipleship issue.

By Matt B, CC-BY-SA.