Management Styles and Insights - Term Paper Example

prepared MANAGEMENT STYLES AND INSIGHTS Management, according to BusinessDictionary.com, is the “organization and coordination of the activities of an enterprise in accordance with certain policies and in achievement of defined objectives”, while a Manager is “an individual who is in charge of a certain group of tasks or a certain subset of a company. A manager often has a staff of people who report to him or her” (Management 2011). More than these definitions and in a more practical sense, managers are the leaders within entities which were built and created to reach certain objectives that are, most often than not, trade-related. They are the drivers, the goal seekers who manage a broad spectrum of responsibilities. They are responsible in meeting a set of objectives and manage a group of people that work towards these goals. More than the glamour that is attached to the title, they are really the moving force behind every company. They make things happen. Having spoken with Ms. Elizabeth Meyer, Senior Product Manager for an international bank, we get a glimpse of how grueling this job can be. The targets can be daunting and extremely overwhelming. Managing her team alone is a challenge because she deals with five people from different backgrounds and with diverse personalities. She has to serve as the medium to enable to make the team fully functional, creating harmony and ensuring that individual differences are complimented and talents are maximized. There is also that challenge of managing the relationships with coordinating departments, who have as much quirks as her own. And of course, there is this much greater challenge of managing her superiors, the senior management team, ensuring that expectations are met at exceeding levels. It’s quite a tough, but rewarding job, she says. MANAGING PEOPLE Ms. Meyer says she is part democratic, part autocrat when asked what type of leader she is. It’s a challenge managing people who have different temperaments and moods, and different working styles. She has five highly experienced and greatly skilled product managers under her wing, one of which is much senior than her in terms of age. When she came in as their department head, Ms. Meyer was only 29 years old, and her age was one of the challenges she had to tweak to work to her advantage. During her previous stint in another international bank, she says she was 90% democratic, with the goal to empower each teammate to make their decisions. However, having a 35-year old team member who was not exactly thrilled to be under her management was what drove her to become more firm in her leadership style. Age seemed to have become an issue for this particular subordinate who felt like she was underrated. The attitude affected the boss-subordinate relationship such that there was too much resistance. Ms. Meyer felt that she could not afford to risk the ire of this team member as she is also deemed to be the top performer, albeit lacking in management skills to take over the Senior Management/ Department Head position. Today, she exercises her role as a manager whenever a crucial decision to be made, reminding her team that at the end of the day, she is still liable for each move the team makes. She feels that she was able to earn the trust of this subordinate by injecting the right amount of balance – she listens to this subordinate’s suggestions but also makes sure that she has a firm stance on certain issues, whenever needed. The road was not exactly smooth, so to speak, as she had her own personal challenges to address and a few unwise business decisions as well. But in the end, a good relationship founded the way to harmony in their workplace. Ms. Meyer enjoys being a leader, as she exactly knows how to motivate her team towards their goals. She is results oriented, and she makes sure that her people share her vision. They set short term and long term goals and conduct regular meetings to update each other on their own tasks. She also enjoins the participation of each product manager during business planning activities. She says this is the best way to make each and everyone equally responsible for business goals, and this result to the team members’ more personal take on the responsibilities. Their sense of ownership becomes much stronger when they know and understand what is going on, and if they feel they have a hand on where the team, and the company, is going in the next few years. Ms. Meyer encourages her team to do their customary self-assessment every year. This is in preparation to the annual performance appraisal being conducted company-wide. This exercise, she says, allows the people to look into their own performances before going through the structured assessment being implemented by the Human Resources group. This also allows them to be more receptive of the actual assessment made. She says that this became sort of a tradition, whereby she talks to each teammate one-on-one. This is also where she gets inputs to report to senior management. THE JOURNEY TOWARDS BEING A MANAGER Prior to becoming a Department Manager at age 29, Ms. Meyer was a section manager for five years, and a Product Assistant and Product Associate three years prior. She has joined only two companies, the present one her second. She decided to move after eight years of stay in her previous company because this provided her opportunity to upgrade, not only in terms of position, but in compensation as well. She says that her experience is probably what brought her to her current position. She rose from the ranks, having been a Product Assistant, an entry level position in the beginning. It was not an easy task, she says, as she had come to a point that she felt that she was at a dead end when she was in her previous company, thus the decision to move. It seemed to her that people are getting promoted, not really on the merit of their performance, but on other factors that are more personal in nature. Moreover, the company was pirating talents from other banks, in its efforts to be highly competitive. This, according to her, resulted to lack of motivation for junior and mid-managers who felt that they were being robbed of the chance to move further. They felt shortchanged because in the first place, it was their generation that succeeded in doing image rebranding. Moving to another company is really a common move among employees. She says the most important thing is that both employees and employers know and understand the reasons and the motivations for these transfers. This way, both parties could manage their expectations. INSIGHTS Many of us endeavor to be managers in each field of expertise we dream of achieving. To us, this is the ultimate dream. But as they say, power comes with big responsibilities. A management position is not to be taken lightly. The road to get there tends to be bumpy and challenging, and being a manager itself is no walk-in-the-park. And it is an added challenge to maintain the position once you get there. Integrity and reliability are probably two most important characteristics of a good manager. Integrity is essential to be able to handle the difficult task of being entrusted one whole team. Reliability is needed for him to be able to lead the whole team, as a general is to his army of soldiers, towards the business objectives. Works Cited “Management”. BusinessDictionary.com. November 15, 2011. http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/management.html Read More