Leadership Style

After having read the chapter on Leadership in Stueart & Moran, I've come to understand my past experiences a little better. And a great irony has come to mind: When I was much younger, I would sometimes be chastised by my teachers or parents with the some form of the comment "If you want to be treated like an adult, you've got to start acting like one." But my experiences in the "real world" have been the exact opposite; in most of my previous employment environments, the administration basically treated the employees like children, no matter what the employees were hired to do or how professional their credentials were. While this implies a leadership and managerial philosophy akin to Systems 1 or 2 under Likert's Systems of Management or McGregor's "Theory X", my own personal style, on the other hand, seems to be more similar to one of the contingency models of leadership, especially House's Path-Goal Theory. This stems, I believe, from my belief that people, especially people in professional situations, should be treated like adults unless and until they prove otherwise. This philosophy requires me to assume that people will do the job they've been hired to do or will ask for guidance. Until an employee "drops the ball" a number of times or otherwise demonstrates that they need to be supervised much more closely, I'm going to assume the job is going to get done.

And, to be honest, this approach has, so far, worked in my favor, not only because the job gets done, but the employees view me in a positive light, seeing me as a very good leader. For example, when I was at LexisNexis, on a number of occasions, I was tapped as an Acting Team Leader to fill in during extended absences or while they filled the position. On those occasions, I was able to make the transitions for the team members as painless as possible because I allowed them to continue to function, for the most part, as they had before I came along. As a result, many customer support representatives hoped I would be appointed on a permanent basis, and when an opening for a permanent position came up on another team (one of which I had never been in charge), my reputation as a fair, humane, but effective Team Leader was so pronounced that members of that team, some with several years seniority on me, lobbied me to apply and campaigned heavily for my appointment.

And it's not because I let them get away with things. For example, one of the times I was Acting Team Leader, I had a new person on my team who had just completed Initial Training and was being coached into the phones who, for several days in a row, was technically late logging in. Now, proper procedure required me to log each occurrence in the system, which would have been on her record for the next year. Instead, and especially because she was consistently going over her time at the end of the day (which meant, in my mind, that the company was getting the time she was expected to give each day), I sat down with her and explained the ramifications of her tardiness if I were to go "by the book". We then talked about the causes and possible remedies, and I imparted to her that I didn't want to hold it against, but I would be forced to log future occurrences. She claimed to understand and, at least for the remainder of my tenure as Acting Team Leader, she was not late again. By treating her like a responsible adult, even if one with a problem that needs to be addressed, I was able to get her to remedy the situation in a way that kept our working relationship on the positive side without resorting to potentially long-lasting punishments. Similarly, because of this approach, I found team members coming to me with problems or concerns that, they admitted, they would not have felt comfortable taking to my predecessor.

I'm not a fan of McGregor's "Theory Y" or any similar theories that rely on employee committment to "objectives" or "vision". While there may have been a time when employees thought in these terms, today's employees are much more self-interested; they do their jobs because of what they get out of it personally (which may be, and usually is, more than just a salary), not because of a desire to help the company achieve its goals or because they are motivated by the vision being handed down from the CEO. Don't get me wrong: An employee may act, even consciously, in a manner that helps the company achieve its objectives or realize its vision, but the employee is doing it because it will help him achieve his personal goals, whatever they may be. In other words, the company-centric motivation is, at best, an illusion, while the employee-centric motivators are the effective ones, and when aligned with the company's goals or vision, will bolster the illusion that the employee is affected by company-centric motivators. The best leaders and managers will be able to align the employees true motivators with the company's goals or vision, or, failing that, make the employee comfortable with the company's motivators, even if they don't fully embrace them.