Monday, 9 November 2009
With a new baby on the way (8 weeks and counting), I was interested from a personal point of view in last week’s Demos report into parenting, which looked across a couple of simple dimensions of approach and concluded that children brought up in a “tough love” environment were the ones most likely to succeed. Professionally, I’m intrigued by the link between this and management styles, particularly following the NICE report from earlier in the week regarding management and stress.
For those who haven’t seen the Demos report, my interpretation of the model they used is as follows:
I’ve used a lot of shorthand here, but in simple terms, the four categories they identify are:
Tough Love
This is their “gold standard” - the perfect balance between consistent, structured discipline and support, empathy, encouragement and love.
Laissez Faire
The support, empathy, encouragement and love elements, without the consistent application of rules, structure and discipline.
Authoritarian
The consistent application of rules, structure and discipline, without the warmth, support, encouragement and love.
Disengaged
Parenting without either the consistent application of rules, structure and discipline, or warmth, support, encouragement and love.
--
The link between this and management skills and style is obvious, as is the tie in with the NICE report from last week on stress in the workplace (see here) and the links to bad management.
As with most things in life (certainly from my point of view), it’s all a question of balance. The manager who is a “friend” to his or her staff without taking the real responsibility of management seriously is the laissez faire parent. The manager who picks up on everything that goes wrong, but fails to offer support and encouragement or be appropriately flexible is the authoritarian. And the manager who is largely absent (perhaps playing internal politics, or simply being rather lazy) falls neatly into the disengaged category.
However, these four categories are clearly caricatures. There are likely to be times when each of us dips into various different parts of the model, either at different times, depending on our own circumstances, or indeed depending on who we are dealing with. But the aim, surely, should be to maximise the time we spend in the top right quadrant of “tough love” in our management approach.
I’m looking forward to building aspects of this report and the simple model I’ve developed above, and I’d love your help with examples (anonymity respected!). If you have experience or examples of management that falls into any of the above categories, please pop them into the form below, or e-mail to blogidea@trainingreality.co.uk. Many thanks!
If you liked this article, please choose a button below and share it with your friends and colleagues
Please leave your thoughts and comments here
LYNNE KING SMITH
– PHOENIX, AZ
Interesting to compare management with parenting. I have always leaned towards treating employees like intelligent adults and hate to "micro manage" in any way. My ultimate goal would be to have all employees take their responsibilities seriously, find joy in coming to work and doing a great job, and admit when mistakes are made. I know for a fact that an authoritarian style of boss will have employees who can't take responsibility for mistakes and will often enhance the truth to make themselves look better.
This is how I lean naturally - I suppose you could describe my parenting as tough love, with the emphasis on love. My idea is always to error on the side of kindness if you have to choose. About a year ago, I installed a middle manager, aged 63, who was managing mostly staff in their 20s and 30s. He really focused on getting to work at exact times, and spent a lot of energy correcting. He's had to learn a lot from them about their ability to multi-task and still get a lot of work done. He's quite "old school" as we say, and it has reinforced for me the approach I prefer. I'm not sure it's creating the workplace I want to have.
Read a few blogs lately about workplaces that alllow people to have completely flex schedules and base everything on outcome. This doesn't work for children (they need bedtimes and good meals), but it interests me to know if this works well without losing productivity in the workplace.
Thoughts? And thanks!
Lynne King Smith
Simon Roskrow
– North Yorkshire
Hi Lynne, and thanks for your comment.
Much as I would love to offer guru-type thoughts on parenting, I'll leave that to others...despite (because of) the three children I have, I know extremely well just how amateurish my approach is...!
Where I will comment is on your point about flex schedules. I recently watched this brilliant speech about what really motivates us from the RSA (bit.ly/cvESdi) which, about 2/3 of the way through, offers an example of an organisation that allow specific time for staff to work on whatever they want, however they want... It makes the point far better than I would.
Enjoy the film - very much worth the 10 minutes or so...
Thanks again, Simon.
– Suffolk, UK
Hi Simon
My instant thoughts on this were 'cool' and 'spot on' till I thought more carefully. I think there is a lot of validity in applying this to business, and successful application is likely to come with focus rather than with a shot gun approach.
In my experience there are leaders, and there are managers. There is also "management". Sometimes Management has the right mix of managers and leaders, and the business goes great till someone leaves or is promoted.
Managers are those great at managing, and should be provided with such as requires managing. Business processes, tasks, projects etc.
Leaders therefore are the ones to focus on (lead people, manage things). This model for tough love could then be used as an illustrative simple model for people having staff for the first time to ensure that they can engage their staff appropriately.
Kind regards
Clive
Hi Clive
I totally agree about the difference between management, managers and leaders - our training spends an awful lot of time looking at the differences (a heart versus head approach is one of the critical distinctions we make).
The slight area I disagree on is that, although the roles or approaches are very different, quite often (in my experience) the differing roles and approaches have to be contained within the same person, to be brought out at different times. Many of the people I work with need management skills and leadership attitudes, whilst managing to be consistent and authentic in their approach - rather than being some sort of Hydra character!
Many thanks for your comment - always great to get different perspectives and challenges. You might like to take a look at http://www.trainingreality.co.uk/blog/Passion_and_pragmatism.php which covers a little on the challenges of managing management versus leadership.
– Milton Keynes
Ummm! Very true - I've had first hand experience of this both in family and business contexts. As a child I had a mother who use tough love, but whom we idolised and a father who was dissengaged - subsequenty leading to family break up (after my mother died) and personally carrying a lot of mind-baggage as an adult.
In a business context, I joined a large global organisation in 1996 which was run by local UK management - it was a "nice" place to work as everyone was relaxed and had a good time. Dress code, timekeeping etc etc were all very Laissez Faire. During a period of dark financial results in 2000, the German parent company drafted in new management who very quickly imposed very tough love - standards were raised, expectations were set, problems were "removed" and everyone now knew exactly where they stood. In my training now, I describe this as an org that went from a "nice" place to work to a "better" place to work.
I ran a small team and then a European Project within this regime, before then having the confidence to branch out on my own. So, Tough Love works for me!!
Thanks Stephen - I love the distinction between an "nice" place to work and a "better" place to work. Sometimes it can be the easy route for managers to take (and parents as well!) to provide the "nice" place, but my view is that this is, at best, a short term solution that is simply unsustainable.
Great that you've subscribed to the blog - keep these thoughtful and insightful comments coming, and I'd love it if you'd have a look at some of the other posts as well - you may well particularly like http://www.trainingreality.co.uk/blog/Taking_your_own_medicine.php !
I’ve probably been on the receiving end of all the various styles of management. I think part of being a manager is to understand the people you have in your team and how they operate, their natural style etc and hopefully the organisation helps them to understand themselves (if don’t already know this).
A good team is made up of a mixture of people and they’ll all have different preferred styles for how they like to be managed and as a manager I tried (didn’t always succeed) to flex my style accordingly – so some needed very close management or encouragement and others were very happy to be allowed more freedom and responsibility. I know from my own experience that when I’m too closely managed – I don’t feel trusted, I hold back and eventually leave for greener pastures. I like to know agreed objectives / KPIs / budgets etc and then leave me to get on with it...
Your blog set me thinking.....I’ve been learning about Transactional Analysis which is a decisional model and talks about the different states of Parent, Child, Adult and I started thinking about management style in relation to TA which very simplistically is...
Parent style tends to use ‘ought’ and ‘should’ phrases- things you hear from a parent or authority figures
Adult style is based on here and now- making your own choices and decisions on today’s reality and circumstances – grown up thinking
Child style is about responding to parent or authority figures in the way we did when we were very young –trying to please and ‘I must do this’ ‘I must do as he/she says’
TA goes into more detail on each style – eg you can have adaptive child, free child and rebellious child – but keeping it simple and thinking about business and management- not ideal to have too many managers with Parent style using the shoulds and oughts- some control and criticism from others can be good but where the control aims to take away your ability to be yourself and decide upon your own behaviour is restricting and unhelpful. Also too many in Child state not good either...
Adaptive child – you do as you’re told – very little thinking for yourself or questioning- plenty of yes and not challenging
Rebellious child – as it says rebellious- ‘I’m not going to do this ..I’m going to do that and you can’t stop me!’ – could be very destructive and difficult to manage