ARM ROUND THE SHOULDER OR BOOT UP THE BUM?

There’s increasing discussion about management style. In the past there was an arm-wrestling aggression and bullying in management depicted still in the “The Apprentice”. It seems to bring out the worst in everyone. It gets good ratings (over 4.5 million watch it) but it’s a bad advertisement for management.

 

In football, tough managers like Sir Alex Ferguson and now Pep Guardiola and Jűrgen Klopp are admired. Many want disciplinarians controlling the prima-donna footballers earning £20,000,000 a year. 

But it depends on the footballer whether it works. Some will respond to praise and encouragement, others to putdowns.  Contrast the tough, “call me Boss, son” approach with that of Gareth Southgate, England Manager, and Graham Potter, the Brighton Manager. Both gentler people, good at getting the best out of their players.

Some managers seem genial until you work for them. Sir John Hegarty – the founder of advertising agency BBH - always seems relaxed and charming but some of those who worked for him said he was unreasonably demanding.

Jeff Bezos – the spectacularly successful founder of Amazon – is allegedly a scornful and hard taskmaster with put-downs like “Are you lazy or just incompetent?”  The results of his company speak highly for this approach.  But could it be out of date? By the same token Steve Jobs was very successful but with little to applaud in the way he treated people. His successor Tim Cook who has a quieter more democratic style of management has lifted Apple to entirely new levels.

Being a bully is completely unacceptable nowadays, yet in politics bullying has apparently become endemic. The Tory Whips Office has become increasingly intimidatory; politics is a nasty business. Ask the Democrat, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the U.S. representative for New York's 14th congressional district. She was recently reviled with shocking language by a Republican politician. 

Bullying in business has negative effects. Talent can be squashed by snide dismissiveness. We can all recall moments when self-confidence and creativity flowed away like water out of a bath.

Management of people is a real skill too few people think about or learn. It’s about getting the best out of others and there isn’t a simple formula for that because few managers and few employees are the same. But when we read about the poor levels of productivity in the UK blame poor management of people. It’s not easy but great managers are usually great controllers of results, of numbers and of which levers to pull to achieve desired outcomes. 

It's interesting that sometimes it needs a hands-off approach when management needs to stop being in charge and to start to behave like absentee managers. One of the best managers in my life just let me get on with it. I wonder if the companies I know that did so well during the various Covid lockdowns benefitted from people being left alone to do their work rather than having someone breathing down their neck and putting them on some time consuming training programme. 

I also wonder if the restrictions of the past two years may not have changed our expectations of and our need for great management. What we need is a mixture of inspiration, integrity, enthusiasm, and energy.  Most of all we need to believe in and trust our managers. Abraham Lincoln said something interesting about what making a person a manager can do to them. 

His observations are wise and raise the question that we should consider about all managers. Their effectiveness may seem great but what of their influence in the longer term. What of their character?