Managers of other people tend to fall into one of four basic styles. That’s according to research by the American Management Association. How you manage has a big effect on the ultimate performance of the organization, yet managers often see themselves quite differently than their direct reports see them. Joining the Federal Drive with Tom Temin with more, the association’s director of corporate learning solutions, Jeff Becker.

Interview transcript: 

Tom Temin  Managers of other people tend to fall into one of four basic styles. That’s according to research by the American Management Association. How you manage has a big effect on the ultimate performance of the organization. Yet managers often see themselves quite differently than their direct reports see them. Here with details, the association’s director of corporate learning solutions, Jeff Becker. Mr. Becker, good to have you with us.

Jeff Becker  Nice to be with you, Tom. Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.

Tom Temin  And in discovering the four styles, which we’ll get into, what was your methodology for determining these four styles? How did you conduct this research?

Jeff Becker  Sure. So, about every quarter, we put out some questions and research questions. And in this case, it went to about a little over 1,100 folks that responded to it. All different industries, including government and all different levels, really. It was individual contributor up through executives as well. So, roughly a little over 1,100 respondents.

Tom Temin  And you asked them about managerial styles and it sounds like everyone fell into one of four buckets. Describe those buckets for us.

Jeff Becker  Sure. You betcha, yes. So, they, to that point, they looked at these four different buckets to kind of say, where am I? And if they were an individual contributor, they basically said, where’s my manager? What type of style do they have? And those four styles are, one is democratic, which a lot of people associated with, which I’ll talk about more in a moment. And that’s really a style around, okay, how do I work with my team members, but ultimately, I as a manager will make a decision. So I might still have conversation with them. But I, as a manager, ultimately decide kind of where we’re going. The second one was autocratic, and in this case, autocratic is very much the tail method, I kind of tell my employees what to do, I tell them how to do it, and sometimes when to do it. So, all of those types of, you know, tell methodologies, if you will. The third one was really that laissez faire type where, hey, I’m hands off, I’ll let you do your job. And I’ll just kind of get out of the way. And then the fourth one is a facilitative approach. And that is a series of, again, kind of dialogue with a team member, but ultimately allowing them to make a decision. So, really four different types of management styles, and really an understanding of where do folks fall, and particularly how do they flex between those four types of styles.

Tom Temin  And which of those four democratic, autocratic, laissez faire and facilitative, which has the most number of people in that bucket?

Jeff Becker  The most number of people fell into the democratic. And what was interesting about that, though, is the managers identified themselves in fact, I think it was 55% of managers said, I definitely fall into that bucket. However, individual contributors that evaluated their managers, only about a third, roughly 33% said yes, in fact, so there was a bit of a disconnect in terms of manager seeing what’s my general style, versus actual team members or individual contributors.

Tom Temin  And I guess, one can be democratic until somebody disagrees. And then all of a sudden, they’re autocratic.

Jeff Becker  Precisely, precisely. And in this case, we’re not necessarily saying hey, one’s right, wrong, or indifferent. But can you flex between those? And that also came out of the study, as well, is the ability again, manager’s perception of being able to flex versus a team member saying they’re not as good at that as they think they might be.

Tom Temin  And as a training organization, is it your belief, AMA’s, or your personal belief that if someone is perceived as autocratic, that can be kind of off putting to employees? Can people learn and improve style of managing such that they can become a better manager and have more effective results?

Jeff Becker  Yeah, very fair question. Yes, absolutely. We’ve particularly given coming out of the whole COVID world where we very much went into the tell philosophy, we now have a lot of folks coming to us saying, hey, I didn’t get any kind of training, I was sort of put into this role. And because of that, I’ve gone into this tell mode. And so we are absolutely seeing various different degrees of development education needed for that new manager, not necessarily new manager, but the manager says, I want to get better. I fall into this category. I don’t want to get the feedback of hey, you’re always telling me what to do. How do I manage that? And sometimes that’s a skill around communication. Sometimes that’s a skill around emotional intelligence. Oftentimes, it’s a skill under the umbrella of truly leadership and managing and influencing others. So, absolutely, we get a lot of those requests lately around this style, if you will, and trying to get better, frankly, at their ability to influence and work with their team members.

Tom Temin  We’re speaking with Jeff Becker. He’s director of corporate learning solutions at the American Management Association. And you mentioned emotional intelligence. If someone has a high degree of that, it sounds like they could be successful regardless of the type of manager they are. You could even be autocratic, but do it in a way that is human relations based. And for those who are individual contributors, that doesn’t mean that one cannot have influence in an informal way or a way that’s not official designated. And sometimes such a person might even have more influence in some ways than the designated manager.

Jeff Becker  Fair. Yes, very fair. Emotional intelligence, a lot of it simply has to do with awareness. And that was one of the pieces that came out of this particular studies. Am I as aware of my style as I think I am? And the answer generally was no. You see yourself one way and others see a very different way. And, so, absolutely that emotional intelligence piece to say, am I aware of how I’m coming across? And, also, am I aware of, in this case, the emotion, the feeling the need of the team member that I’m working with? Absolutely. Correct. Correct. And, in fact, what came out of some of this survey directly to us was, hey, I don’t necessarily lead people, but I lead projects, I lead departments, I lead, you know, I have dotted lines to things and lead conversations, how does that apply to me? So, absolutely, these are skills and capabilities, and again, awareness of styles that isn’t just for the person that happens to manage and or lead a team of five or 10 or 15. Absolutely.

Tom Temin  And is there any evidence to tell which of those four styles again, democratic, autocratic, laissez faire or facilitative, in general, is more effective for organizational performance? Are there too many variables to be able to make that call?

Jeff Becker  Good question, there’s definitely a need for flexing between them. And what we found, through again, further conversations and clients that we work with regularly, is sometimes people get in a rut of sticking with one of them. That’s where the problem occurs. So, it’s not necessarily, hey, I really need to lean on just this one. But I will say this, part of the survey talked about, I wish my manager was more facilitative in that we would have conversations and I ultimately, as a team member, would be able to make decisions versus just being told kind of what to do. So, absolutely. There’s an impact on people, there’s an impact on the business, we often tie it into how does it affect your culture? How does it affect your bottom line? What have all these things mean? So, if you just start with that manager style and capability, you can really influence things in a positive direction for an entire organization or agency.

Tom Temin  And there’s a situational aspect to this, I imagine, also, if you are, say, autocratic, it’s almost like an Army officer used to ordering platoons around. But then when you’re coaching a soccer team of nine year olds, that you can’t treat them like a gunnery group.

Jeff Becker  Correct. Absolutely. And so to know, I had used autocratic as working with a new person, we may need to be in that degree of telling a lot more. They don’t necessarily know they’re new to the agency, they’re new to the organization, what do they do? How do they do it? They need that direction. So, you bet, and understanding where they are, you may also have people that have worked with you for 25 years, and believe it or not, the laissez faire approach may work, hey, just let me do my job, kind of get out of my way a little bit. And I’ll roll with it. So, again, understanding when do I move accordingly from one to the next, based on who I’m working with.

Tom Temin  And there’s no real personality value then assigned to each of these, you can be autocratic, and be very likable and have good human relations. Or you could be a facilitator and be an SOB, right?

Jeff Becker  Yes. And know, again, when to move accordingly. And is it appropriate? Hey, if I’m working with Tom is that appropriate, an appropriate style for where he is today, or the project that he’s working on? On the other hand, Tom, you might say, hey, I need help here. Tell me what I should be doing. Hey, great. And I slide into that autocratic. So, again, it’s that flexibility, it’s understanding what is the appropriate style, to be utilizing with this individual at this particular time.

Tom Temin  And again, just to underscore, this can all be taught and learned?

Jeff Becker  Absolutely. We do it every day. We do it every day, this particular management style survey came out of the COVID world. And I say that as people started go back into hybrid workspaces, and all different and we were getting calls like crazy around how do I manage my team? And what is my style? And what should it be? What’s right, wrong and different? How do I work in all these, you know, these different environments or in terms of workspaces? So, it started with that, and then it got really down to well, let’s identify those styles and how do people use them and flex accordingly? And ultimately, if I’m better at a particular style and being flexible, how does that impact the business outcomes of an organization or an agency and what they do, the culture, all of those pieces gets wrapped together? So, long answer to your question, but you bet. These are absolutely opportunities for development and learnings for people

Tom Temin  And know thyself. Jeff Becker is director of corporate learning solutions at the American Management Association. Thanks so much for joining me.

Jeff Becker  Thank you, Tom. Appreciate the time.

Tom Temin  We’ll post this interview along with a link to the research at federalnewsnetwork.com/federaldrive. Subscribe to the Federal Drive wherever you get your podcasts.

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