Seven ways to change your management style

Changing management styles and approaches are challenges for every manager and change is a key component of business ownership.

The ability for entrepreneurs to successfully manage change – and that includes changing their own approach – can prepare the groundwork for growth and establish foundations for a positive and vibrant culture that will attract talent.

Unfortunately it’s not something that many business owners do well, with study after study showing that most attempts to change come to nothing and fail badly.

But it can be done. Several entrepreneurs shared insights about what worked for them with Smart Company and consultants also shed some light on the issue.

The biggest mistake companies make, says management consultant Kevin Dwyer from Change Factory, is restructuring the organisation. He says it never works and they should never do it.

“It’s the lever reached for most often where you have a reorganisation and organisations should be creative-based around like competencies and like processes,” Dwyer says.

“They rarely have real impact on how a place works but they are the first lever people reach for.

“It creates upheaval, people have to change their reporting lines, people have to change who they are working with, they even have to change their communication styles and thinking styles to work with new people.

“What people are hoping for when they do a reorganisation is somehow they will get a different level of accountability and responsibility in positions with greater clarity of who is responsible for what.

“But what they find is that they were never clear about who was responsible in the first place. And if they had thought that through well, changing the structure isn’t going to change that.”

Consultants and entrepreneurs came up with several ideas to change the way managers approach things to get more out of staff. The ideas cover all areas, from meeting styles to office layout.

1. Self awareness

This is one of the first things managers should reach for, says consultant Joel Barolsky. That is the biggest change.

“The leader needs to ask themselves what is my style,” Barolsky says. “Is it appropriate and am I willing to adapt and change it?

“Now a lot of people don’t ask that first question. They look to change others and things around them, but the first place to start is to get a reasonable insight into their own style and preferences, their own strengths and also their own blind spots.”

The simplest way of doing that, he says, is to get some feedback.

“For example, if you’re doing a performance review, you can ask how can I be a more effective manager? It takes a lot of guts to do that and you might hear stuff you don’t want to hear but if you get a better idea of where you are coming from you are in a better position to adapt.”

2. Psychological profiling tools

Many companies put candidates through all sorts of tests to see how they will measure up and Jannine Fraser, managing director of outplacement firm Directioneering Victoria, uses one such tool, the Birkman Method, for everyone at Directioneering.

That’s everyone from the receptionist to Fraser herself. The Birkman method is a 298-point personality assessment tool that looks at such areas as how people deal with relationships and tasks, what their needs are, how they cope with stress and how they approach problem solving.

Fraser says she introduced it as a change that could be used in different departments, like sales and marketing, to get people working together. Handled properly it can used to get everyone collaborating because they understand where everyone is coming from.

The beauty of the tool, she says, is that it helps show how people are different and how to manage those differences.

“I thrive in a busy environment with back-to-back meetings. I get energy from that whereas somebody next to me may look absolutely fine but they will be by themselves all weekend to recover from that and recharge,” Fraser says.

“Now that is something not obvious when you are observing somebody’s performance in the business environment. It helps me understand how people are going to operate and it gives people enough wiggle room so that they can self manage and not get overloaded.

“It can be a way of building some scaffolding around the total business rather than having isolated silos, which has historically been an issue. It builds a common language and if you can get people working together collaboratively in a team, it’s a step up in terms of the total performance of the business.”

She says tools like the Birkman Method are not that expensive and can cost as little as $500.

“Quite frankly they cost almost nothing relative to the amount of cost that’s put into training budgets,” Fraser says.

“You are probably going to get better performance from people if you get them working in a collaborative team environment rather than sending people off to external training courses which are often, quite frankly, hard to measure.”

3. Values

There are companies that claim to have very strong values but the managers at IT recruitment specialist Peoplebank have taken it one step further.

One of the big changes it introduced in recent years was to bring in a facilitator and hold sessions to explore the personal values of staff. That covered everything from love of family to community spirit to personal integrity.

Peoplebank managing director Leon Lau says it wasn’t easy.

“It was quite intense and some of it was quite emotional and confronting. Some people had to get up and bare their soul. But everyone contributed and out of that we produced a list of what was important to individuals,” Lau says.

The next step was to get everyone workshopping the values of the company.

“We then married the two off and aligned the company’s values with the people’s values,” Lau says.

Many of Peoplebank’s policies are part of that marriage. There are flexible working hours, a baby feeding room and very clear rules for how to deal with clients and candidates. If anyone raises an issue internally the company has a commitment to get back to them within 24 hours.

It’s a change that ensures everyone works to the same agenda and system.

“It makes sure that everyone is working together in a way that meets the values of the organisation,” Lau says.

4. Change meeting style

Dwyer says if meetings are just repetitive rituals that go nowhere they need to be cut out or changed and replaced with something that might be more constructive.

“If the meeting is regarded to be useful but it’s lost a lot of its constructive zing then change the environment,” Dwyer says.

“You can hold it off-site. If it used to be an hour-long meeting every week then make it a two-hour meeting once a month. Or you can change who leads it.”

Barolsky says some corporations have instant feedback sessions after each meeting. At the end of every meeting, staff will hold a debriefing session. How well did we prepare? Was the agenda appropriate? Did we run the meeting well?

What could we have done differently? It produces insights and ensures the next meeting will be more productive.

5. Get ideas

Every company claims it wants employees to generate ideas but putting it into practice is a lot harder.

When Shannon Cooper and Steve Sanmartino started building up Rentoid, a company that positions itself as the eBay of renting, they knew they had to change their approach because they were starting to employ people.\

Cooper says the big change was to ensure that they would get insight from the new employees and they set up a special system that kept ideas cooking.

Rentoid has a staff of six including Cooper and Sanmartino. There is one working in Sydney, another in Mexico and two in Moldavia.

“As we got more and more people coming on board the real necessity for us was to open up the channels of communication,” Cooper says.

“So we let people know that whether they were in front of us or if they were on the end of a Skype or an email it was important for us to have their ideas and it was important for them to put forward ideas.

“Whenever we would have our briefings on line we would always set aside 10 to 15 minutes where we would talk about nothing but ideas, how we could do things better, what we could improve on and what new things people are seeing.”

All ideas, he says, are welcome. Even if someone comes up with an idea that might not work it is put aside. Maybe it could work with a bit of fine tuning.

“We have never said thanks but no thanks for your ideas,” Cooper says.

It’s a key change that ensures everyone is trying to turn Rentoid into an ideas factory.

6. Change staff communication

Good staff communication is essential for business success and to put it bluntly, employees who don’t know what’s expected of them will not perform well.

Managers who want to connect better with staff might need to change communication channels.

They need to examine the tools and methods and see whether they are appropriate or whether they can be improved.

Some companies rely heavily on Intranet systems, others have a CEO or company blog. Some use staff forums where the boss regularly meets with staff to talk about issues. Not all of them work and managers need to identify what suits their staff.

A case in point is Igloo Zoo, the company run by David Gold, the young entrepreneur who has been behind LookSmart, dStore and Azure, which was sold in 2006 for around $20 million.

Igloo Zoo, a chain of frozen yoghurt stores, has employees aged between 15 and 22. Communicating with them by email didn’t work and getting information out to them about things like rosters needed another channel.

“They tend to live their lives around Facebook so we have found ways to communicate with them on various modules through Facebook,” Gold says. “We’ve also had ideas from them about using Four Square.”

He says the company tried using other ways of communicating, like the social networking tool Yamma, but that didn’t work. Employees didn’t take to it.

“It’s important for you to communicate with them in a way that they get the message. They don’t care if they lose their jobs, it’s all about them, so you have to communicate with them in an environment where they feel comfortable.”

It’s a message for all entrepreneurs – find the communication channel that works.

7. Change office layout

Barolsky says changing the office design makes a more creative, switched-on workplace. He points out that many offices in the Docklands precinct look very different from anywhere else in Melbourne.

Employees have smaller desks but larger areas where they can meet and talk. There are more shared desks and examples of hot-desking.

“It facilitates a more co-operative social harmonious working environment,” Barolsky says.

“It doesn’t suit everyone but the principle is that office layout and how it works can have an important impact on how people feel and interact and on the culture within the work environment.”

But it has to be managed with care. Companies should not implement these changes without consulting staff who are having to change their working style.

It may affect their productivity and the system should be designed with input from people who will have to live with it system every day.