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Success Secrets and Stories
Unveiling Philosophy of Management: From Unconscious to Conformist Leadership
Discover the invisible forces shaping your work life as we dissect management styles that could be making or breaking your team. Dr. Mona Al-Qadi joins us to unravel the 'unconscious management' style, a leadership approach that could leave staff feeling overlooked and undervalued. We promise you'll walk away with a newfound understanding of how crucial self-awareness and responsiveness are in cultivating a thriving workplace. Greg and I don't just stop there; we also tackle the oft-overlooked 'self-protective management' style, revealing its potential to stifle motivation, and reflect on why nurturing talent should be at the forefront of every leader's mind.
When crisis strikes, leadership is put to the test—something we know all too well from personal experience. Hear John explain how an authoritative, yet purpose-driven approach helped is team navigate through uncertainty, setting clear goals while encouraging open communication.
Greg shares a gripping "9-11 story," where decisive leadership provided much-needed calm during chaos.
Join us in the conversation with our stories of leadership that could help you as you travel the path of a leadership.
Presented by John Wandolowski and Greg Powell
Hello everyone, welcome to Success Equiton Stories. I'm your host, john Mandeloske, and I'm here with my co-host and friend, greg Hall.
Speaker 2:Hey, everybody yeah.
Speaker 1:And we're here to talk about the next step. In season two, we're going to be talking about recognizing what type of manager you're working for, maybe what kind of manager you are and what you should consider as far as the approaches for being a responsible leader, and hopefully you'll understand how these different characteristics build upon each other. And, especially in today's discussion, we're going to be talking about occasions where we've used different management styles when it's appropriate, and you'll see the continuity of the designs of the different managers and hopefully your manager fits into one of them. Ultimately, we would hope that be the responsible one, but hey, there's reasons and opportunities for others to understand what they're doing and what's happening around them. The first category is probably the weakest or toughest. It's called the unconscious management, which is basically management by default, and people who are in this type of management style consider staff powerless and trapped. Productivity and people's concerns are unimportant. Method of operation is basically withdrawn or non-involvement All words that would be appropriate when we're talking about the unconscious.
Speaker 1:I found a very interesting article on the internet. The title of the article is Can Leadership Style Be Unconscious, dr Mona Al-Khadi and she's a development consultant for LinkedIn, and this is from a LinkedIn newsletter from October 4th of 2023. And she said you know the first she's starting off with. What is this style? And it refers to the approaches and behaviors that are associated with a person that employs the leading or influencing or guiding a group or an organization that encompasses those kind of decisions. But what would be considered important for leadership and can agree that the leadership is not confined to individuals with formal titles or positions or authority. Anyone, regardless of their job title, can exhibit certain leadership qualities and behaviors. Leadership can emerge from various levels within an organization and an individual can lead through their actions and influences, the way that you would interact with others. So the concept of leadership is there, but now she goes on to say let's talk about the application of an unconscious leader. This refers to the situation where the person exhibits particular leadership approaches or behaviors without conscious awareness of doing so.
Speaker 1:She goes on to talk about the three most common reasons for this phenomenon the lack of awareness, which is an understatement for the unconscious. Some individuals may lack a clear understanding of their leadership style or the impact of others. They might not have the ability to engage or be self-reflective or receive feedback from others. The other element of it is behavior, habitual behavior Over time.
Speaker 1:People who are habitually leaders are basically just following the patterns that they've always done and how they've interacted with certain people. These habits are basically ingrained, and it makes it a challenge for the individual to recognize how they are being perceived by others. They're not. They're unconscious. They kind of don't care what other people think. Limited training and development is a characteristic of people who are unconscious, and also how they treat their staff. They really don't care about training, they really don't care about development. So, in a nutshell, this leadership style can be defined as unconscious, and it's essential for leaders and organizations to actively be aware of what they're saying and how they're coming across in terms of style. Now, greg, I think you've had some experience with the unconscious management style. Maybe you can talk about that a little bit.
Speaker 2:I have, john, thank you. We've talked before about generations of employees in the workplace. In the workplace today we have some millennials Most of the baby boomers are on their way out Gen X, gen Y, gen Z and Alpha. These folks want and they'll tell you they want intentional leadership. They don't want what I would call zombie leadership People going through the motions would have you right. They don't want somebody just casually shooting from the hip on leadership. They want someone to purposefully display forethought and demonstrate a planful approach to leadership so both the company's goals and the employee's goals and aspirations can be met.
Speaker 1:And they are already saying that that's the best way for them to check out mentally or resign on the job or leave without really like two weeks in gone kind of mentality, because they're not going to stick around for years on end if they don't see leadership. So your turnovers also going to be another indicator that you're broken and something needs to change the self-protective management style. Greg, I think you gave a good description from our storyboarding when we were doing this and I think it'd be appropriate. Why don't you take this one?
Speaker 2:Thanks, john. And so, if you could imagine, john does a really good job of putting some we put these slides together for talking points to work from. He put together an image that I think I'm going to do my best to translate to you. When you think about the self-protective management philosophy, the view of staff is that they are incompetent and they're lazy. As far as productivity and people concerns, they are mutually exclusive and the method of operation is strictly coercion and force. And this image that we have here is a very large individual in red pulling along some very small individuals in blue, literally dragging them along. There's no investment engagement. Again, this individual, this leader, believes these folks are lazy and they're coercing them into going to the next step. And it's a powerful image, but also a sad image as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's sort of like you're treating your staff like children. It's the parental kind of mentality of self-protective. They haven't developed enough, so I'm going to do everything for them because they're just incompetent, which is, are they incompetent or they're lazy or fill in a blank for why somebody would think that this is a good approach, but odds are that that leader doesn't really understand that they're responsible to try to bring their talent levels up. So there's so much more to that and a little bit of the unconscious and a little bit of authoritative kind of blends. And I think the next category is really more descriptive and it's conformist manager by status quo and Dr Durst's quick review of those positions are the view of staff is weak and need to be protected. Again, that's self-protective kind of approach. People's concerns are emphasized and the modus of operation is basically maintaining the status quo. So there's that piece of you're looking for compliance. There's a maintaining of the status quo. That's expected. So it's not so much that they're not competent, it's that you're not really looking for creative thought or input. You want compliance. That's really what you're looking for.
Speaker 1:And again, looking on the internet on articles that I thought were very appropriate for trying to communicate this. There was an interesting article from what they call the Indeed Editorial Team, which is kind of strange that it's the team that does it, but they made a very good attempt at describing what they call what is authoritative leadership, and they did this back in February 12th of 2024. And the authoritative approach refers to a management style where the leader is in complete control. The leader sets the goals, determines the processes, oversees the steps literally looking over your shoulder in micro management 101. The authoritative leadership drives the organization and the employees to a common goal. This type of leader work with employees and how they step with their processes, and their leadership and their coaching skills can be successful. The main difference between an authoritative and the authoritative leader is that once the authoritative leaders show employees how to complete the task, they let them continue on their own. Doing so sparks innovation and new ideas to accomplish the task, but it's still compliance and making sure that they're maintaining the status quo, and they do that in terms of these different categories that they talked about in the article.
Speaker 1:Intimidation the manager moves throughout the people's actions stern, holding them accountable to very high standards. They're reflective in terms of how they focus and experience the things that are associated with the institution. They apply their knowledge and help the employees with previous situations and try to do it instead of with anger, with sternness or intimidation. They try to do it through guiding and sharing lessons and learning from the past, trying to be reflective. They adapt to situations. For example, some employees respond with stern feedback, but a little bit of what they're looking for is the best strategy, and the team members are looking for the same thing. It's the closest thing that they want for success and that's where the reflection piece of it is helpful. They also talk about adapting and being able to do so in terms of stern feedback.
Speaker 1:So an authoritative approach is going to give you some freedoms, but feedback is instant and there is a certain intimidation that's associated with that. It's calm guidance when it's done actually appropriately, but there's not a lot of opportunity to give different examples. You don't want to give endless time. You want to give your time constrained. The reactions that are associated and the other category that you're talking about is making sure that they're being stern rather than being intense. They're meeting the employee's reactions, their input, but they're in an effort to make them work harder and be more efficient. That's really the essence of trying to take that, the next step. So why would somebody want to do something like this? Why would you want to apply the authoritative approach? Well, unfortunately, there are occasions where you have to do this, and I'm going to try to blend a little bit about my background. I had to apply an authoritative approach in my background, in my work history, and it was basically an organization that was broken.
Speaker 1:The benefits of an authoritative approach that they describe match perfectly and why I adapted my management style to reduce the number of mistakes. The organization that I was working with were about to close their doors and, unless something changed, they had like six months left of keeping the doors open. So the challenge was get it done period where we need answers. So it was to reduce the amount of mistakes and to make sure that all the parties were pulling the rope at the same time that's the best description I can give that they would not rely on just previous experiences, but develop the teams and find a more efficient way to be productive, to boost productivity, especially in my example, the production of sending out product had diminished to the point where they were six months behind in terms of delivering products and they could not keep the doors open. Their product was time sensitive. When a patient needed their product, they needed it now, not in six months, and they were. So to produce that kind of change, to change the processes, I had to come in and basically make a complete stop, 180 turn in order to make a change and that's to boost the productivity of the team and to understand those impacts.
Speaker 1:The interesting component of why I was involved with the authoritative approach was the two consultants that they had on deck were no longer being listened to and they had great ideas about productivity that I just enforced rather than asked. I engaged and implied those changes and that really did make a difference. The talent was there, the comments were there, but they had lost their way because of all the noise going along with their failures that they had trying to distribute their product and to improve decision-making. The authoritative approach brings it all on my plate. I own whatever the decision was and until we could get that organization working again, it was my fault and I took that responsibility. That's a little bit of my background is I understood that that was an important element, but that's also authoritative because I wasn't sharing it at that point and a responsible leader shares that decision-making approach.
Speaker 1:Now, what I thought was interesting is that this article laid out the descriptions pretty straightforward, and it's what I did not having this article to work with. But I had set my purpose. So I brought together the team and basically rolled right down this list to find my purpose, set my parameters, engage the team that was there, explain the reason why we had to make the change and reflect on the situation and talked about timeframes that we would review how we would be moving forward. So I defined my purpose in terms of making people understand that give a little background. I was from engineering and I'm here helping out distribution because I had a background in distribution. I had experiences and actually one of the places I used to work with was with Greg in warehousing operations, so I knew how to get where they wanted to go and the next step is setting your parameters. I basically knew what was broken in terms of the mechanics, in terms of how they were trying to get it done, and I put those things on the board for them to see. The math had to improve and I had to see that progression and those parameters never came off the board until it was fixed.
Speaker 1:The other part was I engaged my staff. I didn't underestimate their input. I was there to try to help them to get ahead, to push them ahead, but that hesitation and that indecision, I took that away from them. They had to have results and some people call that micromanaging. It is, but it was also necessary for them to understand that I'm engaged and I can change. But you're going to have to speak, you're going to have to help me understand and that's the next one that they're in next category is explaining my reasoning. I would try to let them understand that there was a purpose behind going down this road and it wasn't strictly just do it my way or the highway. If we're going to get this to work, we all have to try to take our best ideas and make them work. But it's not your idea If you're not comfortable with it. It can be my idea. But somewhere along the line we need to help this organization get back on its feet and to reflect on the situation. Basically, a little bit of that is to give feedback, but to reflect on where they are and how to push it forward.
Speaker 1:It is really important for people to understand that when somebody goes and uses the authoritative leadership role. You should know whether this is their permanent style or a temporary style. The people at least knew me long enough to know that this wasn't my normal management approach and understood it was applied because of the situation and it was an urgent and quick requirement that needed to be handled differently than other roles that I had done in my past. So it makes some sense to understand. You have to be adaptive, you have to sometimes take that kind of leadership, especially when it's an emergency Fire injuries that are happening at work. The authoritative approach is actually logical for those applications. Greg, I think you have a different way that an authority kind of approach was appropriate for the situation. Maybe you can talk about that one.
Speaker 2:Thanks, john. I call this my 9-11 story of authoritative management, so everybody remembers where they were during 9-11, that Tuesday in September 2001. I was at my company's headquarters in the suburbs of a major Midwest city. We had an authoritative senior leader who ran most of our supply chain organization, and at that time he was appointed by the CEO as the face of leadership to get us through that fateful day and the days to come. He drew from his senior leadership military experience in coping with through high stress in wartime conditions. So the man was there on the forefront in the battlefields etc. And knew what that life was like.
Speaker 2:Fear had permeated throughout the corporate office building, including middle management and individual contributors, as though World Trade Center buildings were on fire. It was a scary time. His authoritative leadership style, though, brought an element of calm to the organization. He had to make some decisions on his own and it was good that he did and he carefully crafted directions for middle managers and individual contributors, because we still had a business to run. People still needed to know what to do, when to do it, so to speak.
Speaker 2:But a little background with that as well. He had a quote that stays with me till today, and he said on that first day if you allow fear to prevent you from doing your job today, the enemy wins. And that really went close to my heart. As far as what does that really mean if I'm not on the as a leader I was a young leader at the time if I'm not out there making things happen and working with my folks? He recommended we check on our families, we check on our employees that might be in the Northeast on business, but also trust that our country had a plan to keep us safe and what we could do, the best thing we could do, was focus on doing our jobs to the best of our ability to meet or exceed customer expectations.
Speaker 2:It was a heck of a day. It was a heck of several days. We had to transition through that to become more comfortable getting on the road, going to our homes, getting on an airplane. But that authoritative leadership was what we needed at that time to get us through a very awkward and difficult time, and it was a path forward.
Speaker 1:And he did the things in that short period of time sent out emails or different ways of yeah, tell all the meetings he sent out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there you go. Yes.
Speaker 1:Right. So he engaged staff, making sure that they all had the message. Yeah, a good leader, I think, was your executive that found a team member that was appropriate for this skill set and gave him his authority. I think that's a sign of a very good CEO at the same time.
Speaker 2:I agree, John, and it was something that cut everyone's attention for the positive and I think for us as a couple of employees, managers, leaders, individual contributors it put a lot of confidence that we have the right people at the top of the house. Again, it gave us more confidence. We knew what we were doing and we could make it through this very awkward time.
Speaker 1:So the authoritative approach I think we've expanded on quite a bit, but you can see that it is considered micromanagement at some level. But sometimes it is appropriate because of the situation. It's where you know where to apply those kind of skill sets and to have those skill sets to have the confidence as a military leader in your organization to know that what he was trying to do was going to help the organization heal and keep focus. That's very important. So I think we've kind of covered this. Greg, what do we have in store for our next podcast?
Speaker 2:Well, John, for our next episode, we will be continuing our discussion on the basic management philosophies of an achievement manager and a responsible manager.
Speaker 1:Awesome. So if you like what you've heard and you'd like to know more, I wrote a book called Building your Leadership Toolbox which is available on amazoncom and woolycom Success Secrets and Stories. The podcast is available on what you're listening to. Thank you. Also, the other popular formats like Apple, google, spotify and more. Dr S Books, materials and Training Programs are available on successgrowthacademycom. I always like to say that my music is brought to you by my grandson. He plays the bass guitar. Perfect timing for the bass guitar. We have something called Buy us a cup of coffee. Look at, and if you fire up our website, that's on Buzzsprout, you can see that we have that connection, that you can contact us. We also have our email Mine's Wando75periodjwcom, and Greg, yours is as G Powell 374 at gmailcom.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the idea that we want to hear from you your examples of management. Hopefully you have good examples of management about people that you've worked for that you found, that understood responsibility and applied the NBR concepts that we've talked about, but organizations that usually are someone that you'd like to share with have those skill sets anyway. So please take the time and share. We'd like to know more. So thanks, Greg.
Speaker 2:Thanks, John, as always.
Speaker 1:Next time.