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Still, experience teaches many leaders it's essential to shift style at certain times and in specific circumstances, as in the following examples.
Information Filtering
Alan Rudolph, director of global product delivery for IBM, is a firm believer in complete transparency with his team of technical professionals. "But at the same time, I want to shield them from noise that would create uncertainty or conflict in doing their jobs," he adds.
For example, during the annual planning process, there are a lot of what-if discussions to explore possible changes and new directions. Rudolph confines these early-stage discussions to managers who need to be involved. When decisions are finalized, transparency again becomes the norm, and staff members are engaged in any major change or new initiative right from the beginning.
After all, Rudolph says, "you as a leader can deal with the uncertainty -- that's your job, to explore and then make decisions." But when changes that can dramatically affect people's jobs are being discussed, often it's best to protect employees from worry and speculation until decisions have been made.
Improving Relationships with Staff
Not every manager is a natural at relating to diverse personalities. In fact, top performers are often elevated to management with little formal training on how to manage and motivate the people they'll now be leading. And sometimes a manager's natural style can be misinterpreted or create a negative response rather than a positive one.
Donna Moniot, an executive coach in Dallas, worked with an up-and-coming manager who needed to improve communication with his team members. His natural style -- numbers-driven and results-focused -- worked well up the management chain, but some subordinates disliked his direct, just-the-facts demeanor and felt he didn't care about them as people.
Moniot helped the manager better understand different personality styles and then devised an innovative visual cue of a color-coded piece of paper, correlated with their assessed personality style, that was taped to the top of each worker's computer monitor. This served as a reminder of each staff member's communication needs as the manager entered their workspace.
"Instead of starting a discussion by asking, ‘where's the numbers?' he learned to change his style and first ask a relationship question -- something as simple as ‘how are you doing?'-- to establish rapport with his staff members who were relationship-oriented," Moniot says. This simple change "meant that he could manage his team better by adapting to their thinking styles rather than forcing them to adapt to his," he adds.
As a result of identifying and then adapting his style as needed, this manager has progressed steadily up the ranks to an executive position. In all likelihood, his progress would have stalled had he used his natural tendencies in across-the-board staff communications.
Leading Significant Change
When a major change initiative is launched, managers need to gain genuine commitment from staff or the initiative will fail. But employees may be hesitant to be first off the block in changing long-standing behaviors. Thus, managers should demonstrate the new behaviors themselves as a signal it's OK to change.
"What is often forgotten or outright ignored by leaders is that they are also part of the change equation," says Diane Wieser, a Danville, California-based sales executive in the corporate learning and development industry. "Their adaptation is integral to the organization's ability to shift its direction. Staff members are going to look to their leaders to see if they are serious about the change or if it is just lip service."
There is a lot at risk. "People's careers are a high-stakes game, and change is scary, so they will only adapt their behavior if their leader goes first," says Wieser.
Thus, adapting one's natural management style should be a strategic, deliberate act to achieve a goal or improve team results. "The more senior you get, the more you need to understand how to manage and when your style needs to be adapted," Rudolph notes.
