3 Management Styles, You Decide Yours

Create your system to match your management style.

Your Management Style

The best way to manage your life will be the way that resonates with you and your unique traits. In my previous blog, 3 Aspects of Life Management You Can Control, I discussed how to create your life management system in alignment with the way you think, act and organize. Just as your system has to resonate with your unique traits, your management style will be uniquely yours.

In my blog, 3 Keys for Managing Your Life, the third key is to be sure your system is both effective and efficient. Your management style is based on your level of ability to be both effective and efficient. I break the styles down into three possibilities for simplicity, yet the styles are really spread across the spectrum between the two extremes. The styles emphasize effectiveness, efficiency or a combination of both.

Effectiveness & Efficiency

Companies often have three levels of management, which can help explain the differences between the management styles. The top level of management usually consists of visionaries, who only see the forest and are focused on what would be the most effective projects and products to focus on. The lowest level of management usually consists of supervisors, who only see the trees and are focused on the detailed activities and the most efficient ways to get them done. Middle management usually consists of those who have a balance between the vision and the details, who see both the forest and the trees and are focused on both effectiveness and efficiency.

Many leaders believe that effectiveness is more important than efficiency, because it doesn’t matter how efficient you are if you’re doing the wrong things. I’ve challenged that idea in the past, because while doing the wrong things won’t achieve your goals, doing the right things in the wrong way won’t achieve them either. I believe effectiveness and efficiency are equally important to your results, so we’ll discuss both and the way to achieve your optimal natural flow, as follows:

• Effectiveness  

• Efficiency

• Optimal Natural Flow

Since most people’s management style is more focused on either the forest or the trees, we’ll also discuss ways to support the one that is your less proficient focus.

Effectiveness

Effectiveness is choosing the right things to do to achieve your desired results. The best way to choose effective action is to test it against your vision and values, and to determine if it compares favorably to the alternatives being tested. 

Just as a visionary leader shares the organization’s mission, its reason for existing, and the organization’s vision, what it hopes to achieve in the future, you are the visionary leader of your own life with a mission and vision. Your mission declares  what your purpose is, what relationships are important to your mission and your system of how you think, act and organize. Your vision declares what you expect to achieve in the future. Spend some time clarifying what your mission and vision are.

Just as a visionary leader rallies all the members of the organization to support the mission, each doing their specific part to fulfill that mission, you steer the various aspects of your life to support your mission and vision. What is your purpose? How do your occupation, your relationships and your health and wealth support your purpose? Use your mission and vision to select the most effective goals or projects to move you in the direction of fulfilling your mission and vision.

Efficiency

Efficiency is choosing the right way to produce your desired results, to uphold your mission and achieve your vision. Once you decide what effective goals and projects would move you in the direction of fulfilling your mission and vision, you need to determine the most efficient way to achieve those goals and projects. 

Efficiency is impacted by a lot of factors. What tools and resources will you need to achieve your goals efficiently? How can you best schedule your activities to take advantage of your energy flows throughout the day and to take advantage of the natural external factors such as your environment and other people’s availability to do their part in mutually beneficial activities.

One of the most important aspects of efficiency that people often struggle with is choosing the right person for specific tasks. Many of us think that we need to do everything ourselves. Initially it may seem that way, if we have limited resources, however, your time is best spent doing what you do best and paying or bartering with others for what they do best. Synergistic relationships produce more value in less time, because they emphasize what each person does best. 

This does not mean that you should delegate all of your tasks. You may want to do your own gardening and yard work for the natural exercise and mental rejuvenation it affords you. You may enjoy cooking and cleaning for their meditative and experimental aspects. Therefore, it becomes most efficient for you to find the right level of balance between your mental, emotional and physical activities. 

Once you achieve the level of efficiency and balance that you have discovered works well for you, maintain that efficiency with a level of flexibility. A rigid branch will break in the wind, but a flexible one will bend as needed. Establish a system of review to determine what is still efficient and what needs to adapt to change.

Optimal Natural Flow

Nobody knows with 100% certainty what the most effective thing to do is or what the most efficient way to do it is. And since the only constant is change, the most effective thing to do and the most efficient way to do it will often need to adapt to those inevitable changes. 

So skip perfection. You, like everyone else, will regularly make educated decisions based on your current information. Then create a system of review to evaluate whether your products and processes are still the most effective and efficient ones for you to pursue, and where you may need to adapt to changing circumstances. 

Resilience, your ability to bounce back, will help you to adapt to changes caused by adverse conditions or difficult and unexpected events. Resisting the changes necessitated by those conditions or events will only cause problems. Being attached to your initial ideas of your results having to look a particular way will only cause problems. 

Water flows around obstacles, yet always maintains its natural direction of heading back to the ocean. Wu wei means to be like water, allowing things to flow naturally, without you trying to force things to happen in a certain way. Flexibility, resilience and acceptance of all that occurs will allow you to achieve that optimal natural flow, which allows you to consistently make course corrections to guide you back into alignment with your mission and vision. 

You Decide Your Style

Which management style are you? If you are a visionary with lots of ideas, but not always good with the detailed follow-through, then surround yourself with people who are more efficient than you. If you are good with the details, but not always sure which idea is best, then find a visionary whose ideas you admire. If you have both the vision and the follow-through, then you might decide to be an entrepreneur, starting out doing most of the work yourself or outsourcing as needed. What style resonates with you to effectively and efficiently achieve your vision? You decide!