Case Study: Importance of Adapting Your Managerial Style

As Rohit came out of the VP’s chamber, he loosened his necktie and let some fresh air cool his nerves. He was still in a state of shock. What happened inside during last 30 minutes seemed to be a bad dream. As Rohit walked towards his office building, he recalled what had happened during last one year.

Rohit carried with him experience of managing five mid to big size teams. Some of the assignments were pretty challenging. That was one of the reasons why he was chosen to manage his current team for a very big account. His company was in the field of services; with foreign clients paying on a fixed-price model. To make its margin, his company constituted a team with pyramid structure – keeping large number of fresh or less experienced team members and a few highly experienced ones. All through his career, Rohit has led teams which mostly had this model. He knew this model very well. From the beginning in this project also, he used his usual managerial style. But within a few months of having started in this project, one of the senior members asked for ‘release’. He said he wanted to use his skills in a different type of project. He was a high-performer and was allowed to join another project. During next 6 months, four of the five senior team members resigned from the company. They mentioned different reasons for their decisions to quit. The unit’s VP asked Rohit for a meeting, which he had just finished. In the meeting the VP blasted him for loss of key employees with the premise that it had something to do with Rohit. But Rohit was really clueless!

On the same day, Rohit got a call from a senior HR manager who chatted with him for two hours straight. After going through all the aspects of the issue at hand, the HR manager’s verdict starred Rohit in his eyes. The resignations were due to Rohit’s managerial style. In fact the release request near the beginning of the project was also due to the same problem but Rohit had not understood what was wrong and hence did not do anything about it.

It started occurring to Rohit and subsequently he became aware of the root cause. Rohit had adopted a ‘directive’ managerial style to manage his team. This style is best if the team members are beginners and hence ‘freshers’ in his team were fine with it. But it was highly unsuitable with experienced members of the team who ‘deserved’ a different managerial style. ‘Delegating’ would have worked well with the one team member who was a high-potential employee. A reluctant but experienced member would have met different fate if Rohit adopted a ‘supportive’ managerial style with him. Similarly another member could have been ‘coached’. Rohit had used a single ‘directive’ style to manage his entire team and it had produced disastrous results.

Many of the experienced managers use different managerial styles to manage different team members differently without realizing it. But many others treat two employees in the same manner even if one of them is at the peak of his performance and the other is highly disillusioned or demotivated. It is not always that managers ponder over how their managerial styles result in consequences in the lives of their team members.

If you do it right in all the above cases, congratulations to you and keep it up! If you do at some times and not at others, be more careful. Remember – as a manager you will never be happy if your team is not happy. Rohit realized this in a hard way. With a little smartness we can avoid being in his place. It is very important to adapt our managerial styles for different team members in a diverse team.

- Rahul Tiwary

[Disclaimer: Views expressed are personal and all the particulars mentioned in this piece are imaginary ones used to develop this case study]