Leadership Styles You Need To Master
As a Manager or Leave It Alone
Have you ever wondered why conflict occurs in your team or why your employees complain?
This is something all managers know about and have been struggling with in their line of work. The reason why this is happening can easily be explained by scientific research and how the human brains work.
So let me explain why you need to master Task and Relationship management so that you will be loved or leave that line of work behind you.
Leadership Style #1: Task management
Experts show that employees want a task-oriented leadership style to thrive as employees.
I will explain task management in three ways and why employees and people love it.
Explanation 1: Maslows need hierarchy
This comes back to Maslows Hierarchy of Needs that he presented back in 1943.
The first three levels are the ones to pay attention to.
- Physical needs — Access to toilets, food, water, and sex. This is regulated by your Hypothalamus.
- Physical safety — You need to feel safe as a team member within the group. This comes back to Honesty & Humility.
- Social safety — This refers to Psychological safety and safety from being canceled or talked about behind your back. It is referred to as Female Indirect aggression and this is something girls learn at six years of age and mainly targets other girls/women. Workplaces are not excluded from this. Some men also use this type of aggression.
Explanation 2: People's negative emotions
Negative emotions are your mental and physical pain and it resides in your personality trait of neuroticism or emotionality.
This personality trait is also known as your pain circuit and can be described as mentally stable or unstable. If you are unstable then you react and blow things out of proportion every time you get triggered. If you are mentally stable then you do not react in a bad manner and people do not have to mentally prepare before they talk to you. If you are medium to high in neuroticism as a manager, you will trigger neuroticism in your employees. That means you’re forcing your employees to walk on eggshells around you.
Because that signals you might have mental problems such as Borderline, or bipolar personality disorder, or that you are a vulnerable narcissist.
You as the manager are creating negative emotions in your employees.
Either way. Your emotionally stable, low in neuroticism, employees will look for another job. You will be stuck with only the ones who can’t get a job elsewhere which are most likely not productive employees and therefore you will not perform as well and not meet your target. There is a big chance the malicious individuals are staying behind in the team creating even more havoc.
This will make your manager fire you due to incompetence as a manager.
That’s the second explanation and reason you should not seek a job as a manager if you are medium to high in neuroticism.
Explanation 3: The effect on human health
Negative emotions increase people's blood pressure.
When people are in fight-or-flight mode. Flight is the default normal emotion in humans. The blood pressure goes up above 140 and if you’re putting your employees in that situation every single day. You are slowly killing them indirectly. Simply by you being their manager.
That in turn is killing the person's heart and neurotic individuals do not live as long as emotionally stable people.
QUESTIONS:
- Do you want to be that manager????
- Do you want to have that on your conscience?
- Are you LOW in Honesty & Humility?
- Do you want to be a therapist making horrible choices?
Leadership Style #2: Relationship management
Explanation 1: Have the ability to listen properly
If you do not understand the methodology of listening, which is a primary component of the role of a manager, you will not be trusted to do your job.
Listening is the basis of communication. To be a good communicator you need to understand others completely. That is done by summarising what the other person just said to “validate” that you did understand him or her.
Only when you get the sign that you have understood them, you can then start thinking of your reply.
Explanation 2: Always be available during work hours
This is the classic one that all interviewers with subtlety ask when you are interviewed for a leadership role.
Do you work with your door open or closed?
They want to know if your employees can contact you to clarify how the task should be done. It comes back to task management. If you are not available you cannot listen actively and lower your employee's neuroticism.
Whether you like it or not, lowering your employee's neuroticism is a HUGE part of being a successful manager.
Explanation 3: Create trust by being honest and Humble
This is measured by the HEXACO test and is fairly simple to identify in people.
If you are low in Honesty & Humility you are low in Greed-avoidance which you see in their way of dressing and so on. They have low morality and lie, deceive, and manipulate you. They are also the opposite of modest in that you will see the arrogance and nonempathetic way of talking in their callous words in front of everyone. Usually goes hand in hand with being disagreeable to everything.
If you are low in Honesty & Humility you have most probably psychopathic, narcissistic, machiavellian, and sadistic behaviors. Manager is the last job you should apply for or have and it is only a matter of time until your employees will see this and the one with connections will call your manager and out you.
Please spare everyone by not applying for a managerial position if you are LOW in Honesty and humility.
Funny thing just happened.
When I wrote this article, three days later, a former employee of mine in my last contract as a lead UX Designer and product owner reached out to me due to a bad manager in his new contract. I gave him my professional assessment of what the manager is as a personality and what he can expect.
Guess what happened?
That manager's manager has gotten the information about his behaviour from an employee and it is only a matter of time.
That manager is high in neuroticism as a man.
Most likely vulnerable narcissists based on their behavior.
Takeaways
There you have the evidence, based on scientific facts, that you need to master to be a great manager.
- Be Honest
- Be Humble
- Learn to Listen
- If you are reactive seek help and don’t abuse others
P.S. (I’m so grateful for your support!)
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Manager Skills You NEED To Have!
