Effective leaders consider people not just by the competencies they bring to their team, they are sensitive to their characters as well. It is this mix that achieves a team's goal in the most harmonious and effective way. Such leaders seem to intuitively understand others and how they will work together - how a character will fit with a manager’s style. While managers can recognise an individuals’ fit with their personal style, it seems harder for them to think outwards towards a collective organisational style, one that can be strongly resistant to change. This collective culture is the sum of all the individuals’ characters, plus their physical interactions with their workplace such as process, method, values and policy.

Every organisation's management style is a myriad of processes, attitudes and motivations that reinforce each other. One example is the evolution of project management over the last twenty years, being focused on building common process, and improved consistency of method and skill. Inevitably these methods unintendedly promoted a certain management style and influence on choice of team member. Inadvertently we excluded highly capable individuals whose characters didn't fit with the ethos of those project methods; while organisations themselves were driven to value rigour above effectiveness – a case of the medicine crippling the patient! Now we have Agile and SCRUM taking the lead in the project managers’ portfolio of methodologies, and again face some of the same dangers of limiting character diversity in our projects – old problems looming afresh - there is no one character fits all scenarios especially with project work.

What do we mean by management style?

Management style is also termed organisation culture, “Organisation culture is the pattern of beliefs, values, rituals, myths and sentiments shared by the members of an organisation. It influences the behaviour of all individuals and groups in that organisation [Harrison]”

Organisation culture effects every aspect of any organisation and its people:

• how colleagues and managers interact;
• the tolerance levels to ‘being different’ found within localised management styles (sub cultures);
• how decisions are taken;
• the organisation’s reputation;
• how honestly it meets its compliance commitments;
• how people are incentivised and rewarded;
• designs of ICT used; and
• how an organisation responds to its external business environment and stakeholders.

Smaller business cultures tend to be based on individuals being dynamic and achievement focussed. Corporate’ tend to be procedural, openly conflict averse and consensus seeking around an oligarchy.

Original research by Professor Charles Handy, further developed by Dr Roger Harrison and Herb Stokes both then at Yale in the early 1970s, showed that all organisational management styles or cultures reduce to the following four measurable dimensions:

• Transactional– where an authoritarian command and control management style focuses on a single leader or oligarchy, which has the gift of reward. Decision-making and resource allocation is usually centralised and typically deferred upwards.
• Alignment – where colleagues within an organisation unite intellectually through a shared vision, or shared business processes, of what that organisation aims to achieve.
• Self-Expression – where individuals achieve through drive, ingenuity, performance, boldness and entrepreneurship.
• Mutuality – Where colleagues share strong bonds with each other, keeping them involved, inclusive, protective, and caring of each other and their families and friends.

These dimensions, or domains, are tangible and core to how every organisation functions. For the most part management style or culture is hidden in the noise of daily working life, and rarely considered for the strategic benefits or weaknesses it brings. There is no reason for the skills in doing this to be the preserve of a few senior executives, we are all capable of successfully using this knowledge for our benefit.

What are the consequences of a mismatched management style?

Let’s consider working with ICT where it’s no longer solely about the choice of tech type, it’s how that tech shapes the solution. In practice, one type of technology can build-out solutions appropriate to different management styles. An ultimate system’s design is made manifest through the many individual design and procurement choices made for a project from its inception to completion. In a simple example, if we have a strongly command and control culture accepted or expected by colleagues (T in cultural terms), then they will work best with rule based and workflow designs of computer system guiding them. In contrast if we have a strongly achievement culture (SE in cultural terms), then such a rule or workflow based computer system would quickly create conflict and frustration – their preference would be for personally adaptable tools to use. This is a critical factor in the successful adoption of new systems, and processes, yet it’s virtually ignored when business architectural requirements are defined.

The disconnect between management style and team members

Practically we tend to look at a project as an entity, focussing on its mechanics and the processes of bringing it to fruition. When recruiting team members typically we consider external candidates in terms of their finer points of skills and experience, plus a ‘can I as their manager work with them’ assessment. In contrast internal candidates frequently arrive as a given with little management choice in this respect. This can lead to team members and contractors becoming conflicted as neither is comfortable under a shared project’s style or culture; which is itself likely to be conflicted with the rest of that organisation’s culture. Meaning, many individuals who are driven by a genuine desire to achieve excellence, may not prevail over the mismatch of management styles and attitudes. The biggest loss to a project is when team members’ commitment withers away through the petty politics and administrative nonsense of diverging management styles.

Is Agile truly the future?

Yes, is the plain answer! The Agile philosophy and approach empowers individuals to succeed through collaboration, honest feedback and challenge, with the courage to experiment and innovate; plus the boldness and confidence to make a swift turnaround if things don’t work out – to start again. These are characteristics many managers are fundamentally uncomfortable with in the workplace. We need project leaders who can work with confidence outside of any prevailing management style, Simply, such a leader would pick the most appropriate project method/lifecycle to work with for a given business situation, then choose their team entirely, or buy one in ready-made if they have that luxury. Such a leader must be empowered to modify the prevailing balance between individuality and method. Ultimately, Agile is well suited to getting the best from a diversity of characters and competencies, even if forced into a more linear sequencing of events.

Character is the key to success

The assessment of someone’s workplace character can be straightforward, and understanding this dramatically improves our ability to successfully communicate and work with colleagues. There are many formal methods to gauge a person’s character or temperament for projects, with Belbin’s team roles probably the best known of these. An alternative I like is an informal method named Empathy Styles. Empathy Styles derives from long-standing and validated psychological research on management effectiveness, recruitment performance, and how we communicate.

The model has seven character descriptions that we all exhibit in different strengths – typically with two to four stronger traits, the others being lesser so. Each trait has a descriptive name, a drive, and a set of likely behaviours or attitudes. The possible combinations of these exhibited traits enables a more realistic view of likely behaviours and communication ability from an individual in a project’s context.

The seven traits are:

The Artist has a drive to create, together with the desire to be different, and can find communicating with others difficult.

The Double-Checker has a desire for security and a concern for the welfare of themselves and others.

The Engineer has a drive to complete projects, characterised by detail, process, and method.

The Hustler has a drive for material success, being quick, opportunistic, and entrepreneurial.

The Mover has a drive to communicate, characterised by a positive and upbeat energy and a desire to work with others.

The Normal has a drive for social approval and order and brings a sense of formality, maturity, anchoring of others, and logicality.

The Politician is driven to win, including the need for status, strength, and decisiveness.

For some individuals, two or three of these traits will be dominant, shaping their behaviour and choice of career. Other individuals will have a more balanced set of all character traits, bringing a different mix of strengths valuable to a successful project.

We can gauge a person’s headline traits by observing their behaviour, dress, and use of speech. There is neither a right nor wrong implied here, we-are-who-we-are. What is less intuitive is who-we-are can gently change from month-to-month, between roles, or from personalchallenge-to-personal challenge. We are not cast in the same character die forever. Similarly, intelligence is not relevant in this context other than for a person’s chosen profession.

Through character assessment we can gain an appreciation of other people’s expectations, from their preferred style of workplace, their colleagues, and the way they go about their work. Each trait highlights individuals’ strengths and weaknesses, which we can then use to engage them with, within a given management style and a project’s roles and objectives.

How do we improve performance by thinking management style and character?

It would seem intuitive that a strong ‘Engineer’ trait should be the perfect person to deliver a project. In reality, they could work well in isolation, which may be their preference, though without elements of Double-Checker and Mover, for example, they would probably fail in larger projects. In Agile, we see a better fit with the Artist for projects, yet they often find it difficult to work with others, and in progressing their ideas and designs to a timely conclusion.

So for Agile generally we need to start by looking for Artists (for creativity) with Engineer capabilities (to complete the task); plus some Mover characteristics to make the person happy to communicate with others; plus a Normal in the background to set high standards for their work.

When planning a Waterfall/Linear project’s lifecycle, the most effective characters would be in Empathy terms stronger ‘DC’, ‘N’ and ‘E’ characters with background ‘P’. ‘A’ characters in this type of project could become stubborn which may be an advantage, or a hindrance, depending on the type of project.

In planning a SCRUM/Agile project, the challenge is tapping into quite different team behaviours. Success will stem from a mixture of outward looking and listening to the user - as ‘M’ and ‘Hustler’, maybe ‘Double Checker’, (although not to be the strongest trait), and an ability to get the activities done - probably ‘Engineer’ with some ‘Artist’ and ‘Politician’. Politicians probably wouldn’t read anything this long as an aside!

Not having the ‘dream team’ of skill and character won’t be a show stopper, you simply have increased risks of conflict, mistake, or ‘working-to-rule’. These are simplistic examples yet the principle is straightforward and reliable. To find out more about character through your own traits, there is a five minute online confidential quiz found at www.empathystyles.com/findoutyourstyles.php (use code CTO)

All this may seem obvious and many managers would say we do this anyway, yet too often we fail to anticipate the influence of culture on a project’s success. Care is needed when designing a culture for a project, if you impose something on colleagues who don’t aspire or share its values, they will inevitably react to it adversely and sometimes aggressively.

Pointers to improving project delivery through culture and character

• Understand your own character at least for the headline traits.
• Be aware of the dominant culture, or management style that exists in your own organisation. How might you become aware of any sub-cultures be hidden inside your organisation?
• When initiating a project, consider its lifecycle and what overall management style is most likely to bring a successful conclusion.
• Work with the team members to expose issues of culture and its impact on their ways of working together and attitudes. If it’s a big project you can use a current state and target state approach to evolving working culture and practices along the journey.
• Don’t rely solely on team candidates’ skills and similar projects to guide your choices.
• Make changes to internal reporting and administrative structures to accommodate the reasonable expectations of those involved.
• Seek/apply an interim governance model to a project if that would help deliver the project’s objectives.
• Tiger Teaming can be useful where changes to administrative and reporting structures are not achievable, or other transformation issues could hinder success. Here responsibility for operation and project are together ‘licensed’ to a team for the duration of that project or activity. Then ‘handed back’ when signed off and complete. This can be very useful where a project includes moving to a fresh or transformed management structure.

If these pages raise awareness of how colleagues’ characters differ, and what that means for project delivery, then it’s been of value.

Character and culture is a way of starting conversations, and when we get people talking about themselves and their preferences, we can place them into suitable teams - and benefit more from their abilities. As Roger Harrison realised, it can be a most powerful way to get people to focus on what they want from a project, without being drowned in the mechanics and politics of the actual work expected.

I would end with a simple recipe for project success: recruit a good mix of characters, in the right project roles, guided by a sensible project method, within a realistic management culture and associated practices.

Contributions and ideas from my colleagues acknowledged: Ms Szu Hill, Dr Roger Harrison and Walter Blackburn.