Does Your Management Approach Fit The Growth Of Your Company?

Whether you’re a manager at a start-up or a 30,000 person company or somewhere in between it’s critical that you appreciate the difference in managerial challenges based on the needs of your team and/or company as it grows.

All too often managers and even owners get stuck in “how it’s supposed to be” instead of remaining open and flexibly evolving into what is actually needed in order to support, develop, and even hire the employee base that’s needed to face into and succeed with the challenges required by where the company is going.

The culture that was hip and laid back in the beginning can need to become tighter, more demanding, and may feel “rigid” and “unforgiving” when preparing for an IPO, major acquisition, or game-changing product launch.

On the other hand, in order to move from a financially strapped, kitchen table 3-person “all hands on deck” beginning to a 1000 person company, many specific departments will need to be created, each with their own skills and culture, each with their own goals and deadlines.

It’s one thing to manage a four-member engineering team that needs to constantly work overtime in order to prepare for a company launch and quite another to manage a 40-person team of specialists who are building their careers and aiming for promotions. .

So, here’s a little quiz for you:

1 - How do you feel about managing someone out of the company when their skills/attitude no longer fit the company and they have proven they can’t or won’t change?

2 - How do you feel about taking on a much larger team than you now manage, requiring you to do skip level meetings with the people who report to your direct reports and then coaching your direct reports on how to best work with their team members?

3 - How do you feel about promoting a newer hire who has proven to be outstanding when some solid long-standing employees aren’t making that grade yet?

4 - How do you feel about having your team members argue with you about the direction you want to take the team? Do you see it as healthy and productive? Or merely time-consuming? Disloyal? Or.....?

5 - How do you feel about a team member who asks directly for a promotion? Impressed and eager to help the person prepare for that promotion? Annoyed and hostile toward their overt request? Or......?

These questions are aimed at triggering new awareness about how you feel about managing in a changing culture and may not address what you are facing in the company where you currently work. Hopefully they trigger you to think through how well you are prepared for the changes
that can be required of you in your role as a managerial leader.

Please provide a challenge you’ve had to face as manager when the company you worked for went through an evolutionary bump, crisis, or growth spurt. Thanks!

(Photo: How to Think Differently to Drive Results Day 3 Larkin Building (3) by Michael Cardus/Flickr)

Judith Sherven, PhD and her husband Jim Sniechowski, PhD https://JudithandJim.com have developed a penetrating perspective on people’s resistance to success, which they call The Fear of Being Fabuloustm. Recognizing the power of unconscious programming to always outweigh conscious desires, they assert that no one is ever failing—they are always succeeding. The question is, at what? To learn about how this played out in the life of Whitney Houston for example, and how it may be playing out in your own life, check out their 6th book: https://WhatReally KilledWhitneyHouston.com

Currently consultants on retainer to LinkedIn providing transformational executive coaching, leadership training and consulting as well as working with other corporate and private clients around the world, they continually prove that when unconscious beliefs are brought to the surface, the barriers to greater success and leadership presence begin to fade away. You can learn about their core program “Overcoming the Fear of Being Fabulous” by going to
https://OvercomingtheFearofBeingFabulous.com

Their 7th book, short and to the point, “25 Power Speaking Tips That Will Leave Your Audiences Wanting More,” is available in kindle at: https://tinyurl.com/25PWRSPKGTips

And if you are involved in marketing, you may be interested in their 5th book “Love Your Customers and They Will Love You Back” https://tinyurl.com/lovecustomersbk