Ten premiership managers, ten different management styles. Melanie Wombwell continues her analysis.
From the analysis in parts 1 and 2, what do the business professionals think? Let's have a look...
Method
From analysing the different management styles of the ten premiership football managers, you would have seen that we matched each of their management methods to the most relevant recognised business management styles, adopted by professionals operating in today's business world.
To help highlight this again, below is the list of the recognised business management styles, and the names of the football managers that we believe best suit those styles:
- Autocratic (Alex Ferguson) - prefers a high level of power over their team
- Relationship (Ian Holloway) – leads people through encouragement and enthusiasm
- Cognitive (Arsene Wenger) – leads by a purely logical methodical approach
- Collaborative (Roy Hodgson) – deliberates with their team members and uses their contributions to make decisions
- Shadow (Carlo Ancelotti) – provides adequate authority to the team members to decide on their own
- Co-achievement (Harry Redknapp) – works with all team members to inspire them to reach decisions and do the right things
- Results-focused (Sam Allardyce) – only interested in making sure that the result happens, whatever it takes
- Transactional (Roberto Mancini) – rewards are measured and offered by performance
- High-flex (David Moyes) – will change their style to suit the circumstances or needs at the appropriate time
- Delegator (Mick McCarthy) – like the shadow leader, but also keen to keep their finger on the pulse of what's going on. Allows free thinking yet always wants to make the final decision themselves
Following this, we then conducted an in-depth online survey with 108 HR and business professionals from some of the most dynamic UK businesses of today. The businesses reflect a mix of industries and company sizes.
NOTE: Those being surveyed did not know which football manager we had assigned to which business management style
Which premier league football manager would you like to work for?
As the football season really starts to heat up, so does the pressure on the team's managers. But if they were running a UK business, who would business professionals want to work for?
28% of those surveyed said they would like to work for Tottenham's Harry Redknapp, whilst second favourite was Blackpool's Ian Holloway with 23%. Out of the ten we listed, the managers that received the fewest nominations were Roberto Mancini, Sam Allardyce, and Mick McCarthy. Interestingly Sir Alex Ferguson, undoubtedly the most successful premier league manager to date, only received 4% of the votes, whilst recently departed Roy Hodgson received a surprisingly high 16%, following what had been an admittedly poor six months for him at Liverpool.
Which football manager do you think will do the best job running a large UK business in today's current economic climate?
Harry Redknapp (23%), Arsene Wenger (19%) and Ian Holloway (15%) would be the best football managers to run a large UK business in today's economic climate according to those surveyed. Alex Ferguson (11%) also received a good percentage of the votes, whilst receiving the least was Roy Hodgson (5%), Roberto Mancini (4%) and Mick McCarthy (2%).
What's your management style like?
34% of those surveyed said that their own personal management style was a 'relationship' style, whilst 25% said that they tend to adopt a more 'collaborative' approach, and 19% believe they have a 'delegator' management style. Nobody thought their management style was 'cognitive', 'shadow', or 'transactional'.
What's Your MD/CEO's management style like?
Although it's not a style they like in a boss, 23% of those surveyed said their MD/CEO's management style was most like the 'delegator' approach, whilst 21% said it was 'collaborative', and 13% said results-focused. Worryingly for UK plc, over a third (35%) thought their MD/CEO's management style didn't get the best out of their organisation's workforce.
Employees in the organisation
As the social media phenomenon continues to grow, are businesses missing a trick? Only a quarter (28%) surveyed said they felt able to use social media to talk about work. Although they aren't encouraged to talk externally, there appears to be a good flow of dialogue internally. For instance 81% said they were able to make new suggestions and 76% felt able to ask questions.
While there has been a lot of media talk about pay freezes and bonuses, when asked to choose two things that they thought motivated employees most in their organisation...the top two answers were 'inspirational leadership' (36%) and 'reputation of the company/its brand' (34%).
What does the leadership team think…?
62% of those surveyed think that their leadership team would mostly say they were 'a real asset', 'crucial team players', (59%) and brand ambassadors (44%).
To read part 2, click here
Melanie Wombwell is managing director of Results International. Results International works with companies and individuals to help them unlock their potential, enabling them to boost their performance in the workplace. This is done in a number of ways, be it through executive coaching, working with the top team, or delivering organisation-wide culture change programmes that build a passion for leadership, management and team success. Results International have worked with many well-known companies and organisations including the Home Office, Nationwide, Phones4u and Vodafone
