My manager and I have two different leadership styles our team is effected. What to do?
Transcript
I co-lead a team with a manager, but we are totally different in the leadership style we have. One of the leaders is micromanaging and one of the leaders is more freedom giving person. So a difficult situation for this person, and this person was asking me for help and reflecting a little bit.
What can this person do?
Start talking with the manager, lay the cards on the table: We have different styles, but what is the direction we want to go towards? Where do we want to be with the team? Where do we want to grow? How do we do this. If you as the leader, are more freedom giving and the other person is more micromanaging, it's important for you to have a conversation.
What is the right style. And worst case, you need to split out team members that you work with them on different tasks and the manager is working with them on other tasks where it's more required to do micromanagement. For me, micromanagement is always the wrong solution, but I understand in some circumstances it's needed.
So have a conversation with the manager, align where he want to go, and then bring the team to the table to understand what their needs are. Because it's not just your perspective or the manager perspective it is as well. What are the needs of the team? Do they need micromanagement? Do they request micromanagement?
Do they need more freedom? Do they want to be independent on how they're moving? And they just get a bigger task delegated and then they want to figure it out themselves? And of course, it's also related on company culture is related on the culture where you live in which part of the world, because it's different in all parts of the world.
But number one, for this topic, start having a conversation with the manager.