Management styles are critical to running a company, but not all of them are the same. Some are very different from each other, and some are much better for running a journal than others.
Understanding what a management style is and how it works can be critical to its success.
In this article, we’ll go over three different management styles that can work for running a journal.
What are management styles?
Broadly speaking, management styles are how one works towards achieving goals. Managing a team can be very challenging, and we’ve prepared a guide to learn more about this. Having goals is critical though. These goals can range in terms of importance. A management style, importantly, can dictate how you interact with your coworkers and team members.
There are quite a number of factors that a management style can impact. Some of these include,
- Interacting with clients
- Interacting with coworkers
- How to delegate
Because there are so many management styles, there is rarely a “one-size-fits-all” option. Taking different elements from different styles can often help you manage a team effectively.
Interacting with clients
This might feel straightforward, but how you interact and deal with clients is important. Because customers are your source of income, they need to like dealing with your company. No customer will enjoy poor customer service, and fewer still will tolerate bad behaviour. What is bad behaviour when it comes to customer service?
Some examples include weak communication, badly delivered information, incorrect information being given, and when you don’t deliver on expectations. Having a management style to follow helps you to lead your team and helps them to understand what your expectations are when dealing with clients. Logically, treating clients with respect, and having prompt and formal communications is important. Some companies might lean towards a more casual form of communication, but academia is a highly formal institution. Choose which you feel is most appropriate for your company, but remember to understand your customers.
Interacting with coworkers
Importantly, your day to day interactions with your coworkers will help to make sure your company is successful. Having a reputation as a “bad boss” can negatively impact your personal (and company’s) reputation. This doesn’t mean that you need to be friends with all your team members (though many people try to do this), it means to be fair and respectful. Finding the right balance with your team members can make work more enjoyable, and more effective.
How to delegate
Managers are often skilled individuals with a lot of experience, but part of being a good manager is knowing when to delegate work. By delegating work, you’re communicating several things to your team. First, that you trust them to do the work you assigned. This can inspire team members to want to succeed. Another thing that you do, is to make sure that work is properly distributed to team members that know how to handle the task. Without proper team management, work might be incorrectly delegated to team members that don’t have the necessary skills to do a job. It’s critical to make sure that layout work is not being sent to your editing team, and that billing issues aren’t being given to editors to do. Know what your team is capable of, and make sure you give them the opportunity to grow and work on their skills.
Delegating properly means to know what your team is (and is not) capable of doing. This is critical to success, but it is a manager’s responsibility to know what team members can do.
clear set of submission guidelines can save time and money.
Three management styles you can use
Here, we’ll take a look at three general types of management styles that might help you run your journal effectively.
The consensus leader
Of all the management styles, this one is the most democratic. Sometimes, it’s called a democratic leadership style. This method takes perspectives from members of the team, and will incorporate team members in the decision-making process. These managers will often allow other members of a team to take the lead on projects where appropriate. One of the major merits of this method of leadership is that team members will feel like their opinions are valued. This fosters greater personal ownership of projects and general work satisfaction.
One of the downsides of this method, however, is that it can be a very slow process. Without a single person making decisions, the process of making a decision can be dragged out unnecessarily. Worse yet, democratic decision-making can also wind up leading to bottlenecks in a project. If team members cannot come to a consensus, and the team is built on needing consensus, projects might stall.
We’ll address this leadership method in significantly more detail in the future, so stay tuned for more information.
Charisma leaders
Some people are very good at managing and interacting with people and this management style reflects this. Their high levels of charisma make working with them on a personal level very pleasant. A charisma leader can make you feel like you’re the most important person on the team, and it has a very positive impact on the general work-place happiness of a department. Employees are at their happiest when they are being recognized, rewarded, and feel like they are being seen and heard in a company. Charisma leaders create positive work environments and happy employees. There are downsides to this type of management style though, including toxic positivity.
Generally, not all situations warrant being positive and happy, there are sometimes serious moments where we need to have serious conversations and attitudes. Business is about more than just a happy workplace—it is about being successful. As long as being a positive influence is keeping these goals in mind, then a charisma-based leader can be a very successful method.
Authority-based leaders
There are some leadership methods that adhere to more traditional formats. These rely strongly on the chain of command, and can seem unyielding. The “my way or the highway” approach can be jarring in the current day and age, but there are still many companies that use this form of management. The manager is at the top of the chain, and results and information go up the chain, while instructions go down the chain. This sometimes makes employees feel like they are not being heard though, and this can negatively impact employee happiness. Authority-based leaders are very focused on results, and are positioned in such a way that they can quickly implement decisions to achieve goals. This form of management has fallen out of favour in the last few decades due to the changes in the workplace.
Picking management styles
Selecting the right management style for your team can be challenging, but there are merits to picking and choosing elements. You might have cases where decisions need to be made quickly, and so an authority-based decision making method might work in some cases. In other cases, such as in fostering a healthy and happy work environment, you might want a charismatic manager to help. Knowing what you need for each situation is very important to making sure you can have the right method in place.
