Even if they do not say so openly, many “old style” managers think that forming independent work groups is only a waste of time.
They believe that most of the time, the work meetings of a team are: unproductive, too long and lead to insufficient results.
The reason for this is that, deep down, they definitely know how things must be done and what the best solutions for the company are.
This way of thinking and managing a company highlights the limits of the managers who do not know how to carry out team building.
Most of the times, the “old style” manager does not know how to put together a work group, how to manage it and how to make it efficient.
He is unaware, for example, that a work group goes through 5 development phases and in each phase there is a type of behavior of the members that ranges from refusing what is new to its complete acceptance.
He also does not know that in each development phase and at each reaction of the members of the group he should be reacting with a very specific management style.
But for the “old style” manager, team building, very simply, is of no interest to him and he also is not interested in learning about its fundamentals.
This would entail his making an effort in adding new skills such as: the ability to communicate, to interact emotionally and to see the company and its human resources in a systematic way.
For the “old style” manager it is much better to continue spending his time by seeing what is going on in the department, speaking with the people he trusts and, in conformity with what he has seen, give orders and directions.
Unfortunately, when the economic world was much slower than today, this could have been enough, but today it no longer is and the managers who persevere in this management style are sentencing their companies to remaining small or to failing.
Today, the growing complexity of the market demands makes it so that managers must continuously analyze a huge amount of always increasing data and make quick decisions in order to not get left behind.
This is why they are often found in meetings with their colleagues and always less in contact with the people on the field.
It is on this point that the “old style” manager falls; he cannot make it alone, he should increasingly delegate the analysis and the solutions to the most varied problems to his collaborators but he is unable to and he does not know how to do so.
He does not know how to build and manage autonomous teams which independently take on the change and the continuous improvement in the departments of the company.
Many managers do not read and do not study; this makes them blind in regards to the possibilities of improvement which could be implemented in their company.
The methods of team building, during the last 50 years, have made giant steps and today for managers who want to learn the methods there is a very specific training course.
So perhaps the question at the beginning of this article should be changed with the following:
Are you a Manager who is interested in Improving Yourself?
Mario Mason
Kaizen Coach
