During my life, I have had the opportunity to act in the roles of both a manager and a leader, such as basketball team captain, officer coach, member of the management team, and CEO. In this service profession called leadership, I have sometimes succeeded and sometimes learned.
Management
As the captain of the basketball team, I trusted my team 100 %, but often my leadership was largely focused on things like the execution of offensive patterns, individual shot or pass choices, and defense rotation. All important things, but as a manager you rarely light a flame called passion in the heart. In international scientific research, my management style would probably be referred to by the word "management". Suomenniemi would talk about case management.
Micromanagement
As a recovering perfectionist and eternal optimist, I have led myself – and sometimes unwittingly others – into situations where things have to be perfect and nothing is impossible. It is typical for managers who have the same character weaknesses as the undersigned that in a weak moment the desire to control rears its head. In particular, if there is mistrust about whether the agreed things will happen as desired.
Most of the time, this management style is seen as unnecessarily detailed questions, reporting requirements, or doing things for others, so that the desired result is sure to come. As a young officer cadet, I was guilty of this too often. In the short term, the management style may work, but in the longer term, this micromanaging creates a culture of passivity.
Management by perkele
Fortunately, I can say that, according to self-reflection, I have not been guilty of implementing a leadership style - where the focus is on people, but leadership is characterized by mistrust. However, I have proven this a few times in the course of my life from the role of a manager. I will forever remember how a senior lieutenant always covered his insignia in various subordinate-leader discussions and revealed them with a big gesture, saying: "we performed a comparison of insignia, you lost. The punishment is a running march of 5 kilometers, time 25 minutes." This kind of leadership is from deep where Marcus Grönholm's karter Timo was hit by a big stone in last year's World Cup rally.
"Management by devil" management style is characterized by hierarchy, constant sowing of mutual mistrust, leading by fear, inequality and belittling people. The "management by perkele" style of management, which is also familiar to Finns, has been scientifically discussed by e.g. Timo Vuori, professor of strategic management at Aalto University, who is one of the authors of the widely publicized study Distributed Attention and Shared Emotions in the Innovation Process: How Nokia Lost the Smartphone Battle. The study presents how Nokia lost the smartphone battle due to the culture of fear that prevailed in the company. The senior managers were detached from reality and the middle management, who feared them, only provided them with information that pleased the senior managers. Positional authority rarely breeds value and prestige.
Leadership
A management style where people are at the center and trust is the driver of interaction often achieves wonderful results. In the academic world, this upper corner of the management square is often referred to as leadership. As a general rule, I have tried to operate in this sector in management team and managing director roles. My stumbling block in management has sometimes been the fact that using this style of management alone, a "coffee table discussion culture" is easily created, where results sometimes remain secondary and difficult issues are not discussed sufficiently.
Good leadership (LeaderMent)
However, basketball and (working) life are partly both atmosphere and result sports, at least as a leader, which is why the ideal change in leadership styles takes place in an atmosphere of trust, taking people and things into account. As consultants, our team and I condensed this style into a monstrous word: "LeaderMent". The same in Finnish: we lead by trusting people and things. Below, still visualized, the quadrilateral of leadership.
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Joshua Moorrees
More than a trainer.
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