By cchi@hubspot.com (Clifford Chi)

Growing up, a few of my baseball coaches were some of the most ruthless and demanding people I’ve ever met. They used fear to push my team to our physical and emotional limits, intimidated us with cruel ultimatums, and didn’t really seem to care about us as people. They did everything they could to win — and punished us when we didn’t.

When I started doing internships in college, I expected my managers to be just like my coaches. Since businesses actually have to make money, and not just win a few games, I was scared to mess up.

But at the end of my last internship, I realized I’ve never really felt afraid to fail in the working world because my managers were the complete opposite of my coaches. They were patient, understanding, and, most of all, nice. It seemed like they cared about me just as much as they cared about their job, even though there’s a lot more at stake in the office than on a high school baseball field.

Although my managers have treated me well, there are still managers out there who are just like some of my baseball coaches: fear-mongering, intimidating, and mean. These tactics might produce short-term results, but, in the long-term, all they lead to are unhappy employees, underwhelming results, and a high turnover rate.

You don’t want to be a jerk at work, especially if you’re a manager, so check out this overview of the best leadership styles to adopt — and the worst ones to avoid.

1. Visionary Management Style

A visionary manager communicates a purpose and direction that her employees believe in, which convinces her team to work hard to execute her vision.

After setting their team’s vision and overarching strategy, visionary managers usually let their employees get to work on their own terms, as long as they’re productive. Managers will mainly check in on their team to make sure they’re on the right track or to share new insights.

This gives their employees a great sense of autonomy, which all managers need to provide — after all, self-direction is a basic psychological need. When humans work on tasks that they have more control over, they feel more satisfied and motivated to complete them. Letting their employees’ personal motivations determine the direction of their work is the best way for managers to boost their team’s engagement and confidence.

Visionary managers are also known to be firm yet fair. Their vision is usually set in place, but they’re always open to listening to their employees’ ideas and willing to change their plan if a great idea is presented.

To better execute their vision, visionary managers give a lot of feedback to their employees about their performance and praise them when their performance meets or exceeds expectations.

This type of management style is hard to pull off, though. It’s crucial that you sell your employees on the purpose of your vision before you expect them to execute it. …read more

Source:: HubSpot Blog

Author: Aaron