Treating others as you would wish to be treated
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CloseWhy it's important to have a considerate management style and to treat employees as you would wish to be treated yourself.
Management style is affected by the manager’s own beliefs and perceptions about their staff. The management style, in turn has an overriding effect on the employees’ behaviour. Unfortunately, this often means that whatever the manager expects of the employee is what they actually get from the employee!
The XY theory of management
American social psychologist Douglas McGregor identified two different ways of managing people. The Theory X and Theory Y management styles largely depend on the manager’s beliefs about their staff.
Theory X
The Theory X manager believes that people will do the absolute minimum that they can get away with, that they cannot be trusted and that people are fundamentally lazy. This leads the manager to behave in a distrusting way towards their employees - perhaps micromanaging, checking up on them, not being flexible and maintaining distance from the team.
This management style can be extremely unpleasant for people to work under. Some people may become despondent and happy, but still try to do the best they can; whilst others may begin to act in the way that the manager expects them to (if they treat me like a child, I’ll behave like one).
Theory Y
The Theory Y manager believes that people can be trusted, want to achieve and want to do a good job for a reasonable day’s pay. They trust their people to work well and to do a good job, believe that employees have a valuable contribution to make and consult with them.
This management style helps people to feel valued and appreciated. It encourages initiative and growth.
Are you X or Y?
How do you treat the people in your team? Do you recognise your own X or Y behaviour? Are there situations which drive you to become X? What affect does this have on your team? Think about your own behaviour and reactions to certain situations and consider the impact this has on the people you manage.
Useful links
- Employee motivational theory (Business Balls)
Have your say
Have you ever worked for a theory X manager? How did staff feel and behave in return? Share your examples of managers - what did they do that was good/bad?
Talk to others on the Managing staff forum.
