In our “What Type of Manager Are You?” series, we’re looking at the struggles that different kinds of managers face, whether you’re a nurturer, a cheerleader, or a monitor, and how you can best overcome those problems in line with your management style.
As a cheerleader style of manager, you’re the life and soul of the office. Always there to pick up the team and motivate them with positive reinforcement, you sound like the perfect boss. But what happens when the team performance isn’t all roses and rainbows? When the going gets tough and there’s not a whole lot to cheer about, what’s a cheerleading boss to do? Well, let's find out.
Don’t immediately head for a silver lining
Instinct will tell you to find the good in a terrible situation and use that to perk everyone back up, but this probably isn’t a great idea. Heading straight for a silver lining could do one of two things. First of all, it might make the team think that things are okay when they’re not. It’s okay to downplay things occasionally, but you’ve got to be careful not to cover things up when there needs to be a change. The second thing is that if the morale is low people could take it the wrong way - you need to allow people time to work through the difficulties before trying to reintroduce your standard cheerleader pep back into proceedings.
Open the floor for ideas
When a business or team is going through a tough time professionally, a great way of getting through the funk is to create an open forum for ideas. Not only does it help generate new thoughts on how to improve the business and productivity, it also helps to give your team a sense of purpose, that they’re contributing and making a difference. By doing this, you’ll slowly start to improve morale and perhaps find a useful solution in the meantime.
Be on hand for advice
This is the sort of time where your cheerleader management style has to crossover with that of the nurturer. Your team will know you as the upbeat one of the office so they’ll be looking to you to help them feel better about what’s going on. Make some time to answer any queries face-to-face and be reasonable about what they should expect going forward. If you can’t be on hand in person for whatever reason, make time for Skype one-to-ones. Even if it’s just a quick five minute download from your team it’ll make the world of difference in the long term.
The thing is with being a cheerleader as a manager, it can often be challenging to strike the balance of keeping the team uplifting at times where performance is down and change has to happen, but that’s simply just part of being a manager. So, things might not be going great right now and there might not be a whole lot to cheer about but you’ve just got to focus on the task at hand, knowing that you and your team will come through as a stronger, unified and more efficient team at the end.
Wundamail knows that not every working day is going to be a picnic, and that sometimes you just need a quick temperature check of your team. Getting answers from your team is as simple as asking the right question. Wundamail offers a brain to pick, an ear to listen, and a gentle push in the right direction, perfect for the cheerleading manager even at tough times. Start your 14 day free trial today.
Famous Cheerleaders are:
Apple’s Tim Cook
Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg
