With Yinka Bolarinwa

Managers are building blocks of the organization. As generally accepted, managers perform five basic functions – planning, organizing, staffing, directing and controlling.

To me now it is more of policy formulation, policy dissemination, and succession planning. At all levels of management we have managers working there and performing one or more of these managerial functions.

Out of managers’ numerous roles, emphases are usually placed on achieving effective utilization of resources in an organization through coordinated human effort purposely to realize the organizational set of objective(s).

Managers align the individual’s objectives with the organizational objectives essentially for achieving long-term organizational success. In like manner, managers ar also have the responsibility of communicating organizational vision to employees, and ensure that there is effective communication flow in an organization without any form of misinterpretations.

“What’s management vogue?” This can be answered in different ways. Traditionally, we have focused on how the manager relates to subordinates. Leadership vogue is just another means of talking regarding the same subject.

The question of style is meant to deal with the difficulty of how best to motivate workers to do what the manager needs them to do. Clearly, the foremost effective management vogue is that the one that gets the most productivity out of all employees.

Supportive management

Supportive Management (SM), as a strategy, endeavours to help organizations implement changes or modifications to their culture, with the aim of instilling a more responsible, emotionally intelligent, self-aware and self-managed approach for the general team of staff.

SM is an inclusive, emotionally intelligent approach to behaviour management which opens the doors for staffs and clients (customers) to access on-demand support and strategies to manage the sometimes difficult situations that can occur in the work place.

These can include short-term positive in-work support as well as positive proactive exit strategies when issues pass the emotionally critical threshold.

This strategy is not a quick fix for any organizational concerns, but is a comprehensive approach based on emotionally literate, self esteem building and sustainable, longer term views of what the organization should look like and more importantly, feel like.

In some firms, there is warmth that we can’t quite put our finger on, but which we know it is a strong part of the institution ; clients feel valued and staff feel part of a strong team.

The best managers are proactive and supportive; they hold regular meetings where workers are asked to speak regarding what has gone well since the last meeting before the discussion moves on to problems. Issues are anticipated and avoided by cultivating an atmosphere of safety and openness.

Positive feedback that is genuinely felt is obtainable and employees are encouraged to consider solutions to issues in an exceedingly supportive, and coaching manner. Naturally proactive supportive managers deal firmly with serious performance issues however they are more effective than the other styles because they cultivate a positive team spirit.

Yinka Bolarinwa is Managing Director/CEO of Law Union & Rock Insurance Plc.
Feedback to: [email protected]