Managing as a Peer
Today in Management 251 class, one of my fellow students, Shawn White, gave a presentation on a managerial style he called "managing as a peer". This was a non-conventional apporach to leading workers centered around the idea of convincing workers that managers are equal to their subordinates. Shawn created an acronym (P.E.E.R.) to outline four areas that this managerial style would help to improve upon. The meaning behind each of the letters is as follow: "P" is for Perfecting Knowledge; "E" is for Eliminating inefficiencies; "E" is for Earning respect; and "R" is for Reducing Communication barriers. Shawn went on to define perfecting knowledge as allowing for more personal insight, knowledge by observation, and gaining intelligence on flaws in the workplace. Managing as a peer helps eliminate inefficiences by providing motivation, and having managers work alongside workers helps make workers work harder, and also helping subordinates at tasks helps increase informal training. This style helps managers earn the respect of their employees by getting managers out of their offices and providing more individual attention to each of the workers. This style also helps reduce communication barriers by once again getting managers out of their offices as well as opening communication both ways, hence improving feedback and response times. One problem Shawn pointed out that may occur with this managerial style is a loss of respect between employees and managers due to its more informal nature.
Comments
Posted by: Adam Evans
Posted on: February 28, 2006 04:22 PM
I think this is a terrific post and especially appropriate for gen x-y. Good luck with your research!
Adam Evans
MBA candidate 2007