Course Reflection - Personal Essay

        I am Veronica, a student of MBA center of USTC. Being a MBA student, it’s lucky for me having the opportunity learning the course about Management Communication Skill. When having this course, I am not afraid whether my understanding of management is wrong or if I have no chance to adopt my recognition of management in the future, I am here in the class to learn and improve. I believe that chance only wait for those who is fully prepared.

Before talking about my management style, I should introduce something about my work and my company. I am an officer of Anhui Rural Credit Union, which is the regulatory and supervision organization of eighty-three Rural Commercial Banks in Anhui Province, under the due direction of China Banking Regulatory Commission and Anhui Provincial Government. Since 2004, the deepen reform of rural credit cooperatives launched, the Anhui Rural Credit Union adhere to the market positioning “serve the agriculture, rural areas and farmers, small and medium-sized enterprises, serve the county economy". It has developed into the most popular local rural financial enterprise, owned the largest institutional network, and covered the widest range of services. The general assembly is the supreme authority of it, and the council is responsible for the implementation and supervision of the general assembly，while the senior management is responsible for the council. As a office worker, my major job is doing some administrative work like document editing, management of public opinion, information publicity.

        In some ways, I am not a manager in the company, and also it seems like my work do nothing about management, but in my opinion, management is everywhere and every time during everyone’s work time and life time.

        So, what’s my management style? For some reason, this question always seems a little awkward to answer.

Firstly, I want to say something about management style. It is so hard to put your finger on, but I think in general a good manager gives clear directions and actually stays pretty hands-off, but is ready and available to jump in to offer guidance, expertise, and help when needed. I try my best to make that my management style.

        And also , I think managers have to perform many roles in an organization and how they handle various situations will depend on their style of management. A management style is an overall method of leadership used by a manager. There are two sharply contrasting styles that will be broken down into smaller subsets later: autocratic and permissive.

        Each style has its own characteristics. Autocratic style is the leader makes all decisions unilaterally, while permissive is leader permits subordinates to take part in decision-making and also gives them a considerable degree of autonomy in completing routine work activities. Combining these categories with democratic and directive styles gives us four distinct ways to manage: Directive Democrat, who make decisions participative and closely supervises subordinates; Directive Autocrat who make decisions unilaterally and closely supervises subordinates; Permissive Democrat who make decisions participative and gives subordinates latitude in carrying out their work; Permissive Autocrat who make decisions unilaterally and gives subordinates latitude in carrying out their work.

        Based on my experience, I think I used to be a Directive Democrat. When I was a student of college, I was interested in student activities like holding New Year Party, organize social practice activities and other things. As the vice president of the student union, I liked to make the decisions myself and asked the students of the union follow my ideas. And I liked to do most of the things by myself if I can, I felt afraid about others making mistake in the implementation process.

        When I graduated from college, I became a worker of a bank. Since I started my work, I felt that it’s not good to be a Directive Democrat. In a company, it’s very important for colleagues to corporate with each other. People have the same opportunities to state their views and opinions during the work. The subordinates have the opportunities and rights to judge their boss and the subordinates sometimes will decide the manager’s working effort. So it will be a big problem for me to change and improve my management style.

        During the work time, I also find in different situations, different management style will be appropriate. Managers must also adjust their styles according to the situation that they are presented with. Below are four quadrants of situational leadership that depend on the amount of support and guidance needed: Telling, works best when employees are neither willing nor able to do the job and high need of support and high need of guidance; Delegating: Works best when the employees are willing to do the job and know how to go about it and low need of support and low need of guidance; Participating: Works best when employees have the ability to do the job, but need a high amount of support and low need of guidance but high need of support; Selling: Works best when employees are willing to do the job, but don’t know how to do it and low need of support but high need of guidance.