Your paradigm could be undermining you

How effective you are as a manager, probably depends more on your style than your competence. Big claim I know – but I have seen managers who were highly educated, had years of experience – and you would call them incredibly competent – and yet they were ineffective, even destructive.

Your ‘style’ is how you approach your role and the people you are managing and is largely influenced by the assumptions you hold about staff. I call this your paradigm because it can be a belief system that you have formed over years of experience or from learning for the managers who managed you.

Paradigm refers to the beliefs and assumptions you make about what motivates the people in your team and is based on Douglas McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y of human motivation and management.

If you want to know more about this – and which paradigm you tend to hold, take this short quizz: