Situational Skills

Who should work where? Well that is always a good question to ask. In leadership one-way to decide who should be manager of what is through skills. If you have high technical skills but low conceptual skills you should probably be in supervisory management. If you are highly conceptual but have very few technical skills you should be in upper management. If you have both, on the other hand, you should be in middle management as you are the middleman between the two ideas. But what is interesting about all of this is that no matter what you should have strong people skills as a manager.
When I worked as a caddy over the summers I had a relatively good leader. He wasn’t amazing but for the most part he knew what he was doing and he knew how to act with both the golfers and the caddies. You could consider him a middle manager between the two. The golfers held a share of the property so they decided what happened to it. They had the conceptual skills. Now the caddies are a bad example of supervisory management but lets just say they supervised the ball for the golfers as the golfers wanted them to supervise it. But as all people do eventually he moved up the ladder. Unfortunately for the caddies and the golfers we were left with a new manager that was in the wrong place. This manager had high technical skills and very low conceptual skills as well as low people skills. He didn’t know how to work with people he yelled at the caddies all the time for minor incidents and his smile made the golfers uncomfortable. When the golfers had a conceptual idea he had no ability to relay it to the caddies. It was a real disappointment to the golf club and I.
On top of skills there is situational leadership. This is based on two principles; support and directive. You need different people in different situations depending on whether high or low support and high or low directive is needed.
Once again the caddy master used the wrong leadership in this situation. The caddy master used to be in the marines where the majority of leadership is high directive and low support. You really don’t have time to be supportive of somebody while being shot at.
Thankfully there were no guns being shot on the golf course but he decided to make it as if there were. Some of the caddies were young and required a lot more support as well as directive but he only offered directive. Some caddies new exactly what they were doing and yet he still gave them directive. And then there were caddies who new what they were doing and yet were feeling down but he didn’t offer support only directive. He was simply a bad leader.
Needless to say it didn’t take me very long before I left the club to look for other jobs. It will be a disappointment on my life but there is nothing that I can do about it other then walk away and attempt to never be like him.