Umbrella style management

I don’t think that this is an official name, not sure even if there is one. Hence I should start defining it…

Styles of management

There are many possible classifications. This refers to how they behave towards their superiors, colleagues and subordinates.

• Nil: Is that kind of manager when you feel that don’t have one, is like whatever comes from outside directly gets to you and even someone in the team (the teamleader) is actually meeting with the manager upper management. This kind of managers do not save you work but even produce more work.
• Umbrellas: are those managers that when it rain problems, they handle those problems keeping you dry and comfortable. They use to be hated by colleagues because rain is diverted to other places (teams). I remember one manager of this type that was as having a father, he always kept us safe diverting any extra work to other teams. He was hated by others because that meant extra work for them but we loved him because he kept us focus and our team performed high. We knew, as well, that if we suddenly got a problem from outside the tema was because it was really important, he had done everything possible to safe us the extra work and therefore we all worked towards its resolution. We respect him!

We all want to have an umbrella but I must admit that the umbrella should be a good team player. Otherwise he will derive work other groups that should be on his own, getting his group performance high, while the others get caught in the mud and therefore slowed the overall project.

So, the ideal manager for a project is one that semi-permeable: defends his/her team from burdens and useless work but not at expenses of others.