Success or failure: managers determine 95% of this

Organizations are facing increasingly complex challenges. Directors, management and leadership teams determine 95% whether an organization can successfully deal with change and complexity or not...
That's why it's essential to have a good understanding of the different values that underpin leadership styles and organizational cultures. Robert Quinn's value model offers a valuable tool in this regard. It is primarily used for coaching and management development. The model distinguishes between four different values: flexibility, control, internal focus and external focus. By understanding and combining these values, organizations can develop a balanced and effective approach to achieving their goals while creating a healthy work environment for their employees. In this blog, we will delve deeper into Quinn's value model and how it can be applied in practice.

Quinn model roles

The Quinn model has eight roles that a manager must be able to perform to be an effective leader:

• Innovator: the innovator is creative and makes adaptation and change possible.
• Mediator: this role is persuasive, influential and politically astute. The mediator is the organization's networker and maintains external contacts.
• Producer: the manufacturer is task-oriented and motivates employees to accelerate production so that goals are achieved.
• Director: this role sets the course, and focuses on the market and the organization's position in relation to competitors.
• Coordinator: the coordinator provides structure, ensures that processes are aligned, and plans and coordinates employee tasks.
• Controller: this role is also known as the information processor, because the controller must be able to process large flows of information. The controller analyses processes to determine goals.
• Stimulator: the stimulator promotes teamwork, ensures good team spirit and creates a common goal. This role also mediates conflicts.
• Mentor: this role is helpful and accessible, and focuses on employee development through a caring and empathetic approach.

All roles can be filled at a strategic, tactical or operational level. It should be clear that not everyone uses eight different roles in an easy and natural way. Situations arise where the chosen leadership role is not effective in view of the organization's situation. Solving or preventing these situations is often the basic learning goal of extensive personal development processes. Managers also differ in the competence with which a particular role is fulfilled.

Switch roles

Managers are expected to adapt their management style to a situation. A manager must alternate different roles to move with the organization. This means that eight different, and sometimes opposing, roles have to be filled. Quinn further describes that a successful manager must control all roles to a certain extent and be able to switch between them. Balancing these roles and navigating between sometimes opposing values and priorities can be a challenge.

However, it is not the case that a manager should use all roles equally. Depending on the situation, some roles may be more important than others and a manager must adapt accordingly. The ability to fill these roles flexibly and adapt them to the situation is what Quinn describes as the “game of roles”. This game requires a great deal of self-awareness and flexibility on the part of the manager, being able to switch between different roles and apply the skills and perspectives needed to effectively lead the organization.

Preferred managers' roles

The fact that one person is not the other is the basis of every psychological test tool. People get satisfaction from different aspects, and have different qualities and preferred behaviors. Making these preferences measurable not only aims to clarify the differences, but also forms the basis for awareness and change.

That is why Ixly developed the Quinn Management Rolls Questionnaire. From (personal) professional practice, there was a need for a short questionnaire that provides insight into the extent to which managers prefer certain management roles. After completing the questionnaire, the report extensively describes the candidate's primary and secondary preferences for a role. Of course, the candidate's development points also come to the fore. In addition, it will be clear how this preference relates to the extent of the importance of the roles for management effectiveness in the current position.

Quinn Management roles in management development

Quinn's model can help set up a management development process, both at the organizational level and at the individual level: what do the roles mean for the company and for the manager personally? Management roles can thus be named and an individual learning need can be identified. It offers guidance in setting up a management development process, because it can be checked whether the important management roles are being sufficiently developed.

At the organizational and departmental levels, it can be determined which roles are crucial for the future. By mapping this to personal preferences, it becomes clear where the qualities of the managers lie. You can place the organization photo on the photo of the management team. The differences become so clear, where the MD process can then be focused.

In the Quinn Management Roles Questionnaire, we look at two aspects, namely the extent to which someone has a preferred has for a certain role and the extent to which that role momentous is in the current context. In the sample report of the Quinn Management Rolls Questionnaire you can see how these aspects recur and how the primary and secondary preferred roles are described.

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