Quick questions on Management styles and management skills (VCE Business Management Unit 3)

The manager makes decisions unilaterally. Communication is top-down. Centralised control.

Most effective managers use different styles for different situations. The Atlassian product team is participative on roadmap and engineering decisions, but a Coles store manager during a fire alarm is autocratic. The skill is reading the situation and choosing the right style, not adopting one as a fixed identity.

Vicki Brady, CEO Telstra. Brady's leadership during the 2022-2024 T25 strategy reset combined consultative style (extensive input from senior leaders) with persuasive communication (quarterly all-hands briefings explaining direction). Strong demonstration of communication, planning and decision-making skills under a complex restructure.

Fast decisions, clear direction, low coordination cost. Effective in emergency, safety-critical, or low-experience contexts.

Limited use of employee knowledge, low engagement, poor fit for knowledge-economy work.

Time-critical decisions (emergency response, safety incident), employees lack the experience to contribute (raw new hires), or the consequences of the wrong call are severe.

Brady's leadership during the 2022-2024 T25 strategy reset combined consultative style (extensive input from senior leaders) with persuasive communication (quarterly all-hands briefings explaining direction). Strong demonstration of communication, planning and decision-making skills under a complex restructure.

Farquhar and Cannon-Brookes have run Atlassian through a consistently participative style, with strong delegation to senior leaders. The "open company, no bullshit" cultural value reinforces the management style.

Joyce's management style was widely characterised as more autocratic and persuasive than consultative. The style produced fast strategic decisions (the 2011 grounding of the fleet during the industrial dispute, the post-Covid restructure) but contributed to the cultural challenges that surfaced during the 2023-2024 reputational crisis and the High Court ruling on the unlawful outsourcing of baggage handlers.

Pick Atlassian; cover the style, its fit, the benefits, the risks, and the verdict.

Consultative gathers input then the manager decides. Participative shares the decision. The distinction matters.

Markers want how each skill helps - "delegation develops staff and frees manager capacity", not just "delegation".

It is in the study design and often skipped.

Effective managers flex style by situation, not stick to one as identity. :::