Hold on Loosely..

Tyler Dishman
Jul 25, 2017 · 2 min read

When it comes to managing, I always find myself going back to the lyrics of 38 Special’s song “Hold on Loosely.”

Just hold on loosely
But don’t let go
If you cling too tightly
You’re gonna lose control


I think one of the most difficult things to explain to people about management is that it’s actively passive. In any situation, the wilder things get, the more you want to grab the wheel and try to take control. It’s our instinct. But as we all learned when we were sixteen, when you grip the wheel too tightly when you feel like things are moving too quickly, you lose control, and the car (and yourself) will end up spinning into a ditch.

As a manager, I’ve learned that you have to work your hardest to be passive, calm, and collected in the moments like this. And it’s hard. You’re actively going against your instinct and your ego, and you have to place trust in the process.


I think the hardest part about all of this is that you have to trust those around you, and trust yourself that you placed them there to handle situations when they go down. The best working relationship I can think of that displays management in a nutshell is a golfer-caddy relationship.

On the one hand, you have a world class athlete, someone that is supposed to know the game better than anyone. However, they consistently turn to the person that holds their bag to tell them how they should play the next shot. It’s amazing to think someone so talented would listen to the person below them, but the reason they do lies deep. They know that they brought that person in to study their every move, every angle of the shot, and to help them plan for how to attack any issues they come across. They trust that they know how they would want to play it, and that they will make the best decision for them.


Leaving room for the people below you to do their job is the main form of successful management. It can be the hardest thing in the world to do when you know things are getting crazy, and especially because, throughout your whole life, you have always been the problem solver. However, that doesn’t change. Your job is to still be a problem solver — you just have to change your approach. We should offer possibilities and solutions — not demands.