Week 5, 2023—Issue #241
Management Continuum, Part 1: from Instruct and Command to Mentor and Direct to Coach and Coordinate
Which style best describes managers in your organization?
Management takes many forms.
Which of the following options best describes managers at your company?
1. Instruct and Command
Managers are bosses whose job it is to tell others what to do and how to do it. They are hands-on and detail-oriented, with intimate knowledge of the work to be done. Their position gives them authority. They use that authority to assess performance and set salaries, etc.
2. Mentor and Direct
Managers are directors who tell others what to do, but leave it up to them to decide how to get it done. They have relevant work experience that they use to mentor and assess performance. But, they do not set salaries. Such authority lies with impartial third parties such as compensation committees.
3. Coach and Coordinate
Managers are servant leaders whose job it is to help others succeed in whatever they do. They don’t need relevant work experience because they don’t assess performance. They coach and coordinate, helping others to assess their own performance vis-à-vis standards.
Imagine these options plotted along a continuum with low and high autonomy on either end:
- Instruct and Command, which I argue describes most organizations, would sit on the low-autonomy end
- Mentor and Direct, which represents many technology companies like Google, would sit in the middle
- Coach and Coordinate, representing a growing number of self-managed firms, would sit on the high-autonomy side
It might look something like this:
The faux bell curve distribution is my wholly unscientific guess on where most organizations reside.
Is that true for your organization as well?
Where do you think it should be?
Remember, neither position is better than the other; it’s all about context. But more on that next week, in Part 2.
That’s all for this week.
Until next time: Make it matter.
How can we build better organizations? That’s the question I’ve been trying to answer for the past 10 years. Each week, I share some of what I’ve learned in a weekly newsletter called WorkMatters. Subscription is free. Back-issues are published to Medium after three months. This article was originally published on Friday, February 3, 2023.
