The whole and its parts

The whole & its parts

Dealing with hierarchy

The most challenging thing with hierarchy is to stick to it.

When power is being delegated, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to take it back or give it back.

And yet it happens regularly.

Take the leader who isn’t satisfied with the results from a research team and who installs a new research team as a direct report to him. Or think about the last time the leader intervened in a meeting to make a decision happen.

But what is, if the leader is seeing his subordinate struggle and intervenes to help or if his subordinate is asking the leader to decide “because he is there”?

Both types of interventions are shortcuts to a desired result. And it rarely is the one of productivity. Instead, it’s the one of reaching productivity in a specific way. The way that feels safer in that situation.

The main reason these situations happen is the lack of comfort between leadership and subordinate. They have not yet found a way to align their ideas on how to reach productivity. Or there is a lack of trust that the other will listen or enable the chosen path.

 

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