Corporate Management

The manager as a good father: when a step back is good for the team

It is often an accidental fact that demonstrates to the boss the toxicity and uselessness of an overprotective attitude

23 February 2024

4' min read

A psychoanalyst would wallow in the analysis of the possible associations between the parental figure and the boss figure.

You are my 'creature', but also my responsibility, but also my potential heir, but also my constant concern. These are phrases that a parent might utter, but also a manager addressing what in company jargon is called "one of his or her assets."

Based on the trivial observation of this conceptual connection, one can make interesting and also very concrete reflections on our being 'a good leader'.

One frequently hears of managers who are victims of so-called control anxiety: "Are you doing this? Where are you at? Watch out for x, mind you. Have you already done y? Remember z." Constant checks dictated by distrust and fear that the irreparable will happen. A bit like in the parent/child dynamic, even at work this type of boss/collaborator dialogue is often the result of uncontrolled automatisms. Translated, this means that the 'tormentor' does not realise that he or she is the tormentor. In other cases he does realise it, but perceives the necessity of this type of approach: 'I don't like to behave like this, but unfortunately if I don't check here everything goes wrong'.

This dynamic tends to be self-sustaining. If I continuously control your performance you will feel depowered in your self-esteem, responsibility and autonomy. You will tend not to control or decide, not feeling equal and/or considering that there is a control system from above that will intervene on your behalf. Your not controlling or not deciding or not intervening will lead your boss to convince himself that he cannot trust you and therefore must increase the level of control. It is a vicious circuit that leads to the crushing of the person in charge. There are two possible outcomes: the annihilation of the value of the resource or the traumatic rupture of the relationship. In both cases a human and professional failure.

In the most virtuous situations, an enlightened leader, aware of being trapped in the scheme, designs a path of delegation, a typical subject of management training courses, which, however, often turns out to be full of emotional and cognitive obstacles (if I ended up in the trap of obsessive control, there is something deeply mine that led me there).

More often it is an accidental fact that shows the manager the toxicity and uselessness of his overprotective attitude. A period of sick leave for example, or the need for a long commute or a move to another location, or even the sudden adoption of a full-time working. Suddenly I can't nag you any more, you disappear from my visual horizon and I have to accept that it all rests on your shoulders, that there are mistakes, that the work is not done as perfectly as I would like (and as only I know how to do...).

Often this sudden disappearance turns out to be salvific. The manager discovers he can do a thousand other things and finds himself esteeming a person he had little regard for. The co-ordinated resource, for his part, rediscovers the pleasure of taking responsibility, of acting autonomously, of having 'his own personal impact on the world'.

What if the accidental event that drives us away never comes? Therefore, a very concrete suggestion for a boss to consider is to physically move away from your co-worker's station. Even a change of room may be sufficient, but it works best if we eclipse ourselves completely, that is, if we put ourselves in a position where we never see each other during the day unless we deliberately want to. From this perspective, smartworking is not necessarily a value because theoretically we could still harass those who work with us with emails, calls and continuous waps.

The benefits of a 'distance cure' are enormous:

1) We do not see live the imperfections and limitations of the people we co-ordinate, and therefore do not overload ourselves with protective anxiety.

2) We are not distracted by the traffic and 'noise' of the small unforeseen events of everyday office life that make us consider events that are basically not problematic and worthy of our solving intervention.

3) Let's not fall into the misleading perception that without us 'on the ball' everything is doomed.

4) The people we co-ordinate feel empowered and almost automatically adopt a more mature, 'and now I have to cope' attitude.

Obviously, since it is an accountability mechanism, one has to work on monitoring. It is crucial to establish rules of engagement and continuous, structured feedback moments: 'I will monitor this, this way, this frequency'.

Returning to the analogy we started with, the good leader is a parent who leaves his child's room but invites him to go for a walk together from time to time. Less time together but more quality time.

* Managing director of the training and consulting company Sparring.