My friend and colleague Dmitry has been to India some time ago to teach people there on his subject he is an expert in. He told me an interesting feature of how work teams are historically and culturally organized there. Indians organize themselves into the teams by their caste identity – what makes us think that all the people in the team have same «version» of national sub-culture. Second feature of Indian team is that it features two centers of power: first center is team manager, and another is team leader. And this is very interesting: manager does hold power of authority, however has a mindset to consult and comply with team leader’s opinion and guidance. Team leader is having power implicitly given by all the team members, and is the one listened to and asked for advice and guidance. Leader is respected and trusted, and uses his judgment and influence with the group and between different groups to resolve operational and strategic issues.

Figure 1. Distributed roles

What is the classical model employed by most of organizations? This is a model where manager, in addition to his/her administrative role, is expected to be a leader and be competent in the business segment – i.e. manager wears 3 hats simultaneously – administrator’s, team leader’s and business expert’s.

Figure 2. Consolidated roles

How many times I saw managers trying to play all these 3 roles simultaneously – and many times unsuccessfully! There’re of course professionals who can do it very efficiently and effectively, however most of the time one of these 3 roles prevail:

Here we can see the trend for internal personal conflict in the manager’s mindset – it is required to be superior, friend and advisor at the same time! You may say – ok, it is possible, but I will argue – how to switch between them and how to set subordinates’ expectations during and after switching?

Another important question – which management behavior should be a priority? What we can answer here is «it depends» and contingent on the situation of manager and team operation (crisis/business as usual), organizational and national culture (power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism and masculinity), manager’s preferable behavior (usually brought from the childhood), experience, predispositions and bias of manager and team members towards each other.

Now let’s consider consequences of manager playing only one role:

Now let’s return to the story I started with – that Indian culture assumes that manager-administrator is one person, and manager-leader is another person, and leader is having more weight than administrator. Question: who is a manager-expert?

Despite of these questions, the idea of splitting these 3 roles may look as a feasible one – each «manager» is consistent in his/her behavior, uses specific power sources and influence techniques. So far so good, but how these 3 people will reconcile power balance between them? However 3 people will more probable agree with each other than 20...

Funny thing here is that many respected companies start to diminish and discontinue word «management» and «manager» in favor of «leadership» and «leader». You may have seen messages like «Mr. Big is leading his financial department and is responsible for financial strategy of our company» or «Mrs. Small had been in numerous leadership positions and has an extensive background in finances». In these statements we see references to leadership and expertise, however who is going to administer all this stuff? Who is going to manage scarce human resources in case of crisis or tough situation, using power of authority and resource control?

Post of Oct 19, 2007