How to grow people as a manager, no matter how experienced your employee is, or how experienced you are in managing people.

I have managed people for over 10 years. I wasn't a very good manager when I started, but I learned a very important lesson that I want to share. It has an amazing effect on the people you are leading, and is logically and easy to apply. In the following I will explain in detail.

Being a good manager is really a difficult task. It is hard to lead a group of people, as it is highly diverse what people need from a leader. People usually have their own style in managing, and use mainly one style. This either matches with the people they are leading or it doesn't. Management styles fall into one of the below 4 categories. Which style is yours?

1. Directive. The manager tells what to do. It can be that the manager micromanages everything. The manager will mostly say things like: you need to do this, and this is how you do it.
   For example lets take a very easy task: The employee need to post a letter, it needs to be send today. The manager will say: post this letter. Call DHL, use the express service. You need to fill in this form, give it with the letter and after they picked it up make sure that they have delivered it.
2. Coaching (Directive and explaining why): very much the same style as above, but with the addition that the manager will tell you why it is important that the letter gets picked up today.
3. Motivating and supportive: The manager will ask you to send the letter today, tell you why, and tell you you can do it ( maybe even add , as you have done it before, or you have done similar tasks before).
4. Sparring: The manager tells you that that its important that the letter gets posted today and why, and expects you to say, I will will post it via DHL express, as it the best service, give it to me it will be done or wants to discuss what is the best option.

There is no correct or incorrect style. All styles above are correct for different situations. Therefore here is only a correct behaviour and an incorrect behaviour of the manager in different situations. Actually, the situation is dependent on the person the manager is giving task to. As there are 4 situations a person can be in. It has to do with their growth and experience. Everybody needs to learn, and are positioned in a situation on the learning curve ( see picture). As parents we usually adapt to our children and change our teaching style dependent on where they are. For sure you won't say to your child, who you want to teach to ride a bike. Her you go, I got you a bike, now cycle.
managers however do do this, without realising what kind of stress they are putting on their employee.
Or the child can ride his bike perfectly, no parent will still hold the bike and tell the child exactly what to do. It would piss the child of, maybe even demotivate the child to cycle, or it gets nervous, as the parent doesn't believe they can do it.

I think you are getting the picture that every situation needs its own style.

Situation 1
The employee needs to do a task they have never done before: the employee can be very motivated, but lack the knowledge. the only way to make sure the person does the task, is to be very directive, maybe even show the employee exactly what to do. Step by step. The persons motivation drops, when they realise the task is more difficult then they think, or when they do not get taught properly. The low in motivation can be a small bounce when the person gets knowledge fast, but it can be heavy, when they get dumped in the deep end. They need to be taught and this needs to be repeated. Then the person gets to to situation 2

Situation 2
The employee has seen it before, maybe once maybe twice, depending on the difficulty of the task. Now it is time to explain why things are done in a certain way, and start motivating the person they are doing learning.
Their knowledge goes up and confidence and motivation as well, but maybe they can't do it alone yet. If they are able to do it alone, you get to situation 3

Situation 3
Supportive, and motivational.
In this stage the employee can do it, they have enough knowledge, but their confidence fluctuates. Sometimes they are sure of themselves, and it can suddenly drop. The manager should be supportive and tell them they are doing it well. It is important to build their confidence in this stage and motivate them. Eventually the employee will become certain of itself and a professional in what they are doing. Which brings him/her to stage 4

Situation 4
The employee is a professional, and can do it all themselves.
They only need to know they direction they are going in, or like to discuss ideas. They need a sparring partner and sometimes freedom to explore other things, otherwise they can drop back to situation 2, demotivated.

This brings me to what happens if there is a heavy miss-match in the management style and employees situation?

Situation 1 (employee knows little, but is highly motivated) and leadership 3,4 (the manager misinterpets the motivation for knowledge and expects the employee to be self sufficient): the employee feels totally lost. If this miss-match takes too long, an employee might leave or even gets ill.

Situation 2 ( the employee knows a little and is motivated to learn more) and management style 1,3,4: in situation 2 there is a confidence and motivation drop. With a mismatch in leader style this drop can be very deep.

Situation 3 and style 1: confidence level goes down, as the manager tells exactly what to do, which feels like the manager isn't sure the employee can do it.
Situation 3 and style 4: confidence level can go down, as the employee is not sure of themselves while the manager threats him as self-sufficient.

Situation 4 style 1: This is a very heavy miss-match. The person is a professional and gets told what to do in detail. This can cause enormous friction between the manager and employee. Or the professional gets complacent and totally demotivated. This can happen also with other styles.

With mismatches you can push an employee back on the learning curve, but it will show differently. For instance in breakdowns, friction, demotivation, low self-esteem.

How do you know in what situation your employee is?. It is actually task dependent. The person can be a professional in one task, but when they get a new task it could be they are in situation 1 for that task. The growth between the situations can be fast or slow, depending on people and the difficulty of the task. How do you know what situation they are in. It is simple, just ask them if they have done it before and if they are confident about it. Having an open discussion will tell you where they are and what they need.

I hope you enjoyed my advice. I am giving free advice about starting a start -up and running it succesfully. If you have any questions or request to cover, I am happy to answer.

Background: I have 10+ years in different start-ups. My background is a PhD in Chemistry and have studied project management. I launched many products with international teams enjoyed working as a program manager under the CEO in a start-up company that was sold for $250M.
Currently I'm building a start-up company myself, that won many (subsidy) grants, and pitch awards. It launched its first product to market in December 2017 within two years