Have you ever wished that your manager would give you more autonomy and responsibility in some areas, and more direction and support in others? As a manager, have you ever struggled to know when to be hands-on or hands-off with your team’s work?
If you’re ‘hands on’ — closely involved with the details of your employee’s work — you risk wasting your time micro-managing what they could have done independently. If you’re hands-off, you risk poor execution and missed opportunities for coaching and development.
One of my favorite tools for navigating this trade-off is ’Task-relevant maturity’ from Andrew Grove’s High Output Management book.
Grove advises that managers vary their approach based on the experience and competence the particular employee with the particular task. If the task a new challenge for your employee, or they’ve struggled with it in the past (low maturity), default to a hands-on approach with frequent, structured support and direction. As they grow (medium maturity), emphasize collaborative problem solving and coaching. And once they gain a lot of experience (high maturity), default to a hands-off, highly delegated approach with initial goal alignment and progress tracking.
Here’s a helpful table from the book:
| Maturity | Management approach |
|---|---|
| Low | Structured; task-oriented: tell "what", "when", "how" |
| Medium | Individual-oriented; emphasis on two-way communication, support, mutual reasoning |
| High | Minimal involvement from manager: establishing objectives and monitoring |
Benefits
I’ve found this approach to be valuable in multiple ways:
- Better employee engagement: team members feel a healthy balance of coaching and close support when they need it, and independence and flexibility when it’s appropriate. They stay in the flow state where the challenge matches their skills.
- Improved team effectiveness: the team’s capabilities grow as members demonstrate maturity in new tasks.
- Managerial leverage: you spend more time on the high-value tasks that actually need your attention and support, and skip the low-value micro-managing.
Examples from my work
In software engineering teams, here are some tasks where I’ve applied the lens of ‘Task-oriented maturity’ to attenuate my involvement in their work to improve employee engagement, team efficacy, and managerial leverage.
For software engineers:
- creating a tech plan / design / architecture for a new system or component
- cross-functional collaboration (work with new teams or roles)
- interviewing potential hires
For managers:
- creating team charters, visions, goals, and roadmaps
- resolving personnel problems and conflicts
- coaching and mentorship
- project execution: identifying and intervening when a project is off-track
Rather than having a one-size-fits-all approach for how I manage these tasks, I’ve varied my approach for low, medium, and high maturity teammates. Grove’s model served me well to effectively support teammates with low task-oriented maturity to grow new competencies, and to stay out of the way of those who already had expertise.
