Embracing Autonomy doesn’t mean losing control
“Control leads to compliance; autonomy leads to engagement.”
Those famous words were coined by Daniel H. Pink, New York Times bestselling author and ex-chief speechwriter for Vice President Al Gore. It might look like an easy thing to do, but how many managers can honestly say that they have truly mastered balancing these antithetical management styles?
Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Alphabet Inc. and its subsidiary Google, said that “Google teams have lots of autonomy, including from people like me”—indicating that creating an environment in which employees can act autonomously is a top-down process.
Years ago, when I first became a manager, I was enrolled in a training program to learn about the tools and techniques needed to become successful in the role. The course literature comprised the excellent book The One Minute Manager by Kenneth Blanchard and Spencer Johnson, which identified Delegation Under Supervision as the number one skill a manager should strive to develop.
The authors came up with a surprisingly simple model illustrating an employee’s development journey through four different stages:
The first is when the employee has just started their new position and is very enthusiastic about their new assignment. However, they overestimate their own ability since they do not yet know what they do not know. The result is often that they fail badly in one or several areas. This is the reason the manager needs to refrain from giving too much autonomy this early.
The second state is when the employee is able to carry out most tasks without much supervision. But the earlier failures are still fresh and they frequently make mistakes, so there is still some need to tell them what to do. This is also when the manager needs to apply coaching techniques to grow their self-confidence.
In the third stage, the manager can let the employee experiment on their own to lead tasks without almost any supervision. Having said that, there is still a need for the manager to encourage the employee not to give up, even though they are faced with occasional setbacks.
At the fourth and last stage, the manager deliberately takes a step back with full delegation, and only needs to ensure that escalation, when needed, happens early enough for them to take action.
A Fine Balance
This idea, however, is not new. The Greek philosopher Aristotle once said: “There is nothing more unequal than the equal treatment of unequal people.” Thus, knowing that two people cannot possibly be equal in all things, we should provide equal opportunity by giving each the assistance and treatment that they require. I think it is remarkable that this notion existed more than 2,300 years ago. Despite this, and the fact that The One Minute Manager was written almost 40 years ago and its practical approach has been absorbed by millions of people, I have first-hand experienced working with many managers who still believe that delegation is an all-or-nothing approach, refusing to fully delegate even the simplest of tasks unless the employee is capable of executing all tasks under their control perfectly.
If well-established, effective management techniques are available to provide autonomy under supervision, why are these managers still reluctant to do so? I think one answer to that question is that they fear any mistake by the employee would reflect badly on them. However, there are more strategies to handle risks than avoiding them altogether. Also, they completely ignore the fact that, for employees who are intrinsically motivated by Autonomy, their engagement will be badly affected by such behavior, which will have an adverse impact on their productivity.
Moreover, some believe that autonomy is an important part of the fabric at the workplace.
Malcolm Gladwell, the English-born Canadian journalist, author, and public speaker who was a staff writer for The New Yorker for many years, provided his own view of why autonomy at work is important: “Those three things—autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward—are, most people will agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying.”
This is further elevated by Daniel H. Pink: “Autonomy: the urge to direct our own lives. Mastery: the desire to get better and better at something that matters. Purpose: the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves. These are the building blocks of an entirely new operating system for our businesses.”
Fostering Autonomy
At Attuned, we define Autonomy as: “The need to develop and preserve personal freedom; striving for independence in decision-making, time management and working out solutions while assuming personal responsibility.”
A common myth is that motivated people are easier to manage, but in fact, high motivation comes with high needs. This means that if someone scores very high on Autonomy in the Attuned Motivation Assessment, their manager will need to pay extra attention and ensure that autonomy is provided as much as possible.
This might be extra difficult to address for managers who need less autonomy themselves, which is why Attuned provides them with coaching tips; practical steps they can take in their daily work:
Your members may sometimes need greater independence to do their best work. In these cases, you may find that team members deliver superior performance if given plenty of space, and if they feel their individual responsibility is increasing.
Some people may feel that excessive regulation and working to a fixed schedule stifles their development and prevents them from getting the best out of themselves.
Try to give your team members the opportunity to find their own balance and rhythm in their work.
Different Working Styles
Autonomy is my top motivator (with a score of 96%), and it is an important ingredient privately as well as at work. During my student years, it was very common to study for exams in a group setting; discussing complex topics, testing your understanding as well as comparing lecture notes. However, even though I tried very hard, I was not able to perform well unless I studied alone.
I can also look back to work situations in the past when I was not provided enough freedom in my job or was outright micromanaged—let’s just say that things did not go well. My reaction in those situations was to work even harder and “earn” trust over time. However, this took considerable effort and I often struggled to keep myself motivated.
I later learned to manage my own need for Autonomy by having a direct conversation about it with my boss. In hindsight, I should have done this earlier in my career as well.
So if Autonomy is a need-to-have motivator for you or someone on your team, my advice would be to have a frank discussion about working styles early on—trust me, it will save you a lot of time and effort in the long run.
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