The President of a multinational claims that 80% of technical problems are human problems. And bosses are supposed to avoid and solve problems, so we can logically ask ourselves what kind of bosses organizations need: technicians or coaches.
The function of the boss, in whatever way he is called, responsible, directive, leader, is to get his collaborators to do and here lies one of the greatest difficulties; to lead, the boss must agree to stop doing to get others to do; abandoning a precise technical competence for another that appears more blurred or ethereal: that of directing people.
It is a difficult decision since everyone has their personal ideas about how to command, about knowing how to direct, while almost no one has their personal ideas about the expertise in microprocessor electronics or pants cutting patterns. It happens in the direction of people like in football, everyone feels like a national coach and is willing to criticize the owner, but it is easier for players to recognize talent.
Being these technical and rational managers, they understand that technical capacities can be measured and therefore recognized, while the quality of leadership is more appreciative and therefore more criticized. So, consciously or unconsciously, they hide in the tangible (their technical capacity) when their true mission is carried out in the intangible (train people to do their best).
So when a boss bases his authority on his personal technical abilities, it is because he feels that his leadership lacks legitimacy. By not mastering the art of coaching, at least you want to be the best player.
But at the same time that he uses his personal technicality to gain an ascendancy over his collaborators, he is giving them the message that they are not competent enough in their functions and tasks. You are creating dependency on your collaborators, which has two perverse consequences:
- Success becomes the boss, not his department, which deprives employees of the main motivator at work: achievements. It impoverishes the contributions of the team, creativity, initiative, because employees learn that the good solution, it is that of the boss (the famous "boss is right").
The chief technician usually leads a small group, in which he considers everyone as if they were other arms and hands of his own body. Think and ask for execution on the same terms as your own ideas. The group resembles a small military command in which everyone sacrificially obeys the sergeant. This type of group can achieve unsurpassed results in specific missions, but at the cost of personal affective tensions and strong creative limitations (orders always come from above). When the number of collaborators increases, personal interrelations produce social phenomena that the chief technician is not capable of understanding or carrying. It is when ineffectiveness appears and multiplies.
In counterpoint, the boss-coach is a team leader, who sets out the strategies and ensures that the team develops the best tactics to achieve the objectives. His role is that of a facilitator so that everyone can perform to their full potential, both in terms of goals and personal socio-affective satisfaction.
If the results of a chief-technician are short-term, and are seen and measured in the short term, those of the chief-coach are long-term and can only be assessed in the long term.
So the boss-coach has a virtue that the boss-coach lacks: self-confidence that gives us the mental strength to trust in the future.
