Stop Managing Everyone the Same Way

What a 1969 leadership model and one of the oldest leadership stories agree on.

If you lead more than one person, you've probably noticed that what works with one of them falls flat with the next. The new hire wants more of your time than you have. Your most experienced person bristles when you check in. And the one in the middle, who was doing great a month ago, has gone quiet. It's tempting to decide some people are just easier to lead. More often, they're at different stages, and you're leading them all the same way.

The leader who trained a team of rookies

Picture a leader starting something from nothing. He has a big mission and a short time to get it off the ground, and he hand-picks a small team to carry it on after him. None of them have any background in the work. A few run a fishing business. One collects taxes. But they're keen. When he asks, they drop what they're doing on the spot and come with him.

So at first he does the work while they watch. He shows them how it's done, up close. When he teaches a crowd, he takes the team aside afterward and explains everything again in private.

Then he sends them out in pairs. He gives them clear instructions, the authority to act, and a short list of what to bring and what to leave behind. They come back with stories of everything they did and taught. He hears the whole report, then takes them somewhere quiet to rest.

Not long after, they hit a harder case. While their leader is away, a desperate father brings his son to the team, in front of a crowd. They try, and they can't help. People start arguing with them. When the leader gets back, he handles it himself. Later, in private, the team asks him the question every manager has heard from someone they're training: why couldn't we do it? And he explains.

By the end, the same people who couldn't solve that case are the ones he hands the whole mission to.

What business school calls it

Good leaders change how they lead depending on who's in front of them and what they're working on. Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard turned that into a model in 1969, and Blanchard and his colleagues later updated it as Situational Leadership II, or SLII. Every leader mixes two things: direction (telling people what to do and how) and support (listening, encouraging, involving them). How much of each you give should depend on the person's development level on that task, meaning how skilled they are at it and how committed they feel.

• Directing (lots of direction, little support): for the keen beginner who has the energy but not the skill yet.
• Coaching (lots of both): for the person who has learned some, hit a wall and lost some confidence.
• Supporting (little direction, lots of support): for someone capable who's still unsure of themselves.
• Delegating (little of either): for the person who can do it and wants to.

Peter Northouse covers SLII in Leadership: Theory and Practice and explains why it's so widely used in leadership training: it's easy to understand and easy to use the next morning. He also flags its limits. The research behind it is thinner than its popularity, and real people don't always move neatly from one level to the next.

The part most leaders miss is that development level belongs to the task. Someone can be an expert at one thing and a beginner at the next. The team in the story shows exactly that. They come back from their first solo trip full of wins, a harder case puts them back at the start, and their leader goes back to coaching.

The leader in that story is Jesus, and you'll find it in Mark 1 to 9, written thousands of years earlier.

If you know your Bible, you probably recognized him a few paragraphs ago. Here's how the passages tell it (ESV).

It starts with an invitation to beginners: "Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men" (Mark 1:17). The training is built into the offer. As he teaches the crowds, "privately to his own disciples he explained everything" (4:34).

Then comes the first solo assignment: "And he called the twelve and began to send them out two by two" (6:7). When they come back, "The apostles returned to Jesus and told him all that they had done and taught" (6:30), and he tells them, "Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while" (6:31).

Then the setback. After the boy is healed, "his disciples asked him privately, 'Why could we not cast it out?'" (9:28).

How Jesus led the twelve

1. Direct the beginner. "Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men" (Mark 1:17). They watch before they do.
2. Coach in private. "Privately to his own disciples he explained everything" (4:34), and again after the failure (9:28).
3. Support the first solo work. He "began to send them out two by two" (6:7), then heard the whole report (6:30).
4. Hand over the mission. "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations" (Matthew 28:19).

Then and now

Notice the order. The setback in Mark 9 comes after the wins in Mark 6. Progress on a team doesn't run in a straight line, and he didn't lead as if it did.

Why we lead everyone the same way

Why do so many leaders stick to one style? It's simpler. Most of us lead the way we like to be led, or the way our first boss led us. And changing your approach can feel inconsistent, as if being fair means treating everyone the same.

But treating everyone the same usually means getting it wrong for most of them. The beginner gets left alone too soon, the expert gets micromanaged, and both of them quietly stop bringing you their best work.

Try this week

List the people you lead. Beside each name, write the one task that matters most for them right now. Then for each person, ask:

• How skilled are they at this specific task, and how confident do they feel about it?
• Am I giving them more direction than they need, or less?
• What would they say they need from me this week?

Pick one person and change how you lead them on that task.

Who on your team needs a different kind of boss this week?