You are in the work and you do not hold the pen. Your team decides most things without you, you are in the room for the working sessions, you talk to your people most days, and the quality bar is something you build together rather than something you enforce at the end. People like working for you. Most of them would follow you to the next company.
Here is what it costs. Partners are slow to name the problem. When you are in the work alongside people, telling one of them their work is not good enough feels like breaking rank, so it gets softened, delayed, or turned into a question. Underperformance in a Partner's team tends to last longer than in the other styles, because the manager is the last person to say it out loud.
The second cost is decisions in the moment. When something is late, you get into the work rather than into the plan, and the plan is where the problem usually is. You are helping. You are also not managing.
Look at your lowest bar. If Standards is lowest, ask yourself when you last sent something back. If it has been a month, your team's bar is not your bar any more and you found out from a client. If Decisions is lowest, check whether the calls you are not making are being made by anyone.
A founder I worked with ran the warmest team I have seen. People loved working there. One of her senior leaders had been missing commitments for most of a year, and everyone knew it, including him. She kept waiting for the next project to fix it, and her best people quietly picked up his work and started resenting her for it.
That was not kindness. It was delaying the pain, for him and for everyone around him. The sentence she learned was short: I am telling you this now because I want you to succeed here, and right now it is not working. Warm in how she said it. Firm in what she said. For the first time in a year, he had a real chance.
One change for this week. Name one thing plainly. Pick the person whose work has been slipping and say, in the first minute of the next one on one, what you have seen and what you need to change, with no compliment in front of it. Be warm after. The order matters.
Your Control score will be low. That is right for a mature team. If your team is new, junior, or has just been through a change, it is too low, and Partner becomes Absent with better intentions.
Next step: the six conversations managers avoid, and how to open each one, are in the Hard Conversations diagnostic.
Next step
The six conversations managers avoid, and how to open each one
The other results
- ForemanYou set the how and you are in the work.
- GatekeeperYou hold the calls and you are not in the room.
- SponsorYou set outcomes and step back.
About this result
This is one of 4 results from the Management Style Quiz, a free tool that shows the score without an email. Aggregate figures are at the statistics page once 30 completions have been reached. More free tools are at the tools shelf.