as leaders we generally have to manage staff of different levels and abilities. There seems to be an assumption that it is incumbent on subordinates to calibrate they way the work and communication to the style of the leader rather than the other way around, but i think, theres an obligation that leaders should tailor and calibrate how they lead downwards, after all, isn’t our goal as a leader to have followers and get those followers to believe in our goals and help us realise them? doesn’t it then make sense that for them to follow we need to help them understand our visions and tasks in a way that they can understand and accept?
putting this into tangibles, this means that we need to apply different management and communication styles to both different types of personality as well as based on different capabilities.
In general the more junior the staff the more you will need to enforce accountability.
The more junior the staff the more detailed the instrucions
The more junior the staff the greater the need for regular checkins, the greater the need for clarity of tasks and deliverables
There a inverse correlation between capability (experience and seniority) against the need for direct management – the more senior the staff the more autonomously you can manage them.
if you tightly manage a senior staff they are going to get very frustrated. if you under manage a junior staff, expect quality and error issues. We have to apply the appropriate level of management to match the level and personality of our staff, so that we can bring out the best in them, we should not expect staff to try and calibrate to us.