"How Should Who Lead Whom to do What?"

by Dr. Clare Graves

YMCA
Management Forum 1971-1972

From the Historical Collection of the work of Dr. Clare W. Graves
- presentations, papers, recorded transcripts, notes-
William R. Lee                                                                                                                      August 2003

This conception of the development of man and his institutions provides clues as to how to manage for effective performance in different situations – clues that say that effective management occurs when we organize:

- so that different work is organized in different ways

- so that people who are psychologically compatible with the work are doing it. (And here they mean far more than a fit between the competencies of the person and the job.) They mean a psychological fit between whether the producer likes routine or variety, risk or certainty, close supervision or loose supervision and the like.

- so that the natural, personal style of the manager fits with the work being done and the people who are doing the work.

- and so that the particular managerial principles utilized by the manager fit with the work to be done, the person doing the work and the manager’s style of managing.  

The set of Figures I through VIII show what some of the clues are. Figure I shows that over time and in varying conditions of existence man takes on different psychological forms. It illustrates that we can come to know what these different forms are and thus utilize this information for organizational purposes.

Figure II presents a very rough picture of the clues as to work. When combined with the information of Figure I, we can begin to see that if our work is typical of a particular level of existence then we need to organize so as to get, so to speak, saintly people working at tasks that are certain and sociocentrically oriented people on those tasks which are group dependent.

Figure III then shows the type of organizational structure that should be utilized in order for certain work to be best done by saintly people.

Figure IV shows us the managerial style generated at each level and, for example, that the manager centralized at level three generates an exploitative system and that he at level four generates a paternalistic style of management.

Figure V shows what is, at first glance, a confusing clue. It indicates that a worker at a particular level who is an open growing personality prefers that form of management which is a level beyond that which the worker himself has attained. But research indicates that this relationship is congruent only when one is working with open, growing personalities. When a person is closed, that is, when he has come to a level, stopped there, and is not moving on, then the congruent relationship if for him to be managed by the style and procedures typical of the level he is at. That is, closed level four people respond best to the paternalistic form of management and the level four managerial procedures.

Figure VI presents yet another aspect of this total problem. It shows that organizations too grow and change with time. And it says that if any organization is in the creative stage it should be headed up by an exploitative risk taking manager. But it says also that if and when the organization gets beyond the stage of being born and is struggling for its survival then a paternalistically oriented head is necessary for its continuing growth and development.

Figures VII and VIII simply sum up some of what has been said above. Figure VII shows the major congruencies between style of manager and worker style preferred. And Figure VIII details, a bit, the factors which make for congruency when the work to be done is Level 4 type work.

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