Dr. Clare W. Graves

"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

When we translate the title of this paper cybernetically, the translation says we can expect optimum performance in a work situation only when there is congruency in the total managerial situation. There must be congruency between the character of the work to be done, the psychology of the person who is managing, the psychology of the people being managed and the methods and procedures of management. These in turn must be in phase with the operation of the total organization.[1]

When we develop this information in order to get clues for managing in any particular situation we derive, among others, the following managerial propositions.

1. When the policies and managerial practices of an organization are out of phase with the managerial beliefs of the supervising person then effective performance in his section is threatened.

This proposition is well represented in many managerial situations today. In many firms that I have observed I have seen training programs wherein the policy was to change the beliefs and ways of behaving of the manager. These firms developed managerial training programs designed to modify the beliefs of the manager as to how work should be conducted in order to bring them more in line with the organization’s preexisting methods and beliefs. (Seilers, 1968, p.134) These programs do not try to fit managerial development to the beliefs and ways of behaving the are those of the managing person. They attempt instead to get the managerial person to change his or her beliers. When organizations foster this kind of incongruency they cast the managing person into a severe value crisis – a crisis which more often than not, reverberates to the detriment of effective performance in his managerial situation. A second managerial proposition is:

2. When the practices of management are out of phase with the way the managed person wants to be supervised then the performance of the supervised person suffers.

Nowhere is the validity of this proposition more demonstrated than in two current practices in many organizations. One is the practice of participative management and the other is the practice of sensitivity training. Of the former Victor Vromm says:

“The concept of participation along with group decision and democratic leadership has been central to much of the work in human relations in industry. There is a considerable amount of evidence that participation has favorable effects on attitudes, morale, absences and productivity.”

[1] It should be indicated, at this point, that other subsystems than those listed exist in any managerial situation. For example, the presence or absence of a labor union and its character and relationships in the organization. Another would be the psychosocial stage of the organization. that is, is it in its aborning state, survival state, stability stage, growth stage or the like. Also, it would be noted that any managerial situation is imbedded in a still larger system. Here an example would be the general economic conditions. These should not be excluded from one’s thinking, though I do so in this paper because of space limitations and because my point “congruency” can be made using the four subsystems utilized herein.

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