If managers are getting things done by wielding their authority from the org chart, odds are they aren't great leaders to begin with.
In most organizations, leaders arise naturally, and they don't always match the org chart. Wise managers let those people shine, and help them succeed. Then the informal leaders help the team succeed, and the manager gets what they want because they did the cliche of hiring smart people and then letting them do what they do best.
In such a scenario, managers may ask what they are doing... because the team is doing it all without much help. But that is a good thing. The manager did their job, of building an effective team.
Two points I see here.
1. managers are placed above the real leaders artificially 2. leaders arise without any formal process
The first point is what systems like Holocracy want to eliminate. The second point is what Holocracy leads to, some people following leaders and nobody really knows who that leader is.
My idea was to decouple the orga/bureaucracy stuff from management and create a new team assistant role, so things can go on orderly and there is someone to talk to.
The second part was creating some kind of process that helps to make decisions, so no "hidden leader" can wreak havok in the background.
Humans tend to fear competence more than incompetence. It’s the same cognitive bias as loss aversion.
Agree. If an organisation has power distance between managers and others, perhaps they have more fundamental problems to begin with.
By power I meant the privileges and rights that comes with their responsiblities and tasks. A simple example would be rights to ask for more resources or budget.
I miss having more people with official power when discussions go on and on without reaching a conclusion, and when there is work that everybody agrees needs doing but nobody wants to do.
They are even less useful without power.
Problem is most of the managers are junior in their position. They don't have leadership experience. Often just got a promotion and come up from a different background and only have a few years of experience on management position. Or, they have some experience at different scale. So when they start on a bigger organisation, they are just like junior employees in my opinion.
Proper leadership requires lots of experience and skills.
The way it works best in my experience is the team helping them to work efficiently. If they (managers) are not informed enough, they start micromanaging everyone and everything around them because they feel nothing is aligned or everything is out of control.
Same story when they are misinformed. If the information is negative they panic and start direct communication with every team member. And when it is just false positives, they may look very unaccountable or impulsive.
The best is to inform them before they seek for information and updates. And use their powers to solve team problems. They have power to provide the support or remove impediments.