Other articles by Carol Hymowitz:

For boomer men, fashion tips on staying hip Dressing to look younger will make you look older Working Chinese women not fretting about motherhood CEOs see therapy's worth Hiring picks up but it's pickier CEOs aren't always candid when rejecting new job Initiative needed to get ahead Executive quest for secrets of de-aging Biggest managermisstepsof 2003

Administrative & Professional
Tucson Urban League
CEO/President Finance and Accounting
Charles E. Gillman Company
Accounting Specialist Administrative & Professional
Jorgensen Brooks Group
Counselor Sales and Marketing
Everready Glass
Sales Reps Trades/Construction
RANCHO RESORT
MAINTANANCE POSITION Mechanical
Komatsu Equipment Co
Resident Field Mechanic

Since he became chief executive officer of Irvine, Calif.-based Freedom Communications in January, Scott Flanders has been crisscrossing the country to meet and talk with employees at dozens of locations. But Flanders has also told his managers that they can't afford to constantly offer advice and guidance to their staffs.

"In this flatter world, where most managers have a broader span of control, there aren't enough hours in the day to double-check everything employees do," he says. "We can't tolerate mediocrity, but we have to presume the competence of employees — and then, when we're disappointed, spend time coaching and training," or weed out failures.

This new model of management — teaching by example and offering employees intermittent feedback rather than meticulously reviewing everything they do — is being adopted formally and informally at many companies. It's a change many managers have to make. Their staffs are larger because of restructurings that have cut layers of managers, and increasingly they are expected to produce work themselves while supervising employees' output.

Many also feel pressured to spend more time with their own bosses, reporting their progress and lobbying for resources for their staffs. And with ranks thin and chances for promotion scarce, they are wary of investing too much personal capital in a young employee for fear that person may stumble later on, tarring their own reputation with superiors.

Flanders said he believes that managers who spend most of their time coaching employees on how to do their jobs are wasting their talents. They would be more useful, he thinks, if they thought of ways to expand their businesses and improve productivity and work quality. In his own first job, he says, his boss, who was an engineer, "inspected everything, but that slowed the pace of where we could move. Everything we did, we did with excellence, but we also lost market share."

The emerging hands-off management model does have critics. Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor at Stanford Business School, cautions that "it's penny wise and pound foolish" for companies not to want managers to train and mentor employees.

"Everyone has more people under them, and many are playing it day by day, hoping their staffs will somehow be self-reliant," he says. "Maybe the lack of time for training won't affect performance today or next week," he adds, "but it will further down the road, when you need a new generation of leaders" or employees who can handle difficult assignments.

For most managers, it's a complicated juggling act knowing when and how much to coach employees. They don't have time for the hand-holding they may have received earlier in their careers, but they have to know who is and isn't performing well so they can jump in quickly if someone is underperforming.

"Doing this is a complicated dance, since no two employees take feedback in the same way," says Carl Bass, chief operating officer at Autodesk, the San Rafael, Calif., software maker. Some employees react well to candid criticism, saying it helps them to know what to do to improve, while others think it's a sign they're being shown the door.

Bass has learned to strategize before he meets with employees rather than blurt out criticism. He and Autodesk's human-resources chief met recently to discuss how to approach one valued employee they didn't want to lose about one aspect of his performance.

They decided the employee would likely improve more quickly if he received praise for his past accomplishment along with advice about what he needed to do now.

Employees learn more from the example their boss sets than from any verbal feedback they are given, Bass said. "As an executive, you're always being watched by employees," he says, "and everything you say gets magnified — so you teach a lot by how you conduct yourself."