In talking with Dave, the command approach appears to have some success when the athlete\worker doesn’t know as much. When to direct and when to cooperate is the hardest part.

For example: Bobby Knight is a very successful coach in college, but I wonder how successful he would be coaching professional athletes in the NBA with the same style? He also coached the USA dream team, but I’m sure he wasn’t yelling at anyone or throwing chairs. I bet he was pretty dang cooperative with Michael Jordan

I agree with your last statement.

I have also seen the tendencies you mentioned. It intrigues me how pressure correlates to command and control. In those cases I feel somewhere in the org chain there is not enough transparency as to what is “really happening”, from both directions.

I have become a fan of agile processes like scrum which get the customer involved early. Expectations are more realistic as they have exposure to the project. Give the customer something that provides value immediately, and let them pull features iteration by iteration, thus somewhat avoiding the pressure of the “huge deadline”.

Another thing that comes to mind with your comments is an organization composed of different management styles. I can only imagine working for a cooperative manager, who reports to a submissive manager, who reports to a command manager. I think it has to be a culture that starts from the top.

Why do you suppose someone would start out cooperative, but once under pressure stop empowering and start commanding?

So, If you are in the 0.001% of the population that is a true visionary genius, that first approach is workable. For the rest of us mere mortals, our time is better spent helping others achieve success, even if it overshadows our own.

I think most of us think we’re zen-like cooperative style teachers, while actually we’re [failed] dictators..