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„Managers should stick to leading and directing. Facilitation has no place in management.”
Is facilitation really not needed and wanted in management? In the following pages I will discuss the validity of this statement with its pros and cons.
Historical evolution of management thought
If we go back in history we are shown how managers became what they are now. They use basically the same techniques and have the same principles managers from decades back had already.
Management and leadership have always played a role in very old institutions for instance the church and the army. Leadership qualities such as leading others, being composed, confident and resilient were and are typical for those institutions. Furthermore those leaders lead by example, communicate with their subordinates but in a strictly defined hierarchy, are strongly focused on strategy and winning, can concentrate on a target and no matter what want to accomplish their mission. But are those “leaders” what you’d now call managers? “Modern management is business management, and pre-industrial state craft and war strategy simply provide a narrow view of the management function as something worthy of kings, princes, and emperors or, in the case of war, generals.” Of course there were bankers, merchants and trading establishments as well but they were not a significant aspect of society. If we don’t consider pre-industrial “leaders” managers then where did everything start? Let’s look at what impact the industrial revolution had:
Until the industrial revolution began in 1750 organizations and companies were normally small and simply structured. With the industrial revolution starting, machi ...