Managers, are you frustrated by flat organizations? Here 3 ways to thrive in a flatter hierarchy.

Company hierarchies are dissolving.

Here’s how managers can engage teams to create trust — all while creating a sphere of influence and even (gasp) authority.

I know overbearing, hierarchical managers still exist. But no one really wants to work for them. And I hope no one wants to be them. Their authority is crumbling like a sea wall in a raging nor’easter.

Here are some advantages of flatter organizations.

Micro-managing leaders erode a company’s value. The people on their team don’t trust them. Retention will be low — or it will cost the company an arm and a leg to maintain employee loyalty. They might retain their power, but companies that allow them to stay in place will pay a price.

So how do you create trust as a manager in a world where your title means less than it ever has?

I worked at General Assembly for a few years as an instructor. One of the first pieces of guidance they gave me as a new instructor was to

be a guide on the side, not a sage on the stage

This is a lovely aphorism. There’s so much wisdom here for managers.

Sage on the stage is an egotistical stance to take — I imagine lots of talking and not much listening. No one wants to work with that person. A stage is an elevated, unrelatable place. The stage has power, but does it engender trust? Not to my thinking.

Guide on the side, by contrast, is someone you want to work with. They will build a personal bond, give you ownership, and help just enough as as guide and step back to allow you the freedom to do your thing.

The guide on the side is the new managerial skillset.

Let’s learn the 3 ways you can get there as a manager.

And, since we’re talking to designers, let’s explore a framework to connect all the disparate activities that make a manager successful.

Trust is the glue that binds your work together

To manage in a flat world while still maintaining authority as a leader, you need to create trust.

Credibility

This is first because it’s most important. As a manager, part of your job is wielding power and influence. To do your job, you must establish credibility. Credibility means that the people around you all agree, more or less, that you have the knowledge, skill set, and confidence to make decisions in uncertain, always-changing conditions.

Empathy

A flat world means that you don’t let status get in the way of genuine care for others — particularly the people that you have some measure of power over. If a working relationship just feels transactional, then people won’t be truly invested in you.

As the book Nine Lies About Work says, people don’t actually care about working for a company — they work for their teams, for the people around them they know. One of the key metrics for work satisfaction is whether or not an individual feels like the people on their team ‘have their back’.

This is especially important to feel like their manager has their back.

Authenticity

This is last because it’s so misunderstood. Authenticity doesn’t mean that you are open about all of your emotions or struggles. We have to honor ourselves enough to hold parts back from work. I don’t think there’s anything inauthentic about that.

Authenticity means that we need to share selected struggles from our past — only when it helps build our team up.

If we are uncertain about a decision, for instance, and we share that indecisiveness, then that could actually cause people to question your leadership. They could be more anxious.

We don’t want authenticity for authenticity’s sake.

As leaders, we need to bring our true selves when it’s in the interest of the team or the company. We need to hold back when sharing will do damage. It’s a simple formula that flies in the face of conventional wisdom about ‘authentic’ leadership.

3 tactical ways managers can establish trust

I’ve included my article mind-map at the end of the article (this is how I start all my articles now). It shows how all of the activities I’m about to list are interrelated — and how they align with the framework for trust.

My (very) hand-drawn mindmap for this article — showing how these 3 tactics feed into the trust framework we spoke about earlier

Participate in projects as an individual contributor (IC)

Design manager roles seem to commonly involve some IC work — I don’t think there’s any way around this if you want to establish trust. Doing this means that you’ll be presenting your work to other designers, and getting feedback and critique. This will help establish your credibility with other teams by being involved in the wider business. Your high-quality work will establish credibility with the design team.

It’s also a vulnerable place. You’ll empathize with designers, who must be vulnerable in the face of critique and feedback. We love the idea of showing your work and being immune to emotion, but the reality is that emotional immunity isn’t realistic (and isn’t healthy). You should care enough about your work that sharing it should feel like a small risk. You should care about quality so much that you’ll put aside your natural emotions to do what’s best for the team.

In being a part of that cycle, you will create a shared connection with the people on your team.

Create strong peer relationships

In a flat organization, influence matters as much or more than a title. There are a few benefits to creating relationships with peers outside of the design/product team.

• Have fun meeting new people
• Build credibility by understanding the business
• Meet people outside of the walled design garden — good for non-redundant information
• Get a window into the customer service journey
• Understand where else the design team can be of value

If you truly value a flatter hierarchy, then meeting others in the business is a great chance to live your values. Allow yourself to be influenced by experts across the company — after all, the user experience is everyone’s responsibility.

Tune your management style

Having experienced all types of management, I can say that a collaborative approach is the most pleasant, rewarding, and productive style.

You’ll need to do a skills assessment of your team and understand their strengths and weaknesses. That way, you’ll be able to tune your engagement to help team members through spots of difficulty. For some designers, this might be structuring an organized initial approach. For others, this might mean getting more involved during the artifact stage to make sure the artifacts are clean, organized, and logical.

Keep a pulse on projects through design critiques and team standups.

The most important part of this style is that you need to figure out how you can give people space to do their work, without losing touch. The balance can be difficult to achieve.

Remember to praise team members on a 5 to 1 ratio of praise to feedback. Humans, all of them, need to know they are seen. It’s fundamental. Being seen means recognizing effort and calling it out.