You're Running Your Senior Team Like a Junior Team. Stop.
Hersey and Blanchard published situational leadership in 1969. The idea: different teams need different things from you. Apply the wrong style and you either micromanage people who don’t need it or abandon people who do.
Most PMs pick one style and apply it everywhere. It’s the single most preventable source of friction in product delivery.
The Styles, Simply
Two dimensions: how much direction you give (telling people what to do) and how much support you give (listening, encouraging, involving them).
A new team facing an unfamiliar problem needs high direction and low support. Tell them what to do. They need clarity, not options.
A team that’s capable but shaky needs high direction and high support. Give them the plan and explain why. They need confidence, not just instructions.
A capable but unmotivated team needs low direction and high support. They don’t need you to tell them how. They need you to listen and reconnect them to purpose.
A team that’s capable, confident, and motivated? Get out of the way. Provide context and remove blockers. Trust them.
The Failures Are Predictable
The PM who micromanages a senior team that’s shipped together for years. Autonomy is zero. The team resents it.
The PM who delegates to a brand-new team and calls it trust. “They’re smart, they’ll figure it out.” They won’t. That’s abandonment.
The PM who keeps prescribing solutions to a team that needs support, not direction. The team feels unheard. The PM feels unappreciated.
How I Diagnose
Three questions before every new team or engagement:
Can this team do the work? Have they shipped something similar? If yes, direction drops.
Do they believe they can? A team can be competent but shaken — new leadership, a recent failure, an unfamiliar domain.
Are they motivated to do this specific work? A capable team might be checked out on this initiative. That’s not a delegation scenario.
At Comcast I was a contract PO inheriting chaos — behind schedule, no consistent sprint goals, stakeholders pulling in different directions. The teams were capable but the system was broken. I led with high direction: rebuilt the backlog, enforced sprint goals, made tradeoffs explicit. I didn’t write their code. I created the conditions where their competence could actually ship.
At Curotec I led a mature consulting org. Experienced project leads. Teams who knew their domains. I led with data and influence — pilot the change, show results, let teams adopt it themselves. The transformation took two years and stuck because they owned it.
Same person. Different styles. The skill isn’t picking a style. It’s diagnosing the team and adapting.
I can tell you in one conversation which style your teams actually need. Most PMs never ask the question. Their teams are already paying for it. s@spencervaradi.com.