It has been nearly 30 years now that I have lived in Germany and have had the opportunity to observe the behavior of managers here compared to my own behavior and those of my manager colleagues in the US.

The most striking difference I have noticed is a tendency in Germany for the manager to assign tasks to his or her subordinate and then leave the person almost completely alone until deadline. In America good managers are seen as coaches who are supporting, encouraging, guiding and monitoring the team member to accomplish his task.

The manager in American who delegates a task and disappears (DAD= Delegate And Disappear) is regarded as a poor leader and often finds that the performance of his associates is not up to expectation.

But the American style of frequent status meetings, casual inquiries into “How is the project going, Jim?”, etc., would be seen by German employees as micromanaging and distrusting the individual.

We see this difference already in university. German students have considerable freedom to learn according to their own methods. Attendance is not taken at lectures, exams are very infrequent and feedback on the progress of learning is given very seldom. That would be a formula for disaster in an American university.

Having taught at four US universities, I can confirm that the teacher is expected to give WEEKLY feedback to every student through a quiz, paper or personal interview. The student who does not receive warnings and specific extra help if learning is not progressing as it should may accuse the teacher of failing to do his or her job if the student receives a failing grade.

In the real business world it is not a pure one or other situation, but my experience is that the German manager assigns tasks and gets out of the way for the worker to perform the assigned task. The American manager is coaching the employee from the time the task is assigned until it is completed.

I am not suggesting that one or the other approach is better. What I do know is that if a German is managing Americans, consideration of the expectation of those employees should guide his behavior. And the same applies to Americans managing Germans.

If you want to read more to understand the American approach, I recommend The One Minute Manager by Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson.

This Harvard Business Review article reports on research conducted by Americans and Europeans which suggests that American businesses are the best managed in the world: https://hbr.org/2011/06/why-american-management-rules.

And here is an article on the unique nature of American management style from Commisceo Global: https://www.commisceo-global.com/resources/management-guides/usa-management-guide.

For comparison, here is what they have to say about German management style: https://www.commisceo-global.com/resources/management-guides/germany-management-guide.

- Herb