Most leadership breakdowns don’t start with bad intent. They start with a misfit.
Think about putting on a pair of tight jeans straight out of the dryer. Even if you can squeeze into them, everything feels restrictive. You spend more time thinking about the discomfort than actually doing anything. You may take those off and find some oversized sweatpants instead. But while those can feel comfortable at first, without shape or support, they get in the way when it is time to move with purpose.
In today’s organizations, these same dynamics show up in how managers lead.
Across workplaces, leadership styles tend to fall into three categories: tight jeans, oversized sweatpants and cozy joggers. The difference isn’t personality. It is how managers balance autonomy, structure and communication. The cost of getting that balance wrong is measurable.
Tight jeans management: Control that limits performance
Tight-jeans managers usually have good intentions. They want their team to succeed, protect them from mistakes and ensure the work is done well. Because of that, they stay closely involved, give very specific directions and check in constantly, believing they’re setting their team up for success. In high-stakes projects or brand-new tasks, that level of involvement can help in the short term. But when it becomes the default, it starts to have the opposite effect.
Most employees will experience a tight-jeans manager. Accountemps research found that 59% of employees say they have. Of those, 68% said it decreased morale, and 55% said it hurt productivity. What managers often intend as being supportive and protective, employees experience as a constraint.
Consider the example of an employee coming to the manager with a question.
A tight-jeans manager responds by telling the employee exactly what to do and exactly how to do it. The information may be technically correct, but it makes the manager the constant go-to and leaves little room for employees to develop critical thinking skills. The message is clear: decisions stay at the top. Employees learn to bring questions, not solutions, and the manager becomes the default decision-maker for everything.
Over time, tight jeans managers become bottlenecks and are unable to step away, while employees focus more on not messing up than moving the work forward. High performers disengage (and even leave) not because expectations are high, but because trust is low.
Oversized sweatpants management: Roomy but no support
Oversized-sweatpants managers sit at the opposite end of the spectrum. Their goal is empowerment. They avoid direction to give employees space. They avoid feedback because it feels harsh. They even avoid scheduled meetings, saying, “You can find me if you need me.”
The problem is that employees often can’t.
What these leaders intend as freedom can instead feel like a lack of care. Stanford research found employees are nearly 10 times more likely to criticize undercommunication than overcommunication, and they perceive undercommunicating leaders as less empathetic.
Using the example of an employee bringing a question, these managers may respond with “You’ve got this” or “Use your judgment,” without any guidance or even discussion. Employees are forced to guess what “right” looks like, leading them to take inconsistent approaches.
Oversized sweatpants are comfortable, but comfort alone doesn’t help people make good decisions.
Cozy joggers management: Autonomy with direction
The most effective managers operate like cozy joggers. They give teams enough structure to feel supported, and enough flexibility to do their best work. Expectations are clear, communication is consistent and employees feel trusted to do the work well.
Returning to the example, while the tight jeans manager dictated the answer and the oversized sweatpants manager deflected responsibility, the cozy joggers manager responds differently: “What do you think you should do? I’m happy to add my perspective, but I’d love to hear what you’ve considered first.”
This approach does several things at once. It reinforces accountability while building judgment. It signals trust without disappearing. And it keeps the manager appropriately involved without taking over. This is what supportive leadership actually looks like in practice.
The cozy jogger approach works because it provides just enough structure to support movement without restricting it. And teams do better work because of it.
Why this matters
In workplaces defined by constant change, how managers show up shapes how work actually feels. Employees don’t evaluate their managers based on intent. They evaluate them based on impact. Research consistently shows that an employee’s relationship with their direct manager is the strongest driver of job satisfaction. That job satisfaction isn’t a nice-to-have – it’s directly tied to outcomes organizations care about, including customer satisfaction, turnover, productivity and profitability.
Too much control often feels like mistrust, while too little communication can feel like neglect. When managers default to either extreme, the consequences are quickly evident in results.
The leaders people want to work for aren’t rigid or hands-off. They know when to step in, when to step back and how to communicate along the way. When leadership fits well, employees stop managing around discomfort and focus on doing their best work. That balance is what turns leadership behavior into business results.
Opinions expressed by SmartBrief contributors are their own.
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