# The Developmental Bind of Metamodern Managers - Synthesis B By:: [[Brian Heath]] 2025-12-23 The bind as typically framed presents two options: perform institutional coherence and become complicit, or refuse and abandon the people who still need the buffer. But both possibilities share an assumption worth questioning: that the manager must mediate between institutional emptiness and people who aren't yet ready to see it. This assumption feels like care. It feels like the only ethical response to clarity. But it also creates a subtle separation between the manager who sees and the team that must be protected from seeing too soon. The trouble is that development cannot be done to someone. It can only be moved through. If this is true, then buffering may not be care at all. It may be developmental arrest, both for the team whose disillusionment is being managed and for the manager who remains anchored in the protector role. Ironic sincerity still centers the manager as the one holding tension on behalf of others. Beneficial antagonism still positions the manager as the sophisticated actor navigating between forces. Both preserve the mediating function that creates the bind in the first place. The way out may not be better buffering or more strategic positioning. It may be releasing the protector identity altogether. Not abandoning the team, but abandoning the belief that managed exposure is what people need. The metamodern manager's real edge may be failing visibly at the performance, not strategically but honestly, and discovering that this unmanaged authenticity is what actually makes development possible for everyone, including the manager. #### Related Items [[Metamodernism]] [[Organization]] [[Development]] [[Teams]] [[Management]]