What is it called when people label themselves as something but aren't that thing? People gotta walk the walk
Servant leadership
21–30 of 105 posts
Re: Servant leadership
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
This attitude is the path to hell. If you own nothing (not even your own attitude, or the quality of what you are doing), then you’re a perpetual victim, always at the whims of others, and always unable to change anything that matters for you. If you take ownership of you and what you do, and how it impacts others and can produce value, you can make choices. To say no. To say yes. To push for recognition, and leave i…
I agree with your comment, but I think the post above is trying to make another point: That in companies you often are expected to take ownership (or are assigned ownership), although the environment does not allow you to make choices - which you refer to as a consequence of having true ownership, right?
What I noticed decently often is that the safe decisions you can make are fairly constrained. By safe I mean that even if things don't go well you will not be held too responsible in a material way. This might be communicated directly but usually is just a constant background vibe reinforced by the company/social norms. You can step over that line and make un-safe decisions but then the risk is implicitly more directly on you.
Re: Servant leadership
#23[deleted]
Re: Servant leadership
#24I've been reading _The Servant_ among a number of other books recently as part of a "management focus" in my role and in many ways so many of these books overlap on many of the hot-areas of leadership. One of the big takeaways is that most of this information isn't just professional, you can (and, IMO, should use it personally). How you handle feedback and responsibility with your direct-reports is going (most of the…
This is a one-weird-trick that management tries to use on underlings: they talk about motivating a sense of ownership to things. But this doesn't jive with the fact that employees are hirelings and thus have no ownership to anything in the company. But it would be convenient for management to push more of the responsibilities of ownership on the underlings, even though they will get none of the benefits. This of cour…
Ownership is about mandate and ability to effect change. That doesn’t imply any material benefit other than being paid to do it.
What management roles tend to do is assign ownership without mandate and ability.
Re: Servant leadership
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
No one is suggesting killing yourself for someone else’s dream. That is trying to take ownership for something that you have little scope to impact, frankly, and as you note don’t see the benefits for. I’m saying, having ownership of what you are doing and what you control is essential. Not doing so is a path to hell. That can be the section of the codebase you’re specializing in, or just the effectiveness and qualit…
Wouldn't the word responsibility be more accurate here for what you are trying to describe? own·er·ship the act, state, or right of possessing something. re·spon·si·bil·i·ty the state or fact of having a duty to deal with something or of having control over someone. Part of me that's pushing back here is my manipulative language detector going off.
Possession is control, is it not?
Ownership is responsibility + benefit (or loss) for an outcome IMO, protected by some kind of agreement. Societal or contractual. Title. Employment agreement/laws.
If there is positive benefit received on a good outcome + a responsibility for maintenance and the like, that is a form of ownership IMO. If a negative benefit comes from damage/destruction/bad things happening to that thing, that also tracks.
Anyone who owns real property quickly discovers there isn’t anything like truly unencumbered and unconditional ownership of anything - the first property tax bill will make that clear if nothing else.
That doesn’t mean someone doesn’t take on significant risks and benefits (hopefully) from owning it. It can still be yanked away if they don’t pay certain people or follow certain rules - or via Imminent Domain.
Someone working a job has more constrained ownership, but it still exists. And like buying a property, they need to choose carefully as they’ll still end up with consequences regardless.
Re: Servant leadership
#26If you are the majority owner, or stand to profit vastly more than your team from an endeavor, then you are never a servant.
Using terms like "servant" to appear humble, when the equity split is massively lopsided is patronizing at best, and manipulative at worst.
Re: Servant leadership
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
This attitude is the path to hell. If you own nothing (not even your own attitude, or the quality of what you are doing), then you’re a perpetual victim, always at the whims of others, and always unable to change anything that matters for you. If you take ownership of you and what you do, and how it impacts others and can produce value, you can make choices. To say no. To say yes. To push for recognition, and leave i…
I agree with your comment, but I think the post above is trying to make another point: That in companies you often are expected to take ownership (or are assigned ownership), although the environment does not allow you to make choices - which you refer to as a consequence of having true ownership, right?
That's the way I generally understand ownership to work in this context.
I should have the authority to make decisions about how to execute a project I'm given (or take) responsibility of.
In the context of "Servant Leadership," how well I execute the task should inform my manager's response. If it is not done correctly/well, I should get the feedback needed to ensure I don't repeat those mistakes. Future work assignments should be adjusted based on how "wrong" my work was. Maybe the project was too complex, and I should be given a more limited scope for the next one, or maybe being shown the corrections is sufficient to trust me with the same level of work next time.
Re: Servant leadership
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
No one is suggesting killing yourself for someone else’s dream. That is trying to take ownership for something that you have little scope to impact, frankly, and as you note don’t see the benefits for. I’m saying, having ownership of what you are doing and what you control is essential. Not doing so is a path to hell. That can be the section of the codebase you’re specializing in, or just the effectiveness and qualit…
Wouldn't the word responsibility be more accurate here for what you are trying to describe? own·er·ship the act, state, or right of possessing something. re·spon·si·bil·i·ty the state or fact of having a duty to deal with something or of having control over someone. Part of me that's pushing back here is my manipulative language detector going off.
I feel like the intended colloquial interpretation of "ownership" here is a combination of responsibility and agency. Just because you're responsible for something doesn't mean you actually have power to influence the thing. So "sense of ownership over X" is shorthand for "sense of responsibility for X plus the agency necessary to fulfill the responsibility"
Re: Servant leadership
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This attitude is the path to hell. I disagree the other way around is. A lot of people suddenly realize they are 50 and they put decades into someone else's dream. Be realistic, do what you are paid for, but save the heroism for your own efforts.
No one is suggesting killing yourself for someone else’s dream. That is trying to take ownership for something that you have little scope to impact, frankly, and as you note don’t see the benefits for. I’m saying, having ownership of what you are doing and what you control is essential. Not doing so is a path to hell. That can be the section of the codebase you’re specializing in, or just the effectiveness and qualit…
> No one is suggesting killing yourself for someone else’s dream.
Nobody makes it that explicit. Managers just ask you (your team) to deliver more story points, go the extra effort to meet a deadline, etc.
And the risk of setting boundaries (saying 'no') to the implicit ask is not being viewed as a "team player", not being promoted or given a raise, or, at worst, being fired.
I am willing to take those risks. Not everyone is.
Re: Servant leadership
#30Servant leadership is great, but boy, this article is a whole lot of nothing.
"To be a good leader, you need to trust your team and listen to them!" Gee, thanks.
Maybe I'm being overly critical, but there's no insight, no analysis, no practicable takeaways at all; just a bunch of GPT-esque bullet points about how some famous people are kind of nice to their employees sometimes. Feels like crappy content marketing, but there's not even any content being marketed.