How to boss without being bossy

Ding ding ding! You win the prize.

The way I always put this to people is that "if dictating worked, there'd be a lot more dictators in the world."

> Good tech leaders influence, guide, and grow people. They are honest and authentic.

> The management style I have seen work the best is when people act in a real, genuine and sincere ways that are true to who they are as individuals and avoid manipulative behavior. They can still be hard chargers. They can still be abrasive. But they generally have a great degree of self-honesty and consideration to others to go along with their ambition.

The best managers I've ever had never told me to do anything. At my last position (from which I was unfortunately laid off a few months ago) as a senior staff engineer at a ~100 person startup with a ~30 person engineering org, my manager, the CTO, raised this to an art form. I joked with our other senior staff engineer (whom I hired) that our manager never said anything but "Figure it out." Once, after an eng all hands meeting, I Slacked my colleague and said "Well, if that wasn't peak $CTO-NAME, I don't know what is. I'm pretty sure what I just heard was the 25 minute version of 'figure it out.'"

"Figure it out" is a great message when you have a talented group of engineers working with you. They're experts at what they do, otherwise they wouldn't have gotten hired. "Figure it out" gives them room to get shit done, and it also goes a long way toward validating any concerns they might express. It's almost magical, really.

I worked there for almost a year, and I what I just wrote here for all of you is the absolute most valuable thing I learned in all that time. As a leader, telling smart, curious, and deeply technical people to "figure it out" will get you everything you ever dreamed of and more.

The only problem is that if you're not careful, you can end up talking too much, which leads to the other half of the lesson: shut the fuck up. Literally just stop talking, and leave some space in the conversation that you're not filling up with words. It's best if you can stop talking right as you've sketched out the barest outlines of a big idea, or told a good story, or you've just got something that's conceptually interesting to drop in the other person's lap.

Once you do that, "figure it out" + interesting idea + "shut the fuck up" is just like weaponized nerd sniping.

I now I come up with the solution, and execute it too.

Why not do it like that? Provide context, making sure people want to do the job to achieve goals.

Absolutely agree with this but then the adult thing to do is not to attempt to manipulate the partner into doing the work but either a) fix the situation directly if it's a one-off (asking, "would you take out the garbage?" or else just doing it), or b) if there is a pattern of unfair division of labour in the relationship, raise it, discuss it honestly and with intent to find a fair solution, and resolve it.