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How to be a leader when the vibes are off

chaoticgood.management

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Re: How to be a leader when the vibes are off

#111

Post by goles »

neilv wrote: post #51

> The right thing to do in this situation is to acknowledge that you see the situation the same way they do, but do it privately, within your immediate team only or in 1-1s. "Yeah, this new policy sucks, [...] If you're a manager in a company that does sucky things, does (inevitably) being quoted saying a policy 'sucks' risk you losing your manager job there? I'm an OG techie, who ends up doing some manager-y things,…

Your balancing the relationship you have with leadership to do what you are asked to do, just as you ask IC to do things they may want to do, with doing the best you can to maintain or improve the QoL for your team.

The author is right, the correct stance is... > “Yeah, this new policy sucks I don't agree with 100% of all decisions, I get it. It’s going to affect me in negative ways too.”

Then critically thirdly,

> "Lets work together to demonstrate why the new policy is a risk to the customer."

Everybody drives on the same roads to the office, everybody has to wake up early, everyone has KPIs they are trying to hit.

To get what you want the compelling argument is to the customer.

Authors example, there aren't enough desks. We'll do it, but this is the level of support we can provide customers. This customers project is going to become at risk based on if we do this because of these reasons. We'll go in, but in order for us to deliver what we do at home we need to be accommodated to provide the same thing on time, I've done an estimate on what we'll need do you want me to expense it?

It's not about changes hurting you, the change hurting your team, it's how it's going to hurt the customer.

Re: How to be a leader when the vibes are off

#112

Post by Herring »

gtowey wrote: post #89
apercu wrote: post #17

The capital class didn't like the power employees had during covid. They hated pretending that they care about employee health or well-being. So now they are vindictively sticking it to everyone. This phase, too, will pass. AI (LLM's) is like cloud - the promise of lowered costs to incentivize organizations to migrate, then a few years later your business is paying double what your Colo and skeleton IT costed. AI wil…

> The capital class didn't like the power employees had during covid. So true. Notice how everything got really expensive after COVID? All the companies cited "supply chain" or cost of labor increases but then were reporting record profits which means they were lying. It was all to punish us for having the audacity to ask for living wages and better work conditions.

Trump won the popular vote. I don't trust the billionaires, but I'm not sure my coworkers are much better on average tbh.

Re: How to be a leader when the vibes are off

#113

Post by throwaway346434 »

As others have expressed, sycophancy is not leadership.

How do you "safely push for change" in private if your executive leadership display sociopathic or narcissistic behaviors, where they expressly do not care about the harm they inflict on others?

Polls show that about a quarter of employees see something unethical, and half don't report it because they think nothing will happen OR they will be retaliated against.

https://www.gallup.com/workplace/648770/unethical-behavior-g...

This means that individuals who are doing misdeeds perceive there are no consequences. Part of your role is to surface that there are consequences; and you bringing them up now is far less expensive than a lawsuit later.

We know this pattern of behaviour is not beneficial - in the context of NPD the worst version of this is becoming an enabler - https://www.choosingtherapy.com/narcissistic-enablers/

While you can absolutely choose your battles and there are some things that are ultimately harmful for you and achieve no great outcome; you are not a leader if you do not advocate for your team when obviously unjust things occur.

Re: How to be a leader when the vibes are off

#114

Post by cyrnel »

stevage wrote: post #105

> In public, you have to support the policies, but when you’re in private with your manager and your peers, that’s the time you can safely push for change. They are actually advocating being two-faced as a form of leadership.

I know, right? It's sycophancy.

If you are actually against the policy and suspect a lot of people are too, then don't silence your employees by keeping their feedback isolated to 1:1s which you admit are ineffective.

Executives need clear feedback to avoid making major mistakes.

Re: How to be a leader when the vibes are off

#115

Post by scyzoryk_xyz »

neilv wrote: post #104
jdefr89 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your employees won’t rat you out… Just don’t say “sucky” to those above you. If I have a cool ass manager who looks out for me and is real (I’m lucky enough to be at a MIT lab where everyone is cool as hell), I will always have their back…

If you're a manager, consider not saying that up the org chart is "sucky". Almost certainly no one on your team will go tattle, but it can leak out accidentally, such as when someone is flustered over a problem. More likely, it will leak out indirectly, in a way, if your team starts thinking of itself a little too much as a group that has to stick together against hostile outsiders within the company, either up the c…

Sucks this is being downvoted. Maturity is hard.

Re: How to be a leader when the vibes are off

#116

Post by cramsession »

tschellenbach wrote: post #60

There are literally subreddits about how to abuse the trust of remote work, but there have always been people doing that. I think the main thing that changed is that amazing revenue multiples that made it possible for companies to ignore these issues are no longer there. Meanwhile the costs of everything, including salaries has skyrocketed. So I think it's lower valuations + higher costs -> more pressure on efficienc…

Valuations are at record highs though. For instance Microsoft stock is at an all time high yet they're instituting RTO (which was clearly not needed to get the stock to the ATH) and an aggressive, anti-employee culture. You can see a lot of this coming from people like Musk who have astronomical valuations, not tied in any way to reality.

Re: How to be a leader when the vibes are off

#117

Post by SanjayMehta »

One of the things he doesn’t say is you have to be extra careful when your boss is replaced by an outsider; it’s exactly as if you changed you changed your job and have to prove yourself all over again.

The new guy also comes with an inflated sense of self-importance; he’s there to fix things which the old guy messed up.

Re: How to be a leader when the vibes are off

#118

Post by an0malous »

stevage wrote: post #106
itsnowandnever wrote: post #64

This blog was essentially my exact strategy over the last few turbulent years. I know it helped my people and I don't regret it. but, man, did it take a lot out of me. I've seen a quip out there before about the perfect recipe for burnout being the combination of high expectations with minimal empowerment to achieve those expectations. and this current market is burning leaders in this industry out like I haven't see…

I saw a definition of burnout as the accumulation of thousands of tiny disappointments and it stuck me. If you're always failing to achieve anything despite effort going in, you burn out.

Burn out is the same as learned helplessness, which is roughly the formula you’re describing here

Re: How to be a leader when the vibes are off

#120

Post by zug_zug »

> Even when you don’t agree with decisions the company leadership is making, part of your job is representing and facilitating those decisions with full alignment.

No, not for a staff engineer. You keep your mouth shut in the #general channel when something crazy is said, or you ask a single question in a thread when you don't understand at all.

The sound of a dozen people not clapping is the perfect rebuke to management mistakes.

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