31–40 of 258 posts
I was never taught that servant leadership should be some weird "manager as parent" relationship. Instead, servant leadership implies the manager serves the team (as the name implies). That includes removing impediments, but also includes empowering the team, ensuring their careers are growing, etc.
From the post: "The middle manager that doesn't perform any useful work is a fun stereotype, but I also think it's a good target to aim for." This is the kind of argument that makes people come up with middle manager stereotypes in the first place. In fact, the whole post is a great example of why middle manager stereotypes exist: it starts with a straw man argument and comes up with a "better alternative" that makes…
All that said, to be charitable, I think what the author meant to express is that you don't want to make yourself a bottleneck as a manager, which is a common failure mode for newly converted IC to junior manager. Where he goes off the rails in the most tone-deaf way is describing that as "not doing useful work". As a manager your work is constantly observing what people are doing, staying the hell out of the way when things are working, and leaning in when things are not going well from a team and outcomes perspective. Doing that well is incredibly challenging and important work.
From the post: "The middle manager that doesn't perform any useful work is a fun stereotype, but I also think it's a good target to aim for." This is the kind of argument that makes people come up with middle manager stereotypes in the first place. In fact, the whole post is a great example of why middle manager stereotypes exist: it starts with a straw man argument and comes up with a "better alternative" that makes…
>Look, boss, sometimes empowering me is just what I need, but sometimes I need you to solve a specific problem for me, so I can keep solving all the other problems I already have on my plate. One of the reasons I really like my current manager is he spends a lot more time reminding us he can/offering to "take care of any blockers." His whole management style can be summed up as "Why is it blocked? Ok, leave it to me.…
Clear boundaries and strategies eliminate these caveats = team members are aligned on what they can make decision for and general direction the team is heading towards.
I'm coming to my VP for help because I already tried diff baits, went to diff ponds, and tried diff reels. I'm coming for a fish finder not a lecture on maybe my casting was off
Can’t wait for AI Slack plugins to replace all low tier middle managers. You can achieve so much transparency since the data is already out there anyway. There has to be a better way to organize how ICs communicate. More productivity to unlock.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Look, boss, sometimes empowering me is just what I need, but sometimes I need you to solve a specific problem for me, so I can keep solving all the other problems I already have on my plate. One of the reasons I really like my current manager is he spends a lot more time reminding us he can/offering to "take care of any blockers." His whole management style can be summed up as "Why is it blocked? Ok, leave it to me.…
Agree and follow this principle to certain degree, however there are caveats here - something being a blocker shouldn't prevent you from trying to resolve the blockers by yourself or work with your boss to resolve them ie - "hey boss, I'm blocked with task A with refactor of this code; are you happy for me to do XYZ?". Then I have options to say: "yes! excellent! go ahead!" or "no, we need to do ASD here" or "no, we…
From the post: "The middle manager that doesn't perform any useful work is a fun stereotype, but I also think it's a good target to aim for." This is the kind of argument that makes people come up with middle manager stereotypes in the first place. In fact, the whole post is a great example of why middle manager stereotypes exist: it starts with a straw man argument and comes up with a "better alternative" that makes…
Burnout, infighting, and chaos will ensue.
From the post: "The middle manager that doesn't perform any useful work is a fun stereotype, but I also think it's a good target to aim for." This is the kind of argument that makes people come up with middle manager stereotypes in the first place. In fact, the whole post is a great example of why middle manager stereotypes exist: it starts with a straw man argument and comes up with a "better alternative" that makes…
I get that the point of the strategy is to help people with strong director-style personalities to listen and empathize a bit more, but in my experience it ended up being implemented as "my responsibility to my reports is to listen and nod."
"Servant Leadership" is a term was coined by Robert Greenleaf in his 1977 book "Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness", which is very specifically about being a church leader. Many of the more generic ideas are applicable in any leadership scenario but if you read the book it's very clear that it was not designed with business leadership in mind. You shouldn't really expect i…
Many terms and frameworks evolve beyond their original intent, so I'm not too worried that this has evolved, too. I've always found it is easier to understand servant leadership as the opposite end of the spectrum from autocratic leadership: Is the leader primarily concerned about growing their own power/success, or growing the power/success of those who work for them? There is a lot of middle ground between those tw…