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Transparent leadership beats servant leadership

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Re: Transparent leadership beats servant leadership

#111

Post by skeeter2020 »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #78
psunavy03 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a main reason why Agile Coaches often end up with such a bad rap, and the role is on the outs. They're supposed to be people who can work with leadership to ensure the right people are on the right teams working on the right stuff at the right time. And turn around and be able to help teams untangle their QA and CI/CD processes to speed delivery. Instead, the damn "life coaches" got their foot in the door and…

Also makes for a poor metaphor, because coaches in sports are supposed to be absolute experts in absolutely everything about the sport without the physical ability to implement it. Imagine if a football player told their coach "I'm not sure how to deal with this specific opponent's strategy" and the coach was like "Well have you tried thinking about it more?"

there are lots of sports coaches that were not good players, but they are absolute experts in their sport. For some reason we've let agile/life coaches convince us that "management" is the event and someone with customer service management experience has a lot to say about software development management. Ted Lasso is a great show, but it's not gonna happen IRL.

Though the Diamond Dogs would be a great peer group for Engineering Managers...

https://larahogan.me/blog/manager-voltron/

Re: Transparent leadership beats servant leadership

#112

Post by TheOccasionalWr »

jppope wrote: post #25

Just wanted to provide a useful link on the topic of leadership. The US army publishes its doctrine for free and updates it somewhat regularly: https://talent.army.mil/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/ARN20039_... The doctrine is a no-nonsense, no-fluff document based on 200+ years of military tradition where the effectiveness of the leadership is actually life and death. Definitely worth a read if you are interested in le…

I'm pretty sure software development of a website doesn't translate to a life and death situation that US army is dealing with. If anything it's why there is so many managers who think this works as if we are solving lives so they have to be strict and we all have to be strict and everyone needs to have their story points updated. The reason why most people went into software development is because they like building stuff so you have to inspire that - it's quite different to why people join US army.

My 2 cents on the actual manager philosophy is that it depends on the organization and the personal and cultural differences of the team members, some people like leaders, some people like servants and some like equality. At the end of the day everyone has to be aware they do work for the business and why they do stuff. The manager has to make that aware and inspire people.

Team topologies Shapeup Sooner Safer Happier

I think those fit most companies.

Re: Transparent leadership beats servant leadership

#113

Post by lostlogin »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #81
lostlogin wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you have been burnt, badly. There is surely a business out there that does fit your world view, though the pay and conditions might not. In my view, the need for growth at any cost is toxic and leads to all sorts of horrible behaviours.

There are no good organizations, only ones that aren’t completely corrupt yet. Consider that to start and maintain an organization takes significant capital and energy expenditures upfront, which means you need to fund them from somewhere and ask sources of funding are corrupted. Consider: there are no long lasting egalitarian, distributed power, grassroots organizations that can compete at a level of social influenc…

> why? because there is no way to survive as a structure, if your org is made up of people who want to eat and don’t want to be a monk.

The worse offenders in terms of corrupting power structures seem to be religious organisations, so being a monk is out too.

That power eventually corrupts shouldn’t rule out an organisation, but if it does, start your own and keep it to one employee.

Re: Transparent leadership beats servant leadership

#115

Post by sa46 »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #58
jppope wrote: post #25

Just wanted to provide a useful link on the topic of leadership. The US army publishes its doctrine for free and updates it somewhat regularly: https://talent.army.mil/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/ARN20039_... The doctrine is a no-nonsense, no-fluff document based on 200+ years of military tradition where the effectiveness of the leadership is actually life and death. Definitely worth a read if you are interested in le…

As a multiple time ground force commander both in Iraq and stateside for CI operations, I can firmly state that there is literally zero to be learned about leadership from corporate or political worlds. When I left the USG because it’s fundamentally corrupt, I went into private business thinking there were technical/business leaders that had pro-social incentives, and their heads screwed on. Man was I wrong. The US m…

That's quite a strong claim. I disagree. Military leadership, like business leadership, is imperfect. Both vary based on individuals, the operating environment, and culture.

Re: Transparent leadership beats servant leadership

#117

Post by Spivak »

cracki wrote: post #94
indymike wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Control, responsibility and accountability have to align. * You should only be accountable for what you are responsible for. * You should only be responsible for what you have control of. Bad managers hate this structure because in makes them accountable for themselves and their subordinates and prevents deflection of blame to low level employees.

Please compare and contrast "accountability" and "responsibility".

Responsibility without accountability is that it's your job to make sure something gets done but you don't face any real consequences for not doing it.

Accountability without responsibility is "being the final desk." Leadership is usually in this position where they aren't responsible for designing the product but they are accountable if it doesn't happen and they miss targets.

Re: Transparent leadership beats servant leadership

#118

Post by rietta »

I think the author is significantly straw-manning the concept of servant leadership.

The short take presented in the article doesn't match my lived experience with this style, both in secular and faith-based circles. The core idea is absolutely not that of a "curling parent." Instead, it embodies living the walk, walking the talk, and putting the team's needs before your own ego.

In fact, this profound concept goes all the way back to Jesus Christ, who modeled it by washing the feet of his disciples—a task reserved for the lowliest servant of the time. This act was deliberately shocking and context-defying. He effectively "turned the world upside down" by saying, "Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all."

I'm not trying to proof-text, but this idea is ancient and deep. It's a profound leadership style that is unfortunately often executed poorly or misunderstood by modern practitioners. Poor execution doesn't invalidate the concept itself.

Re: Transparent leadership beats servant leadership

#119

Post by samwillis »

lesdeuxmagots wrote: post #106
Gormo wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a big difference between protecting a team from all the shit and hiding it from them completely. It's good to be a transparent shit umbrella. The team should absolutely have visibility into what's going on, and understand why certain decisions are being made, but a good manager does need to step in to avoid the shit hitting them directly.

Love the idea of the transparent shit umbrella. Some people advocate keeping the team inside and telling them it's raining. But how far does that go? Are you keeping them in an underground bunker? Or is it a room with a window? A skyscraper with floor to ceiling windows surrounding them? I'm of the mind that if it's possible, the team needs to be outside in the shit rain while protected by the shit umbrella. But they…

> But they need to FEEL the weather

You mean they need to smell it!

Re: Transparent leadership beats servant leadership

#120

Post by eecc »

nlawalker wrote: post #38
CodeMage wrote: post #7

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…

When I was a manager I had to take a training based on the book "The Coaching Habit." It left me really sour on the role, and explained some of the behavior of previous managers of mine that I least appreciated, specifically that their approach to management seemed to be to just get me to articulate and explain my problems over and over until I somehow rubber-ducked myself into solving them myself. When that didn't w…

So basically a crash course in psychoanalysis?
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