I agree with the aspiration, but I think the limiting factor is less the leadership philosophy and more the org's appetite for managers who don’t hoard control and headcount
Transparent leadership beats servant leadership
211–220 of 258 posts
Re: Transparent leadership beats servant leadership
#212From 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…
If everything gets labeled as empowerment, that's not transparent leadership, that's abdication
Re: Transparent leadership beats servant leadership
#213My first few years as an engineering manager were heavily influenced by my idea that I needed to be a "shit umbrella" - I needed to protect my team from all of the shit raining down around the organization so they could focus on getting stuff done. I eventually realized that this is a terrible management philosophy! Your team would much rather understand what's going on, why things are happening and why certain proje…
People don't need to be protected from reality, they need to be protected from chaos. Those are not the same thing.
Re: Transparent leadership beats servant leadership
#214Earlier 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…
Yeah, show the storm, explain it, let people participate in navigating it. But if I walk away from a meeting understanding the situation less and sleeping worse, something went wrong
Re: Transparent leadership beats servant leadership
#215"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…
For me the useful bit of servant leadership isn’t the religious origin, it’s the reversal of default: you’re not “above” your reports, you’re in service to them and the mission
Re: Transparent leadership beats servant leadership
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
I did ceramics for a whole and noticed a common trend. The creator judges the product compared to their imagining of what they wanted to make. Yhe piece invariably falls short (because our imagination is better than our skillset.) Everyone else simply looked at the piece objectively. It was either beautiful or not. I started to look at programs the same way. The criteria for judging my program differs to the criteria…
From Ira Glass: “Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappo…
I tell this to everyone who will listen. This... paragraph? Statement? Whatever is pure gold.
Quit watching YouTube videos, quit reading tutorials, quit listening to podcasts. The only way you learn is by doing something, and by doing something I mean fucking up doing something. Over, and over, and over.
Just do the thing. That's how you learn. And after you make a whole ton of things that suck, you'll start making a few things that don't.
There's no way around it.
Re: Transparent leadership beats servant leadership
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
The Coaching Habit is a fantastic book and is the right way to do. Managers don't exist to solve other peoples problems; it's vice versa. Managers are accountable for a problem, and responsible for building a team that can solve it in the most cost effective way. Their team members are responsible for solving the problem. Managers are also responsible for a lot of other things (tracking, reporting, cost management, r…
If tracking, reporting, cost management, roadmaps, change management, hiring/firing, process improvement, all aren't solving problems, why the heck are they doing it? Each of these tasks should be undertaken because they provide a solve a problem/provide a benefit.
Re: Transparent leadership beats servant leadership
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
If a manager is handling (almost) all disputes of all sorts, then they will fundamentally lack authority to enforce an outcome on a real dispute. They simply are too involved because resolution requires you to take some sort of side. If my children won't speak to each other I will refuse to be the go between because I become a proxy for one to the other. If one then punches the other they won't respect my perspective…
> If a manager is handling (almost) all disputes of all sorts, then they will fundamentally lack authority to enforce an outcome on a real dispute. They simply are too involved because resolution requires you to take some sort of side. Bullshit. Being a routine mediator makes you a better mediator when big things come up, not a worse one. It means you are in tune with the particular needs and idiosyncrasies of the pe…
Bad mediators meditate everything. Good mediators focus on the intractible.
Re: Transparent leadership beats servant leadership
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Coaching Habit is a fantastic book and is the right way to do. Managers don't exist to solve other peoples problems; it's vice versa. Managers are accountable for a problem, and responsible for building a team that can solve it in the most cost effective way. Their team members are responsible for solving the problem. Managers are also responsible for a lot of other things (tracking, reporting, cost management, r…
Isn't the definitions the other way around regarding coaching and mentoring? Coaching is about skills. Mentoring is about advice/soundboard.
My understanding is that coaching is about helping the individual solve the problem himself/herself.
Mentoring is about adding information or skills such that the individual becomes more capable and thus are able to solve a problem.
Re: Transparent leadership beats servant leadership
#220Absolutely — leaders must learn to delegate. Without delegation, you end up doing everything yourself, which isn’t sustainable and will burn you out. Effective leaders trust their team and distribute responsibilities wisely.