Shift from a leader-follower to a leader-leader approach
practicalengineering.management
Shift from a leader-follower to a leader-leader approach
1–10 of 54 posts
Re: Shift from a leader-follower to a leader-leader approach
#2I thought I’d be annoyed reading this, as the blog seems to brazenly rip off name recognition from the significantly more popular and presumably preceding “Practical Engineering” channel/blog… and to some degree that feeling did cheapen the content.
But overall I agree with at least enough of the points to find it is a decent post worth a read.
Re: Shift from a leader-follower to a leader-leader approach
#3The foundation of this approach is non-controversial: Don’t micromanage, be a good coach, don’t force work to go through the manager, and other simple truths.
When I get to the recommendations to “ban” words and force engineers to speak in certain phrases I start having flashbacks to all of the bad managers from the past who read a few management books and thought those tricks were going to make them a good manager. Like when the management book trend was to write user stories in the form of "As I user, I want to" and my manager would force us to write "As I user, I don't want to the app to crash when I" when filing bug reports because that's what their book said we should do. This type of management guidance is not good, and it doesn’t produce good results.
Yes, it’s good to direct teams to express intent. No, it’s not good to ban phrases and force your team to speak in prescribed sentence structures. This is how good advice turns into cargo cult rituals that everyone hates.
Re: Shift from a leader-follower to a leader-leader approach
#4[deleted]
Re: Shift from a leader-follower to a leader-leader approach
#5The difference here is with a win-win-win approach, we all win.
Re: Shift from a leader-follower to a leader-leader approach
#6If everyone is a leader, who is doing the work?
Re: Shift from a leader-follower to a leader-leader approach
#7If everyone is a leader, who is doing the work?
Really?
Re: Shift from a leader-follower to a leader-leader approach
#8Is an interesting idea but don’t think it scales. Once a company gets beyond like 100 people you need some structure and past 1000 is chaos is everyone is a leader.
Re: Shift from a leader-follower to a leader-leader approach
#9It's not a framework, and it requires no diagram. It's just trusting and empowering people to do the job, then getting out of their way. People tend to rise to your level of trust.
I wrote about this, because after a long career I've come to see that most people have no idea what leadership is, or how it works: https://thinkhuman.com/the-leader-ship/
Re: Shift from a leader-follower to a leader-leader approach
#10The difference here is with a win-win-win approach, we all win.
I worked in an office last year. We had these “Wacky Shirt Wednesdays.” On the first Wednesday I was able to participate, I decided to wear the shirt my mom was wearing when I was born. Now there’s some leftover placenta and uterine lining, so it isn’t the cleanest shirt. BUT it’s the thought that counts. That what momma says.
This f’n Karen decides to come over to my desk and tell me it’s “inappropriate” and “gross” and “ur mom’s placenta will get in my salmon salad”.
Win for me: keep wearing the shirt Win for Karen: stop having me wear the shirt Win Win Win: frame the shirt on my office wall so there’s never a chance of getting placenta in Karen’s salad.
Win Win Win!!