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Transparent leadership beats servant leadership

entropicthoughts.com

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Re: Transparent leadership beats servant leadership

#171

Post by ErrantX »

jjk166 wrote: post #133
cj wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're describing one end of an extreme. The opposite extreme is you have someone on your team who is only able to resolve conflicts by having their boss intervene. E.g. you leave some critical feedback in a PR review. The author of the PR doesn't like your comments, so they tell your mutual boss, then your boss comes to you to ask why you left the comments in the PR, instead of the author coming to you directly. Obv…

> The opposite extreme is you have someone on your team who is only able to resolve conflicts by having their boss intervene. What's wrong with that? Resolving conflicts is the boss' job. So long as the team mate is doing their actual job appropriately, that's all that matters. > E.g. you leave some critical feedback in a PR review. The author of the PR doesn't like your comments, so they tell your mutual boss, then…

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 that this was wrong because I've set myself up as the proxy for the others feelings.

If you need a manger to resolve the above example, the org is broken and the engineers are poor engineers.

Re: Transparent leadership beats servant leadership

#173

Post by ddingus »

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…

>solving all the other problems

I(we) call that running interference, and it has always been an extremely high value activity. The people who see the benefit rarely complain. I myself have always recognized it as valuable.

Re: Transparent leadership beats servant leadership

#174

Post by bruce511 »

gretch wrote: post #138
ToucanLoucan wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've put into excellent words what I have done my whole life. Intent matters but it isn't sufficient. If you "meant to be on time" but weren't, you failed. Simple as. You don't need to lash yourself about it but too many folk are ready to give themselves a pat on the back for good intentions, or trying but failing, etc. If you say you're gonna be somewhere, show the fuck up. Anything short is a miss. Failing to acc…

If you’re interested in the subject and want to read more, the concept is commonly called “outcome oriented” vs “process oriented”. A LOT of workplace conflict arises out of outcome oriented ppl having to work with process oriented people.

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 for judging other programs.

So for my software I care about architecture, clean code, the language I used, how clever it is.

I judge others by their UI, documentation, support, correctness, intuitiveness etc. I hate when their UI constantly changes. Even small (cosmetic) bugs turn me off.

But my stuff has no docs, the UI is butt ugly, there are some rough edges, but if you avoid the bugs it gives you the right answer (very fast) while consuming less ram, disk, or cpu. And I used new-framework or popular-new-language and runs on any OS etc.

Re: Transparent leadership beats servant leadership

#175

Post by marcus_holmes »

reactordev wrote: post #51
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…

It was clear the author never actually performed servant leadership. If they did, they would be writing a different article about how much work they did to support their team instead of “how much lack of work can I get away with”. They sounded like an absent manager .

Came here to say this. What he describes is not really servant leadership.

Servant leadership is more or less just the concept that the leader's job is to make sure the team are working to their full capacity. This is in contrast to authoritarian leadership which says that the team's job is to do whatever the leader tells them to do.

A lot of leaders have a problem with the "servant" in servant leadership, there's an ego hit in the title that doesn't sit well with people who have more authoritarian ideas about what leadership is. That doesn't seem to be the author's problem, though.

The author's idea of transparent leadership seems centred around the idea that the team doesn't need a leader, in that the leader should be trying to make themselves redundant and should be training everyone else to be able to function without them. I agree that this is an absent manager.

If they succeed in making themselves redundant, the team will have selected another, informal, leader. Possibly a dynamic set of leaders who each take up leadership in different circumstances. Humans just do this, it's how we work together.

I think the author just doesn't want to be a leader at all, and would prefer it if they could go back to solving technical problems. This is perfectly valid. Management isn't for everyone.

I suggest the author looks at Dyad Leadership [0] where the management role is split into two parts; one part provides the leadership role (setting the vision, coaching, quality, behaviours, etc) and the other provides the administration function (approving holidays, organising events, handling HR, etc). This is used in the healthcare industry a lot, and works in the right situation. It might work for the author because they're obviously providing leadership but don't seem keen about the management part.

Re: Transparent leadership beats servant leadership

#176

Post by TylerE »

skeeter2020 wrote: post #111
BobaFloutist wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

And plenty of great coaches that WERE very good players. Steve Kerr for instance had 5 NBA Championships as a player and is up to 4 as a Head Coach.

Re: Transparent leadership beats servant leadership

#177

Post by rester324 »

jedberg wrote: post #148

Looking back at the best leaders I've ever worked for, they all followed that philosophy that was explicitly stated at Netflix: Context not Control. The goal of the manager was to explain to their reports what problems the team need to solves and why. Make sure the team was aware of any factors elsewhere in the org that might make a difference, and then connect the people on their team with the people on other teams…

Yeah, this makes sense. What I am missing from both the blogpost and the comments is that the most valuable contribution a manager can provide is information and not some elusive, esotheric, corporate-speak mumbo-jumbo. And when I write information I mean information in advance (you can call this call for comments if you wish), not after the fact when decisions have been already made. 99% of managers rather focus on some self-patting feel good mindfulness guru teachings instead, and I wonder why...?

Re: Transparent leadership beats servant leadership

#178

Post by rester324 »

What I am missing from both the blogpost and the comments is that the most valuable contribution a manager can provide is information and not some elusive, esotheric, corporate-speak mumbo-jumbo. And when I write information I mean information in advance (you can call this call for comments if you wish), not after the fact when decisions have been already made. 99% of managers rather focus on some self-patting feel good mindfulness guru teachings instead, and I wonder why...?

Re: Transparent leadership beats servant leadership

#179

Post by rester324 »

danfunk wrote: post #166

All these comments are from the standpoint of being managed, with a derogatory view of someone who would stoop so low as to take a management role. I liked the article. Managing people is ass hard. Doing so is a way to make peoples working lives better, anf to tackle problems larger than a single person can accomplish. Thinking about how to do it better is good thing. It takes courage.

I think this is the attitude that most people take issue with that this comment represents.

So please tell us why we are wrong? Because I can just go and claim in the same vein of your comment to say: "Managing people is easy peasy"

Re: Transparent leadership beats servant leadership

#180

Post by OsrsNeedsf2P »

lowboy wrote: post #63
FuriouslyAdrift wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you ever want to quickly destroy an organization, just separate the ability to control with the responsibility to control. Burnout, infighting, and chaos will ensue.

Being responsible for something while having little/no control is so demoralizing & infuriating.

Isn't this what a PM does
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