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How Many People Can Someone Lead?

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Re: How Many People Can Someone Lead?

#41

Post by coldcode »

dagmx wrote: post #3

The article touches on it a bit, but I think it also highly depends on the person. Some people are really good at leading large teams, others are better suited to smaller teams. It really also depends on the makeup of the team and how much you can trust them to execute without you intervening. I've lead teams of ~20 without issue as a first time lead. It went very well, both for me, and based on feedback, for the tea…

I usually tried to lead at most 5-6 people building apps from the 80's until this year when I retired. What you said is basically what I did as well, leading is not dictating, but you do need people who can work with the minimally necessary information and still do what's needed. Keeping people in the dark, insisting on everything be decided by you, giving them no room to thrive, is a guarantee of disaster.

Re: How Many People Can Someone Lead?

#42

Post by brendoelfrendo »

marvin wrote: post #34
leetrout wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But she gets her summers off! /s It's crazy how underpaid teachers are.

It's a wonder anyone wants to do the job at all, knowing all this in advance. I almost became a teacher once. Figured all the abuse would be a degrading waste of my efforts.

In a lot of cases, they don't want to do the job. There are teacher shortages in a lot of the United States, especially in states that are infamous for mistreating teachers, like Texas.

Re: How Many People Can Someone Lead?

#44

Post by KittenInABox »

zaat wrote: post #26
Wistar wrote: post #18

My spouse both leads and manages ~24 direct reports, each of which require near continuous instruction, supervision, mentoring and encouragement. Her role demands an advanced degree with on-going education and certification requirements; exhaustive planning; an endless well of optimism; extensive individualized communication with third-party stake-holders; detailed performance accounting and reporting to stake-holder…

Well, it is very common in situations like this to have 2 to 4 assistants, and I can't believe without them it would be possible to avoid hard conflicts and even violence on regular basis.

Can you let us know which public school system has 2-4 assistants in a 24-person kindergarten classroom so I can move there when I have children?

Re: How Many People Can Someone Lead?

#45

Post by brendoelfrendo »

marcinzm wrote: post #8
drfrank wrote: post #5

TFA implicitly conflates "leadership" and "management", suggesting that the author is oblivious to the distinction. Even when the author describes dividing the responsibilities of "leadership" among multiple people, they describe dividing both leadership and management responsibilities between those people. This is an authoritarian model that makes the local despot the bottleneck for the team: Decisions end up being…

One interesting note is that some people actually want an authoritarian leader because they don't want responsibility or more things to think about. I was talking online about how much I delegate to my team and I got responses along the lines of "the tech lead or manager should do all of that, why should I be doing their job." >The best managers don't have a hard time finding talent for open positions on their teams:…

I wonder if there's an underlying cause for that attitude. I could see, for example, people working in a culture of high accountability and low trust trying to push decision making uphill lest they become a scapegoat. Meanwhile, places with a better office culture might feel more comfortable exercising autonomy and might value individuals taking the initiative more.

Re: How Many People Can Someone Lead?

#46

Post by SergeAx »

drfrank wrote: post #5

TFA implicitly conflates "leadership" and "management", suggesting that the author is oblivious to the distinction. Even when the author describes dividing the responsibilities of "leadership" among multiple people, they describe dividing both leadership and management responsibilities between those people. This is an authoritarian model that makes the local despot the bottleneck for the team: Decisions end up being…

Manager poaching their former reports will become virtually unhirable in 2-3 cycles. Who wants the Hameln Rattenfänger inside their ranks?

Having lots of peers is not enough anyway; first you need to have a budget to lure those peers.

Re: How Many People Can Someone Lead?

#47

Post by sokoloff »

zaat wrote: post #26
Wistar wrote: post #18

My spouse both leads and manages ~24 direct reports, each of which require near continuous instruction, supervision, mentoring and encouragement. Her role demands an advanced degree with on-going education and certification requirements; exhaustive planning; an endless well of optimism; extensive individualized communication with third-party stake-holders; detailed performance accounting and reporting to stake-holder…

Well, it is very common in situations like this to have 2 to 4 assistants, and I can't believe without them it would be possible to avoid hard conflicts and even violence on regular basis.

We are in a pretty well-funded district. None of our kindergarten classes have 2-4 assistants for a class of 24. Most have zero.

Re: How Many People Can Someone Lead?

#49

Post by throw1234651234 »

martin_a wrote: post #31
whartung wrote: post #19

I'd heard this anecdotally in the past, apparently there's some meat to it. The Marines have this number set to 3. Marines obviously have different scenarios they have to deal with than most organizations. But it's still an interesting idea. https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/the-us-marine-corps-uses-...

> The Marines have this number set to 3. For firefighters in Germany this is, more or less, defined to be 5. A group (which is one of the pre-defined tactial units) consists of 9 people: The leader, three troops of two, one machinist, one "Melder" (kind of the guy/girl for "special tasks", helping with whatever is necessary). The leader commands the troop leaders, machinist and "Melder". This is expected and taught a…

This is going to be true of more professional military specialists as well. A Special Forces team will have an officer leading 4 sergeants - med, comms, weapons, and construction(/destruction). This is more of an exception rather than the rule though.

I don't see how people are supposed to reasonably manage 10+ reports. At that point they are just a figurehead.

Re: How Many People Can Someone Lead?

#50

Post by wavemode »

marcinzm wrote: post #8
drfrank wrote: post #5

TFA implicitly conflates "leadership" and "management", suggesting that the author is oblivious to the distinction. Even when the author describes dividing the responsibilities of "leadership" among multiple people, they describe dividing both leadership and management responsibilities between those people. This is an authoritarian model that makes the local despot the bottleneck for the team: Decisions end up being…

One interesting note is that some people actually want an authoritarian leader because they don't want responsibility or more things to think about. I was talking online about how much I delegate to my team and I got responses along the lines of "the tech lead or manager should do all of that, why should I be doing their job." >The best managers don't have a hard time finding talent for open positions on their teams:…

> I was talking online about how much I delegate to my team and I got responses along the lines of "the tech lead or manager should do all of that, why should I be doing their job."

Well, that's because there's a difference between autonomy (e.g. "I'm going to let you approach the task in your own way without micromanaging your efforts.") and responsibility (e.g. "Your job is to do X and Y and Z"). What most people want from their leaders is some degree of autonomy, not necessarily extra responsibilities (unless there's a promotion attached...)

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