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Transparent leadership beats servant leadership

entropicthoughts.com

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Re: Transparent leadership beats servant leadership

#51

Post by reactordev »

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.

Re: Transparent leadership beats servant leadership

#53

Post by michaelcampbell »

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 starts with a straw man argument ...

Perhaps they have, but there are also no shortage of middle managers that are adequately described by it. I worked for one for a few years.

Re: Transparent leadership beats servant leadership

#54

Post by wmeredith »

simonw wrote: post #50

My 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…

Shit umbrella is not a great analogy. More like a shit filter. Let through what needs to be let through and block all the distracting crap.

Re: Transparent leadership beats servant leadership

#55

Post by michaelcampbell »

simonw wrote: post #50

My 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…

You CAN tell the team it's raining and details of the weather without letting them get overly wet.

There's middle ground here.

Re: Transparent leadership beats servant leadership

#56

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

That's interesting.

I did everything he mentions in "Transparent Leadership," but also the stuff he talks about in "Curling Parenting."

I did it for 25 years. Seemed to work. I kept my job.

In my company, Personal Integrity and Honesty were very important. Not sure how representative that is, in today's world. It was an old-fashioned Japanese corporation.

Re: Transparent leadership beats servant leadership

#58

Post by AndrewKemendo »

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 military has by far the best, all encompassing, most focused and persistently updating leadership development and it’s STILL absolutely garbage.

There’s ZERO, and actually most likely negative, incentives to think about and apply ethics in business and politics, because at the end of the day the most ruthless will win in the long run.

Re: Transparent leadership beats servant leadership

#59

Post by Traubenfuchs »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #56

That's interesting. I did everything he mentions in "Transparent Leadership," but also the stuff he talks about in "Curling Parenting." I did it for 25 years. Seemed to work. I kept my job. In my company, Personal Integrity and Honesty were very important. Not sure how representative that is, in today's world. It was an old-fashioned Japanese corporation.

If the dishonesty worked, you never know it happened!

So you can never tell how much of it there really is…

Re: Transparent leadership beats servant leadership

#60

Post by shevy-java »

Hmmm.

"transparent leadership. In my book, a good leader

coaches people"

So ... why does coaching people require transparent leadership?

I think people can be sneaky and secretive; or transparent. Both can easily be used for coaching and training and teaching people. The other points have a similar issue in my opinion. The article is more like a "feel-good" statement - people subscribe to "be nice and kind". But are all leaders nice and kind? Are evil and mean leaders automatically incompetent and ineffective? I think the analysis part should be decoupled from ethics in regards to "xyz beats abc". One has to define what the goal is.

For instance, some CEO firing 50% of the people will be critisized by many - but greedy shareholders may get more money that way, so for them they may prefer a CEO that is mean-spirited here. That same mean-spirited CEO could be an awesome family guy and super-friendly with his close reallife friends and family, but when it comes to the company, he is ruthless. And so on and so forth.

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