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Servant leadership

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Re: Servant leadership

#71

Post by nvahalik »

avgcorrection wrote: post #4
nvahalik wrote: post #2

I've been reading _The Servant_ among a number of other books recently as part of a "management focus" in my role and in many ways so many of these books overlap on many of the hot-areas of leadership. One of the big takeaways is that most of this information isn't just professional, you can (and, IMO, should use it personally). How you handle feedback and responsibility with your direct-reports is going (most of the…

This is a one-weird-trick that management tries to use on underlings: they talk about motivating a sense of ownership to things. But this doesn't jive with the fact that employees are hirelings and thus have no ownership to anything in the company. But it would be convenient for management to push more of the responsibilities of ownership on the underlings, even though they will get none of the benefits. This of cour…

> This of course assumes that the employee has no stocks in the company

I'm grateful that I get to work for a company that encourages growth and promotes heavily from the inside. Not all organizations are like this. But Servant leadership and companies growing quickly go hand in hand.

Re: Servant leadership

#72

Post by _puk »

lazide wrote: post #38
Bjartr wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like the intended colloquial interpretation of "ownership" here is a combination of responsibility and agency. Just because you're responsible for something doesn't mean you actually have power to influence the thing. So "sense of ownership over X" is shorthand for "sense of responsibility for X plus the agency necessary to fulfill the responsibility"

If you have no ability to change the outcome, or no benefit/loss depending on the outcome, it’s pretty hard to say someone owns anything. It someone will suffer the consequences of an outcome with no ability to change anything (or make decisions), that’s just making someone a scapegoat. If someone can make decisions/do things but will not benefit from or lose anything from the outcome, then I’m not sure what they are…

This [0] was posted recently and (IMO) really captures the reality of ownership.

Without all 3 of responsibility, mandate, and knowledge there can be no ownership.

0: https://blog.alexewerlof.com/p/broken-ownership

Re: Servant leadership

#73

Post by jonfw »

avgcorrection wrote: post #4
nvahalik wrote: post #2

I've been reading _The Servant_ among a number of other books recently as part of a "management focus" in my role and in many ways so many of these books overlap on many of the hot-areas of leadership. One of the big takeaways is that most of this information isn't just professional, you can (and, IMO, should use it personally). How you handle feedback and responsibility with your direct-reports is going (most of the…

This is a one-weird-trick that management tries to use on underlings: they talk about motivating a sense of ownership to things. But this doesn't jive with the fact that employees are hirelings and thus have no ownership to anything in the company. But it would be convenient for management to push more of the responsibilities of ownership on the underlings, even though they will get none of the benefits. This of cour…

Managers are underlings in that sense too. They don't own enough stock or have enough influence that they would rationally be thinking of the gains they'd make in their stock.

Managers take ownership because they're looking for their project to succeed, they want to advance their career, etc. and the same applies to "underlings"

Re: Servant leadership

#74

Post by jonfw »

civilitty wrote: post #35
iamwil wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By ownership, the OP means "accountable in the micro". Even if you don't own the company or the macro, there is a sense of cultivating your own skills and mental well-being when you make yourself accountable in the micro.

It’s also just as often detrimental and leads to burnout when that “accountability” is a delusion pushed by management because the employee has no real control and the whims of management override any real choices they can make. When someone really has ownership, management has to come to terms with the fact that the owner may make choices that are suboptimal to the company for the sake of their or their teams’ sanit…

Good leadership (which servant leadership is intended to facilitate) is all about fixing those problems. Management shouldn't override any real choices on a whim, and management should work to align incentives such that an owner acts in everybody's best interests at once

Re: Servant leadership

#75

Post by PH95VuimJjqBqy »

civilitty wrote: post #35
iamwil wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By ownership, the OP means "accountable in the micro". Even if you don't own the company or the macro, there is a sense of cultivating your own skills and mental well-being when you make yourself accountable in the micro.

It’s also just as often detrimental and leads to burnout when that “accountability” is a delusion pushed by management because the employee has no real control and the whims of management override any real choices they can make. When someone really has ownership, management has to come to terms with the fact that the owner may make choices that are suboptimal to the company for the sake of their or their teams’ sanit…

It's not a binary, you can take ownership of what you can and accept a lack of control where you cannot.

If that line is too far one way or the other it's time to leave.

Re: Servant leadership

#76

Post by lazide »

willcipriano wrote: post #53
lazide wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possession is control, is it not? Ownership is responsibility + benefit (or loss) for an outcome IMO, protected by some kind of agreement. Societal or contractual. Title. Employment agreement/laws. If there is positive benefit received on a good outcome + a responsibility for maintenance and the like, that is a form of ownership IMO. If a negative benefit comes from damage/destruction/bad things happening to that thi…

> Possession is control, is it not? Is possession == control then control == possession. We can have a world like that, if someone worked in some role for a period of time we could have a legal process for them claim their proceeds of the enterprise. That sounds really complicated and it isn't the world we live in today. I think the reason the word responsibility isn't used is generally you are expected to pay for pe…

Not if the deal was that they got a flat pay rate regardless, then anyone would expect they wouldn’t be busting their ass either.

If they get a bonus, then if they did a better job they’d have a right to expect a good bonus. Equity, a higher share valuation (modulo how little control there may actually be there).

I think the thing you’re struggling here is with scope.

For an hourly employee, the ownership extends about as far as ‘what I can do within the hour I’m there, and how can I do it the best I can’.

For the plumber example, it’s owning fixing the toilet. If it breaks because they did a shitty job, it’s also taking care of making sure it’s done right. If the faucet is part of the job, it’s making sure that is done right too (or they say no, I can’t/won’t).

Doing the faucet for free is stepping out of their area.

More ownership, more risk, more scope (all scope sometimes) more upside/downside, less direct payment.

Someone paid a salary is getting a lot of risk reduction (almost all, frankly), and it would be very odd for whoever is paying them to give up all their upside AND take all the risk of it not working.

Re: Servant leadership

#77

Post by lazide »

marcinzm wrote: post #22
mkreis wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your comment, but I think the post above is trying to make another point: That in companies you often are expected to take ownership (or are assigned ownership), although the environment does not allow you to make choices - which you refer to as a consequence of having true ownership, right?

What I noticed decently often is that the safe decisions you can make are fairly constrained. By safe I mean that even if things don't go well you will not be held too responsible in a material way. This might be communicated directly but usually is just a constant background vibe reinforced by the company/social norms. You can step over that line and make un-safe decisions but then the risk is implicitly more direct…

Risk/reward. It’s also easy to take a lot of risk with no possible reward, of course.

Re: Servant leadership

#79

Post by GiorgioG »

Always42 wrote: post #6

Surprised to see this on HN. In my opinion: Servant leadership is underrated. In the long haul at a company it is what is truly needed.

It's "underrated" because at most of our employers it doesn't exist. Some might pretend it does, maybe some even believe they're doing it. We all serve the at the alter of next quarterly financial report.

Re: Servant leadership

#80

Post by m348e912 »

switch007 wrote: post #61
m348e912 wrote: post #39

I used to be a manager. Not a particularly good one, but I did earn a fair amount of loyalty with the team and they worked pretty hard. I would tell them pretty regularly that I work actually work for them. My job was to provide direction, remove roadblocks, and help them be successful. And I did care about those things, so that went a long way.

> I would tell them pretty regularly that I work actually work for them Were they able to fire you?

Yes, by quitting.
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