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Servant leadership

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Re: Servant leadership

#81

Post by lazide »

PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote: post #75
civilitty wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

100% matches my experience. Also, if someone in management is using emotional manipulation techniques (gaslighting, etc.).

Re: Servant leadership

#82

Post by thenerdhead »

I agree that serving others is the ideal form of leadership. I mean those generic leadership posters you'd find in any office or school of the leader helping push a boulder or being on the front line with everyone is pretty common sense right?

What I don't get about servant leadership is why people put it in their LinkedIn profiles, CVs, or boast about the term. Most of those people are obnoxious.

Re: Servant leadership

#83

Post by gangstead »

ketzo wrote: post #30

Servant leadership is great, but boy, this article is a whole lot of nothing. "To be a good leader, you need to trust your team and listen to them!" Gee, thanks. Maybe I'm being overly critical, but there's no insight, no analysis, no practicable takeaways at all; just a bunch of GPT-esque bullet points about how some famous people are kind of nice to their employees sometimes. Feels like crappy content marketing, bu…

It also has a "Pros and Cons" section but doesn't list any cons. Definitely all fluff no analysis.

Re: Servant leadership

#84

Post by potamic »

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…

You may not have ownership of the company but you can have ownership within the scope of your work. For instance, as a developer there are so many areas which involve decision making from code design, testability, reliability, observability, choice of tooling, non-functional roadmap, documentation and onboarding etc. Of course, working within an organizational framework, you may not have infinite degrees of freedom across these, but if you don't have at least a handful of degrees of freedom in what you do, then you depend on somebody to tell you exactly what needs to be done all the time and your work will not be very interesting.

Re: Servant leadership

#85

Post by screye »

Gandhi and Nadella as servant leaders? That's hilariously incorrect.

Gandhi was well known to be incredibly stubborn and exclusionary of outside opinion in the Indian National Congress. He'd impose his ideas onto an unwilling Congress and populace, and a some of them led to a level of blood shed that no other 'peaceful' movement has ever seen.

Satya Nadella came into a deeply suspicious Microsoft. It was a political and paranoid mess, owing to Ballmer's stack ranking setup. Satya Nadella had to rebuild the company's culture from the ground up, and listening to/trusting leaders who had got there through the cut-throat policies of the previous leadership was not the way.

> Anne Mulcahy was Xerox’s CEO. When she became CEO on Aug 1, 2001, the stock price was $8.25, and on Jan 1, 2002. when she became chairwoman. the stock price was $10.05. On May 21, 2009, the day she announced her retirement as CEO, the stock price was $6.82

But not sure why someone would think this is a good example.

> To sum it up, servant leadership is about genuinely caring for your team, listening to their needs and involving them in decision-making. By shifting the spotlight from the leader to the team, you can spark trust, creativity and innovation.

The article is a little too Linkediny for my liking.

Re: Servant leadership

#86

Post by stavros »

supportengineer wrote: post #66
fergie wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feels like crappy content marketing because it is cfappy content marketing. Sometimes I miss a downvote option on HN.

I think certain elite users have the down option.

I think that's only for comments, but I'm not sure.

Re: Servant leadership

#87

Post by stavros »

ketzo wrote: post #30

Servant leadership is great, but boy, this article is a whole lot of nothing. "To be a good leader, you need to trust your team and listen to them!" Gee, thanks. Maybe I'm being overly critical, but there's no insight, no analysis, no practicable takeaways at all; just a bunch of GPT-esque bullet points about how some famous people are kind of nice to their employees sometimes. Feels like crappy content marketing, bu…

Yeah, this is "servant leadership is great. Here are some examples of people who are great servant leaders: X Y Z". Great, thanks, since I don't know any of them personally, I have no use for that.

Re: Servant leadership

#88

Post by lazide »

willcipriano wrote: post #57
lazide wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people can’t or won’t take ownership of something, as they don’t want to take the risks - as you note. It’s much easier (mentally) to be told what to do and hope it eventually works out. And if it doesn’t, blame everyone else.

> And if it doesn’t, blame everyone else. I never blame anyone. I just move to a competitor who is more adapt at running a business. > don’t want to take the risks That legally speaking if they pay off you are entitled to no additional compensation.

I don’t think you’re one of either of those groups btw. You’re taking ownership of a different kind of arrangement entirely.

Re: Servant leadership

#89

Post by makeitdouble »

nvahalik wrote: post #70
makeitdouble wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

＞ How you handle feedback and responsibility with your direct-reports is going (most of the time) how you do/ought to do things with your own children Your children don't have the option to show you the finger and move to another family. Nor (hopefuly) are you paying them to be your kids. I think it fundamentally changes what you should expect from one and not the other, especially regarding responsibilities and owne…

> I think it fundamentally changes what you should expect from one and not the other Not exactly. I want my kids to become great people. I genuinely care about them and their well-being. This is the same thing with the people that I work with and for. I care about them and want to them to get better. > And I'm sure you won't address your son not taking out the trash the same you'd deal with a team member that don't r…

> I care about them and want to them to get better.

Those are the same words but pointing to a radically different reality.

I care about my coworkers being healthy, but there are clear boundaries that I won't pass over. If they drink all nights all week stay alive during the day through piles of enerfy drinks, I won't have much to say if it doesn't affect their work.

Same way I can go any length to help my kid succeed at school, including changing school, paying for tuitions, changing their diet and whole life rythm to improve their focus etc. Helping my colleagues succeed goes as much as talking to them and changing their tasks/career path.

Re: Servant leadership

#90

Post by avgcorrection »

tome wrote: post #44
avgcorrection wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely and utterly false. Even a slave owns his own mind and how it reacts to things. (Insert Stoic spiel here.) And it is best to cultivate a mind which is in accordance with the Serenity Prayer. Another thing entirely is what you formally own . I mean as in by-law, not some aspirational or motivational bullshit. And someone is trying to manipulate you if they try to foist the responsibilities of ownership onto…

> Completely and utterly false As far as I can tell you lazide are in agreement. If your comment didn't start with "Completely and utterly false" I'd think you were writing a supporting/reinforcing follow-up!

Hrmph. This is what often happens on the internet:

- Someone makes a cynical comment on some specific topic

- Someone else makes a completely inappropriate extrapolation and concludes—based on nothing—that the first poster is making an argument for being defeatist and negative for its own sake

- The first poster has to then correct this inappropriate extrapolation—which was based on nothing—by stating that, yes, it is good to (say) have a positive attitude in your life

- Onlookers act puzzled as the first poster is contradicting himself (apparently) by hostilely agreeing with the second poster that having a good mind-attitude in life is good!

So yes I suppose I could be agreeing with the second poster...

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