8 ms·

Don’t Lead by Example

79 points by theBashShell 8y ago

craftinator 8y ago
Attention seeking headline, made up the article to fit.
tsumnia 8y ago
"I was working 16 hour days and struggling to get the team on board, while instead just going overboard." I think this is the key takeaway. The author was leading by a BAD example. More time on task can lead to more productivity... but at the cost of your sanity. I think it's a common tactic in younger developers because they haven't really obtained that level of "ideal worker" they're striving for.
camel_gopher 8y ago
You can lead by example without crowding others out. Set the example, then make room for others to execute on that. This is often the role of a coach.
qznc 8y ago
In other aspects a tech lead must lead by example. If the tech lead reviews pull requests in a sloppy way then the juniors will surely do so too. It does not mean that the tech lead should review all pull requests, of course.
clusmore 8y ago
Off-topic, I'm sorry but I just can't help it, the aggressive modal that pops up instantly when you view Medium enough as a non-signed in user drives me away instantly. I can't imagine continuing to post content on a platform that treats my readers so poorly.
- taneq 8y ago
  Ugh, I hate this. If a web site nags me like this, the one thing I will NOT do is whatever the popup wants.
  - alasdair_ 8y ago
    "Don't every close this page without subscribing!"
- rdlecler1 8y ago
  I’ve unbookmarked them and deleted their emails.
  - disqard 8y ago
    My strategy is to avoid Medium posts. I usually check out the comments to see if it's worth the annoyance, and if there's strongly positive feedback, I will read it.
- pnw_hazor 8y ago
  I have blacklisted medium.com so I will remember to never go their site. It works.
- jlengrand 8y ago
  It actually annoyed me enough that I made a chrome extension to auto-close them : https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/closeme/llkndphpekmhlloepjfjkfdnijciiklh https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/closeme/llkndphpek... ... I'm at about 2733 auto-closed popups so far.
  - kierenj 8y ago
    The link is broken, would you be able to fix please?
    - clusmore 8y ago
      I believe he is referring to https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/closeme/llkndphpekmhlloepjfjkfdnijciiklh https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/closeme/llkndphpek...
      - jlengrand 8y ago
        Thanks, you were faster than me. Source is here : https://github.com/jlengrand/closeme https://github.com/jlengrand/closeme Don't expect too much. I did this in 3 hours out of frustration :).
- baloki 8y ago
  If you’re using Safari, hitting the reading mode button in the address bar disables it and also gets rid of anything not related to the content which is nice. Works on a lot of sites too.
  - EvilTerran 8y ago
    Firefox's Reader View works great on Medium too.
- croisillon 8y ago
  At least the post is not complaining that people are writing on proprietary platforms instead of each own's website.
- expertentipp 8y ago
  Medium is the new experts exchange. I loathe each time someone sends me a link to yet another blog post on this platform.
jldugger 8y ago
Leadership by example is only one tool in the leadership toolbox, and if it's all you know you have, everything looks like a nail. But there's also times where it can be useful. In engineering orgs where senior engineers are treated as non-managerial technical leads, role power may not be available for holding people accountable to expectations. A brief set of scenarios for tech leads: - asking questions in public spaces. Many people avoid asking questions for fear of looking 'dumb' for not knowing the answer already, and when they do they ask questions of the narrowest set of people possible via email or DM. Having senior people modeling the behavior with genuine humility goes some way towards eliminating junior team member's fear of asking the questions to get the information they need to actually do their job. - actually documenting your Pull Requests. Plenty of senior technical folk pull this thing where they submit PRs with no description, either because they feel the code is obvious, because documentation is a waste of time, or because they discussed it with an office colleague who they expect to merge without comment. I've nudged my team towards documenting why a PR is valuable and how it accomplishes that, both through leadership by example --crafting well explained pull requests -- and by introducing PR templates: https://help.github.com/en/articles/creating-a-pull-request-template-for-your-repository https://help.github.com/en/articles/creating-a-pull-request-.... Which was itself introduced via a well explained PR =) - Apologizing to coworkers and customers. Generally speaking, apologies are free, and over my career I've learned a template for them: accept fault, apologize, and commit to do better. Emphatically, do not lie about things or make up mitigating circumstances. This is a recipe for repeat failure, and subsequent loss of trust amongst coworkers and customers. If you blame a process failure on a hardware failure, there is no expectation that you will make an investment in fixing the process! Leadership by example is a soft power, but still a power any leader should have access to, on a limited basis. Of course, nuance is unsuitable for headlines. > jumping on every pager alert immediately, being the first one to respond to team emails, constantly fielding questions on chat. Thoughts on this: - It's unclear this is behavior you expect of others, versus impose upon yourself. In particular, the competitive framing of showing up on the scene first is not immediately obvious to outside observers. It's not even internally consistent, you can't logically have ten _first_ responders. - When leadership views things as a competition, it's not clear who is 'supposed' to handle things. When I see people like James rushing to work on tasks X, Y, and Z, I imagine they like the task, and/or are ignoring equally non-urgent but important tasks A, B and C, and focus on those. For urgent tasks, leadership should serve as a backstop to an SLO, and make it clear who's job it is to meet that SLO. - Additionally, it's not clear to me that leadership by example was bad here so much as the destination they were being led towards was bad. Knowledge work often requires uninterrupted concentration, and spinning up a dozen engineers every page is a solid way to destroy their sprint's deliverables. I generally disable Slack notifications, shunt listservs to folders (and mark a good chunk as read) and silence most iMessage threads.
jaabe 8y ago
Doesn’t everyone lead by example, even if they don’t mean to? It’s anecdotal of course, but I’ve always been affected by how my manager behaves. That doesn’t mean you only lead by example though. Maybe I’m not reading it right, but the author seems to think that leading by example and setting clear expectations are mutually exclusive, and I don’t see why that would ever be the case. Management is a trade though, I’ve had technical managers and I’ve had manager managers, and I typically prefer the latter because it’s really hard to be a good X while you’re also a good manager. Tech lead positions where you make technical decisions but aren’t meant to actually manage people, motivation or finances are a little different, but I don’t see how you get out of setting a good example in those either.
watwut 8y ago
They seen his example, concluded that "this is ineffective" and did not emulated.
pnw_hazor 8y ago
The first rule of leadership is to never post articles on medium.com Such a dark-patterned mess.
sixhobbits 8y ago
Strong disagree. Doing all the work is not leading by example. Leading by Example would be handling the first emergency with a more junior engineer following along, or doing a write up of how you handled it and then asking someone else to handle next time. Not leading by example would be expecting your reports to deal with shit that you don't know how to and getting annoyed when they can't.
- kstenerud 8y ago
  Even worse: when you keep doing it yourself rather than delegating, you signal to your team that you don't trust them to do the job. Lead by example in character.
- nelsonic 8y ago
  So glad that the top comment on this thread is people disagreeing with this post! Leading by example is fundamental to success in any capacity. We cannot expect people we are attempting to lead/coach to do a task if we do not demonstrate that we know how to do it. It's like having a personal trainer who is a couch potato, it simply makes no sense! I really hope that other "tech leads" are not following this example! Put in the hours you expect others to work. Document your work the way expect others to. Write tested, maintainable & performant code as you wish others to. This is all leading by example!
  - triplee 8y ago
    I think you and the other top post folks are disagreeing with the title of the article, not the actual content of the article itself. The author agrees with you in that you should actually do the work (you're a tech lead not a PM or purely management) but also actually tell your team what is expected and enforce it, not just assume they'll see what you're doing and copy it.
  - Foxcoditrad54 8y ago
    You are actually in agreement with the author.
    - 8y ago
gtirloni 8y ago
Should be titled "Don't Lead by Bad Example". You were leading them into Hero Ops behavior when you should be leading by creating solutions and processes that made Hero Ops less necessary.
laythea 8y ago
"you’re a member of a team not the boss of the team." Surely the boss is still a member of the team, otherwise he is chilling, collecting pay checks for nothing. I don't like the ring fenced sub-team mentality that this comment allows. Bosses that are not a member of the team, are not proper bosses. Maybe "figureheads".
blazespin 8y ago
I think he meant to say don’t lead by setting an unrealistic example.

79 points by theBashShell 8y ago

Attention seeking headline, made up the article to fit.

"I was working 16 hour days and struggling to get the team on board, while instead just going overboard." I think this is the key takeaway. The author was leading by a BAD example. More time on task can lead to more productivity... but at the cost of your sanity. I think it's a common tactic in younger developers because they haven't really obtained that level of "ideal worker" they're striving for.

camel_gopher 8y ago

You can lead by example without crowding others out. Set the example, then make room for others to execute on that. This is often the role of a coach.

qznc 8y ago

In other aspects a tech lead must lead by example. If the tech lead reviews pull requests in a sloppy way then the juniors will surely do so too. It does not mean that the tech lead should review all pull requests, of course.

clusmore 8y ago

Off-topic, I'm sorry but I just can't help it, the aggressive modal that pops up instantly when you view Medium enough as a non-signed in user drives me away instantly. I can't imagine continuing to post content on a platform that treats my readers so poorly.

taneq 8y ago
Ugh, I hate this. If a web site nags me like this, the one thing I will NOT do is whatever the popup wants.
- alasdair_ 8y ago
  "Don't every close this page without subscribing!"
rdlecler1 8y ago
I’ve unbookmarked them and deleted their emails.
- disqard 8y ago
  My strategy is to avoid Medium posts. I usually check out the comments to see if it's worth the annoyance, and if there's strongly positive feedback, I will read it.
pnw_hazor 8y ago
I have blacklisted medium.com so I will remember to never go their site. It works.
jlengrand 8y ago
It actually annoyed me enough that I made a chrome extension to auto-close them : https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/closeme/llkndphpekmhlloepjfjkfdnijciiklh https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/closeme/llkndphpek... ... I'm at about 2733 auto-closed popups so far.
- kierenj 8y ago
  The link is broken, would you be able to fix please?
  - clusmore 8y ago
    I believe he is referring to https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/closeme/llkndphpekmhlloepjfjkfdnijciiklh https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/closeme/llkndphpek...
    - jlengrand 8y ago
      Thanks, you were faster than me. Source is here : https://github.com/jlengrand/closeme https://github.com/jlengrand/closeme Don't expect too much. I did this in 3 hours out of frustration :).
baloki 8y ago
If you’re using Safari, hitting the reading mode button in the address bar disables it and also gets rid of anything not related to the content which is nice. Works on a lot of sites too.
- EvilTerran 8y ago
  Firefox's Reader View works great on Medium too.
croisillon 8y ago
At least the post is not complaining that people are writing on proprietary platforms instead of each own's website.
expertentipp 8y ago
Medium is the new experts exchange. I loathe each time someone sends me a link to yet another blog post on this platform.

jldugger 8y ago

Leadership by example is only one tool in the leadership toolbox, and if it's all you know you have, everything looks like a nail. But there's also times where it can be useful. In engineering orgs where senior engineers are treated as non-managerial technical leads, role power may not be available for holding people accountable to expectations. A brief set of scenarios for tech leads: - asking questions in public spaces. Many people avoid asking questions for fear of looking 'dumb' for not knowing the answer already, and when they do they ask questions of the narrowest set of people possible via email or DM. Having senior people modeling the behavior with genuine humility goes some way towards eliminating junior team member's fear of asking the questions to get the information they need to actually do their job. - actually documenting your Pull Requests. Plenty of senior technical folk pull this thing where they submit PRs with no description, either because they feel the code is obvious, because documentation is a waste of time, or because they discussed it with an office colleague who they expect to merge without comment. I've nudged my team towards documenting why a PR is valuable and how it accomplishes that, both through leadership by example --crafting well explained pull requests -- and by introducing PR templates: https://help.github.com/en/articles/creating-a-pull-request-template-for-your-repository https://help.github.com/en/articles/creating-a-pull-request-.... Which was itself introduced via a well explained PR =) - Apologizing to coworkers and customers. Generally speaking, apologies are free, and over my career I've learned a template for them: accept fault, apologize, and commit to do better. Emphatically, do not lie about things or make up mitigating circumstances. This is a recipe for repeat failure, and subsequent loss of trust amongst coworkers and customers. If you blame a process failure on a hardware failure, there is no expectation that you will make an investment in fixing the process! Leadership by example is a soft power, but still a power any leader should have access to, on a limited basis. Of course, nuance is unsuitable for headlines. > jumping on every pager alert immediately, being the first one to respond to team emails, constantly fielding questions on chat. Thoughts on this: - It's unclear this is behavior you expect of others, versus impose upon yourself. In particular, the competitive framing of showing up on the scene first is not immediately obvious to outside observers. It's not even internally consistent, you can't logically have ten _first_ responders. - When leadership views things as a competition, it's not clear who is 'supposed' to handle things. When I see people like James rushing to work on tasks X, Y, and Z, I imagine they like the task, and/or are ignoring equally non-urgent but important tasks A, B and C, and focus on those. For urgent tasks, leadership should serve as a backstop to an SLO, and make it clear who's job it is to meet that SLO. - Additionally, it's not clear to me that leadership by example was bad here so much as the destination they were being led towards was bad. Knowledge work often requires uninterrupted concentration, and spinning up a dozen engineers every page is a solid way to destroy their sprint's deliverables. I generally disable Slack notifications, shunt listservs to folders (and mark a good chunk as read) and silence most iMessage threads.

jaabe 8y ago

Doesn’t everyone lead by example, even if they don’t mean to? It’s anecdotal of course, but I’ve always been affected by how my manager behaves. That doesn’t mean you only lead by example though. Maybe I’m not reading it right, but the author seems to think that leading by example and setting clear expectations are mutually exclusive, and I don’t see why that would ever be the case. Management is a trade though, I’ve had technical managers and I’ve had manager managers, and I typically prefer the latter because it’s really hard to be a good X while you’re also a good manager. Tech lead positions where you make technical decisions but aren’t meant to actually manage people, motivation or finances are a little different, but I don’t see how you get out of setting a good example in those either.

watwut 8y ago

They seen his example, concluded that "this is ineffective" and did not emulated.

pnw_hazor 8y ago

The first rule of leadership is to never post articles on medium.com Such a dark-patterned mess.

sixhobbits 8y ago

Strong disagree. Doing all the work is not leading by example. Leading by Example would be handling the first emergency with a more junior engineer following along, or doing a write up of how you handled it and then asking someone else to handle next time. Not leading by example would be expecting your reports to deal with shit that you don't know how to and getting annoyed when they can't.

kstenerud 8y ago
Even worse: when you keep doing it yourself rather than delegating, you signal to your team that you don't trust them to do the job. Lead by example in character.
nelsonic 8y ago
So glad that the top comment on this thread is people disagreeing with this post! Leading by example is fundamental to success in any capacity. We cannot expect people we are attempting to lead/coach to do a task if we do not demonstrate that we know how to do it. It's like having a personal trainer who is a couch potato, it simply makes no sense! I really hope that other "tech leads" are not following this example! Put in the hours you expect others to work. Document your work the way expect others to. Write tested, maintainable & performant code as you wish others to. This is all leading by example!
- triplee 8y ago
  I think you and the other top post folks are disagreeing with the title of the article, not the actual content of the article itself. The author agrees with you in that you should actually do the work (you're a tech lead not a PM or purely management) but also actually tell your team what is expected and enforce it, not just assume they'll see what you're doing and copy it.
- Foxcoditrad54 8y ago
  You are actually in agreement with the author.
  - 8y ago

gtirloni 8y ago

Should be titled "Don't Lead by Bad Example". You were leading them into Hero Ops behavior when you should be leading by creating solutions and processes that made Hero Ops less necessary.

laythea 8y ago

"you’re a member of a team not the boss of the team." Surely the boss is still a member of the team, otherwise he is chilling, collecting pay checks for nothing. I don't like the ring fenced sub-team mentality that this comment allows. Bosses that are not a member of the team, are not proper bosses. Maybe "figureheads".

blazespin 8y ago

I think he meant to say don’t lead by setting an unrealistic example.