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I've always felt the concept of leadership is looked at the wrong way. Whether in the workplace or even in politics. Leaders are not at the top, they are the f
by grawprog 6y ago
I've always felt the concept of leadership is looked at the wrong way. Whether in the workplace or even in politics.
Leaders are not at the top, they are the foundation of everything. A good leader is the base of the team. The foundation the team is built on. They hold the team together from the bottom. Bearing the weight of responsibility and direction.
A good leader understands, their team's success is their success and their team's failure is their failure.
Anything can only be as strong as the foundation that holds it together. A leader who tries to stand at the top leaves no foundation for the team to work off and instead expects the team to bear their weight.
A leadership role is something that should be taken on with trepidation and the understanding that you're taking on responsibility for the people working with you.
It's up to you to guide things and yes it's you that takes the blame if things don't work.
- cannabis_sam 6y ago> A good leader is the base of the team. The foundation the team is built on. They hold the team together from the bottom. Bearing the weight of responsibility and direction. After doing consulting for the last couple of years, I’m slowly realizing how lucky I was to have stumbled into a small company with a CEO with this approach, right after uni. He ended up writing a rudimentary, inefficient cms in java, filled with strange lispisms, but goddammit it worked as an amazing stopgap until I was available to make something more useable. That’s true leadership to me.
- grawprog 6y agoI've worked for both kinds of leaders. The companies with the kind of leader I describe above were by far the better places to work. The businesses always ran more smoothly, employee turnover was low, there was never usually interpersonal issues, and when problems like that did crop up, they were always solved quickly and by the end amicably. A leader really can make or break a workplace. A good one can make any job feel good to go to, while a bad one can make the best job in the world feel like a living hell.
- cannabis_sam 6y agoThanks for your answer!
- _greim_ 6y agoMaybe even the term "leader" is starting to show its age. Successful decision-making is (has to be) distributed in modern society, where skills are fragmented into so many specialties.
- grawprog 6y agoAgreed, decision maker seems like a good stand in. A good decision maker is able to take, as you say, people whose >skills are fragmented into so many specialties. And successfully organize those people into a functioning unit to accomplish a goal.
- bumby 6y agoI think part of the error is that people have a misconception that a leader should have all the answers. The best leaders I've worked for don't come into an interaction feeling this pressure, but rather help coordinate the energies of the team to let the the team reach the best answer. Of course, when there isn't a consensus, there needs to be a unambiguous "decider", but hopefully this is relatively rare and ends up being just small enough of a decision to get enough feedback to get the team to an iterative consensus.
- analog31 6y agoIndeed, and I wonder if we place too much emphasis on leadership when most managers would benefit from just trying to be better managers. I think a really good manager is a joy to behold, even if they don't have a leadership bone in their body.
- edoceo 6y agoDirector is used in lots of places
- specialist 6y agoSame. Younger me devoured Peter Drucker's advice. Judging from my lavish lifestyle (not), you can see how that worked out for me.