14 ms·

Transparent leadership beats servant leadership

514 points by ibobev 11mo ago

dpflan 11mo ago
With "servant leadership" in its current form being attributed to Greenleaf, here is the "source of truth" on servant leadership: https://greenleaf.org/what-is-servant-leadership/ https://greenleaf.org/what-is-servant-leadership/ "Growth" of those being led is a key concept it seems, which I would think is really only possible when the leader doesn't do everything by themselves as a die-hard servant, but utilizes the "leadership" part to help subordinates learn to lead themselves. Granted this realm of ideas can be a gray-area, but it seems like servant leadership as presented by the author here does not incorporate the concept of growing those that they lead -- as indicated by the fact they have self-invented a new "buzzword" which actually seems to be involve the behaviors as laid out by servant leadership -- am I missing something?
kagrenac 11mo ago
I've noticed a number of pieces lately that seem to suggest that managers and leaders doing nothing is actually good. It's been this way for a while - "bring me solutions, not problems" is the classic boss's abdication, placing themselves above their teams as judges and deciders rather than leaders - but I wonder if this current glut is caused by AI anxiety. After all, if your job is to just choose between options that other people will implement, why not have Claude do that? But if it's a good thing for your boss to do nothing, maybe he can keep his job.
- ramon156 11mo ago
  Sometimes bosses will repeat your idea to sound like he solutioned it for you, without taking e.g. workload or priority into account. I haven't met a boss that wasn't incompetent. Not saying they don't exist, though.
- aranelsurion 11mo ago
  > “bring me solutions, not problems" If someone says this unprompted, I’d suspect they aren’t a manager, they aren’t even an employee. They provide roughly the same input one provides while ordering food at a restaurant. Basically they are a customer, but also on the payroll. That being said, there are some cases where this might be said out of frustration. I’ve seen in my life a few people whose output is mostly finding and bringing issues to the table for someone else (who?) to magically solve them. That still brings some value, and maybe they’d make excellent auditors, but it wears the team and maybe their managers down.
  - cgearhart 11mo ago
    When I say something like this it usually means “I don’t want to dictate your job to you. You’re here because you’re smart, ambitious, and capable. We’ve talked at length in team settings and 1:1 about our goals. What do you think are the problems that need attention, and what solutions do you propose?” The anti-pattern I’ve seen from some folks is that they never want to propose solutions because then it’s someone else’s fault if those fail. These folks often demonstrate minimal ownership of any decisions, so they don’t feel bad complaining about all the problems they see. Not only is that unhelpful, it can actually be very toxic for the team. (As you mentioned.) So when I’m saying “bring solutions” what I’m really asking for is some shared ownership of the choices and consequences—I’m asking folks to act like the main character in the story. And don’t worry, I own the consequences of the mistakes in my team to my leadership—this isn’t about throwing them under the bus. (Getting this to work well requires a lot of trust both ways.)
    - jmye 11mo ago
      > When I say something like this it usually means… Yes, exactly. This isn’t “do my job for me”, this is “do the job you have, and solve the problems you should be able to solve”. It’s also, at times, “pointing at fires is junior shit - find a fire extinguisher while you call 911.”
      - cgearhart 11mo ago
        I love the way you phrased this.
- AnimalMuppet 11mo ago
  But see, Claude can do nothing even better than it can choose between options. So why should that boss keep his job again? "Bring me solutions, not problems" can mean "You are a competent, knowledgeable employee, who has identified a problem. You know enough to look at the alternatives and decide which is best, or at least which ones are workable. Bring me that, not just the problem." And if it does mean that, it's empowering. You with your hands on the situation, you get to tell the boss what you think the best answer is, and the boss backstops you from deciding something that won't work in the bigger picture.
alistairSH 11mo ago
I was never taught that servant leadership should be some weird "manager as parent" relationship. Instead, servant leadership implies the manager serves the team (as the name implies). That includes removing impediments, but also includes empowering the team, ensuring their careers are growing, etc.
- mergy 11mo ago
  Yes indeed. Thank you.
- rietta 11mo ago
  Very succinct, I agree. I honestly have never heard anyone—even those executing it poorly—try to frame Servant Leadership the way the original author did here (the "curling parent" analogy). I have certainly seen people fail badly at practicing this style, but that failure was invariably due to a lack of character, poor communication skills, or other individual execution matters, not an issue with the core concept of servant leadership itself.
- awb 11mo ago
  Exactly. It’s the concept of a management chart as an inverted pyramid with each layer holding up and supporting the layer above them. If you imagine a promotion as working your way down the corporate pyramid, then it’s easier to see how the managers at the bottom are carrying more weight and deserving of higher pay. As opposed to a pyramid where it’s visually represented as the broader management layers supporting the layers above them. In a pyramid, it looks like the CEO has a cushy, overpaid job. In an inverted pyramid it looks like they have the weight and responsibility of the company on their shoulders.
phoronixrly 11mo ago
You see, this only works in orgs that don't suck. It breaks down the moment employees must be manipulated in some way to the benefit of the company and to the detriment of the employees. Unfortunately a regular occurrence even in countries that have employee protection laws.
yet-another-guy 11mo ago
This is just trying too hard. "Servant Leadership" is a buzzword invented to divert the general opinion from the power mechanics that hierarchical organizations are funded upon, i.e., the boss (sorry, leader) commands and the direct reports execute. Being "servant" basically just means being a decent human being, as per putting people in the right condition to carry out their duties, not coming up with unrealistic expectations, and do the required 1:1 coaching/mentoring for career development. Hand-helding employees as this "blocker removal" interpretation of servant leadership seems to imply is just the pathway to micromanagement. It's ok to shield your juniors from the confusing world of corporate politics, but if your direct reports need you to do a lot of the sanitization/maturation of work items and requirements then why should you even trust their outputs? At that point you're basically just using them as you would prompt an AI agent, double- and triple-checking everything they do, checking-in 3 times a day, etc. This "transparent" leadership is the servant leadership, or what it's intended to be anyway in an ideal world. Some elements of it are easily applicable, like the whole coaching/connecting/teaching, but they also are the least measurable in terms of impact. The "making yourself redundant", i.e., by avoiding being the bottleneck middle-man without whose approval/scrutiny nothing can get done is fantasy for flat organizations or magical rainbowland companies where ICs and managers are on the exact same salary scale. And it will continue to be as long as corporate success (and career-growth opportunities) is generally measured as a factor of number of reports / size of org. managed.
- zeroq 11mo ago
  "Servant leadership" is not a buzzword but it's been misused and abused by Big Corporations to the point that it basically lost its meaning [1]. For me - personally - the idea is about being less of a boss and more of a nightwatchman or janitor. I believe in agency and ownership and - in sane environment - people can be left alone with clear objectives. It's more about removing obstacles. I'll give you a simple example. Once a week a maid comes to our apartment. Despite a clear power balance disproportion (it's easier to find a new maid than a senior engineer) and her being used to being transparent and prioritizing to not disturb tenants for me it's the other way around. I'm super happy to hastily finish a call or leave my room is she feels the need to disturb me, and if she needs an extra pair of hands I'm happy to help her with anything. After all, I'm more interested with the final result than feeling important. We have a bucket list of tasks than has to be performed that slightly exceeds her capacity and she has a full right to prioritize things. It took my a while but I eventually convinced her that it's ok to skip things - like cleaning the windows - if she's feeling under the weather or it's cold outside rather than faking it. Most of the pointy hairs I worked in corporate environments would probably prepare a list of requirements and walked through the apartment with a checklist every time she would finish giving her a full, harsh performance review. But that doesn't build trust and long term relationship. And after some time she developed - what people around here call ownership - and sometimes I feel she cares about the household more than I do. Hope that makes sense.
CodeMage 11mo ago
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 life easier for the manager, regardless of what the manager's reports really need. I've seen this whole "I will empower you to do everything on your own" principle in action and it's exhausting. Especially when the word "empower" is a used as a euphemism for "have you take on additional responsibilities". Look, boss, sometimes empowering me is just what I need, but sometimes I need you to solve a specific problem for me, so I can keep solving all the other problems I already have on my plate.
- zoeysmithe 11mo ago
  Yep, this is just a ploy to create a PMC that actually has no skill workers in it. You just shove MBAs, nepos, etc into these roles and just have them gobble up some managerial course which is often nothing but: delegate, CYA, and 'manage expectations.' I dont think we need to go back to the old ideas of The Manager who is Above It All and Doesn't Get Their Hands Dirty. At least at middle levels.
- Forgeties79 11mo ago
  >Look, boss, sometimes empowering me is just what I need, but sometimes I need you to solve a specific problem for me, so I can keep solving all the other problems I already have on my plate. One of the reasons I really like my current manager is he spends a lot more time reminding us he can/offering to "take care of any blockers." His whole management style can be summed up as "Why is it blocked? Ok, leave it to me." Frankly I love it. If it's something we should take care of he's very specific about it too.
  - eithed 11mo ago
    Agree and follow this principle to certain degree, however there are caveats here - something being a blocker shouldn't prevent you from trying to resolve the blockers by yourself or work with your boss to resolve them ie - "hey boss, I'm blocked with task A with refactor of this code; are you happy for me to do XYZ?". Then I have options to say: "yes! excellent! go ahead!" or "no, we need to do ASD here" or "no, we cannot do XYZ right now". If every time people encountering blockers would come to me to resolve them, or wait until they're resolved I'd not get anything done. On the flipside, if every time a blocker is encountered people were to handle it themselves, then a) it might not align with my vision on what actually needs to be done here b) I'm blindsighted with what was actually done. Clear boundaries and strategies eliminate these caveats = team members are aligned on what they can make decision for and general direction the team is heading towards.
kentf 11mo ago
Love this, thank you for sharing.
bbstats 11mo ago
this is so silly. porque no los dos?
great_wubwub 11mo ago
I once worked for a guy who'd obviously seen the term Servant Leadership on a bumper sticker somewhere and figured that meant he was the leader and we were the servants. Worst boss I ever had, and I've been doing this 30+ years and have had a bunch of bad bosses. Why not just 'competent leadership', where 'competent' means 'figure out what your people need you to do and do it'?
onion2k 11mo ago
"Servant Leadership" is a term was coined by Robert Greenleaf in his 1977 book "Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness", which is very specifically about being a church leader. Many of the more generic ideas are applicable in any leadership scenario but if you read the book it's very clear that it was not designed with business leadership in mind. You shouldn't really expect it to apply to being a leader in a tech company.
- codingdave 11mo ago
  Many terms and frameworks evolve beyond their original intent, so I'm not too worried that this has evolved, too. I've always found it is easier to understand servant leadership as the opposite end of the spectrum from autocratic leadership: Is the leader primarily concerned about growing their own power/success, or growing the power/success of those who work for them? There is a lot of middle ground between those two extremes, but without that contrast in mind, you can easily lose track of what the terms mean. The article does a decent job of trying to find a healthier middle ground, IMO.
  - bluGill 11mo ago
    The problem is when things evolve we no longer know if someone refers to the evolved form or the original. Or more importantly if the evolved form retains the important parts of the original.
    - f1shy 11mo ago
      Exactly. And like evolution, what of the millions of species it evolved to are referring to. IMHO either stick with the original, or say “like X with following changes/details” or just go with a new thing.
  - onion2k 11mo ago
    The problem with servant leadership is twofold: Firstly, in 'proper' servant leadership as taught by Greenleaf the leader is supposed to put the church before their own needs and wants. It is not about serving the people who report to you; it's about serving the organisation first. In a business context that's horribly toxic and a great way to spend years being exploited by a company that will grind you to burnout for very little money. Thankfully most people don't actually follow what Greenleaf teaches because they think it's about the people. Secondly though, people don't bother to read much about it. They hear the term and a basic summary, and then fill in the blanks based on their own biases and assumptions. Consequently when someone says they practise servant leadership you can't know what they mean unless you know them well. People who practise their version of servant leadership assume other people mean the same thing by it, and automatically align themselves with that person based on (probably) false assumptions. It is not a helpful term because it's used for a huge range of leadership styles.
deleted 11mo ago
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neilv 11mo ago
Some good points to think about. But also note that sometimes you can shield and assist a team on things you can't be transparent about with the team. So a hybrid of the two schools of thought might be better than either one (depending on the larger org).
usernamed7 11mo ago
They just described servant leadership and called it something else. It's not about parenting or treating people like children.
hartator 11mo ago
> Teach a man to to fish “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Don’t teach a man to fish… and you feed yourself. He’s a grown man. And fishing’s not that hard.”
didip 11mo ago
Can’t wait for AI Slack plugins to replace all low tier middle managers. You can achieve so much transparency since the data is already out there anyway. There has to be a better way to organize how ICs communicate. More productivity to unlock.
- esafak 11mo ago
  That's not going to fix the social problems. What happens when your team needs something from another team?
  - mattm 11mo ago
    Your AI agent asks their AI agent
vinceguidry 11mo ago
Author gives own take on what they thinks servant leadership means, then invents a supposedly different kind of leadership that is just servant leadership, taken into a different context than the original church one, then gives it a new name, one that doesn't really tie into their definition.
jppope 11mo ago
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_ADP-6-22-C1-FINAL-WEB.pdf 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 leadership.
- AndrewKemendo 11mo ago
  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.
  - lostlogin 11mo ago
    It sounds like you have been burnt, badly. There is surely a business out there that does fit your world view, though the pay and conditions might not. In my view, the need for growth at any cost is toxic and leads to all sorts of horrible behaviours.
    - AndrewKemendo 11mo ago
      There are no good organizations, only ones that aren’t completely corrupt yet. Consider that to start and maintain an organization takes significant capital and energy expenditures upfront, which means you need to fund them from somewhere and ask sources of funding are corrupted. Consider: there are no long lasting egalitarian, distributed power, grassroots organizations that can compete at a level of social influence that can overcome or resist the existing power structure. I’ve looked at every possible organization that could theoretically fit including; MSF a.k.a. doctors without borders, swords to plowshares, goodwill industries (who employ significant numbers of disabled people for sub min wages while the CEO makes 3M+), Mondragon etc… and they all have exactly the same fucked up incentives why? because there is no way to survive as a structure, if your org is made up of people who want to eat and don’t want to be a monk. unless your organization is the lead maximalist resource dominator you will be overrun by some organization with no ethics Ultimately it comes down to the fact that people have to trade physical and mental work for money to survive. So there is no alternative to do the “right thing” without also risking your own safety and stability in your chosen society. 99.99999% of people are completely unwilling to risk their life on behalf of any particular philosophy - if only because those people don’t feel strongly enough about any particular philosophy to actually put themselves on the line for it. So whoever has the most money, has the ability to get the most people to work for their goals. Unfortunately the people with all the money/power do not care about anything other than growing their own personal power
pragma_x 11mo ago
I must have misunderstood what "Servant Leadership" actually is. I identify as such, but I also do just about all of the "Transparent Leadership" things called out in the article. I may have to re-evaluate my orientation. There's only one place I disagree and that's when it comes to empowering the team to do every last thing within your charge ("become redundant"). Depending on the organization, there are some actions that only a manager is empowered to do. Someone still needs to be present to weigh in on disputes/arguments, break ties, handle performance, reviews, interviews, PIPs, dismissals, and handle _other_ managers when necessary. It's simply not possible delegate these things and in the case of dealing with other managers, can imperil a person's employment. Also, I would caution anyone to avoid directly comparing management to parenthood, even as a metaphor. A lot of people have terrible parents, and so model the worst behaviors: they can't nurture a houseplant let alone a human being. I've seen people like this bring the worst possible models for management into the workplace this way, and they do a ton of damage to businesses, psyches, and careers in return. Instead, I urge anyone to look to the carpenter/gardener dichotomy and how good leadership requires a bit of both: https://www.intellicoach.com/ep14/ https://www.intellicoach.com/ep14/
- alistairSH 11mo ago
  I must have misunderstood what "Servant Leadership" actually is. You did not. Or, at least we share an understanding of what the term means which differs substantially from the author's.
mergy 11mo ago
This article is a great example of the Strawman Fallacy. I suppose it's a method to generate traffic but I would argue a key aspect of servant leadership is being transparent that you are in a role that should collectively support and lead to enable and expand the team. I feel attributing any sort of parental concepts belittles the meaning here.
chzblck 11mo ago
Coming from the Sales world sometimes I don't want to be taught to fish. I'm coming to my VP for help because I already tried diff baits, went to diff ponds, and tried diff reels. I'm coming for a fish finder not a lecture on maybe my casting was off
dogman144 11mo ago
Not a great post, I’d not follow it if interested in leading teams long term. A Self-admitted self taught manager learns the good parts about servant leadership via self-learning (nice!) but figures that is all there is instead of - “this is interesting, this seems to work but have gaps, what is there to this?” If the author did that, they’d discover a massive body of knowledge to include the specific problem they point out - you solve problems for your team, how do they start to solve their own problems? Servant leadership works if paired with the following, tuned to the capabilities and maturities of the specific employee: - servant leadership: resource your team, umbrella your team, let the smart people you hired do smart things, or turn so so employees into great ones by resourcing them to learn, getting them mentorship, and “sun is strong than cold wind” sort of thinking. - Left/right limits and target outcome: consistently inform your team their duty, in exchange for all the above manager work that’s way past the least-effort bar, is to get comfortable solving problems within the bounds of what the solution does and does not need to look like. Force this issue always, and they start solving their own problems at growing speed, and you have a QA check as a manager via documenting those boundaries per project etc - train your replacement: part serving your team is reaching there’s probably another sociopath on it who wants to lead teams, wants raw power, and so on. Enable that! Teach them how to lead teams in the above fashion. They’ll realize it works. You’ll train someone who can take over the remaining problem solving. This won’t hurt your own job either. Put it all together you’ll get very loyal productive teams of employees who’ll respect you outside of work in your industry where it matters for networking purposes, and you can live with yourself after the laptop closes as you know you’re treating your fellow man/woman the right way while surving in crazy corporate environments. In short, bad advice in that article. There’s a whole corpus to leadership beyond what the author figured out in the side and describes here ha. Edit - ironically the author then argues for arguably similar as the above, but claims it’s something else of their own invention. Engineers should really grok how there are existing bodies of very useful knowledge for all the things that seem easily dismissible as gaps or weak points from tho social sciences. It’d save them a lot of time.
MrDrDr 11mo ago
IMO: I think there is a helpful distinction to be made between leadership and management. Leadership provides purpose and inspiration. Management provides, coordination and motivation. I’m not saying one person can’t do both. I do agree that most management books read like parenting books - but I’d add that whats more important than the method is consistency in whatever approach you believe in. I’m not sure that managers/leaders will ever do that well relying on a book or a special ‘way’ they have read. They really need to have worked this out for themselves.
ordinaryradical 11mo ago
I think this has somewhat strawmanned “servant leadership,” which is more about humility in posture than purely intercepting annoyances and blockers, but nevertheless the conclusions are solid.
simonw 11mo ago
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 projects are high priority, and protecting them from the shit doesn't actually help with that at all.
- wmeredith 11mo ago
  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.
- michaelcampbell 11mo ago
  You CAN tell the team it's raining and details of the weather without letting them get overly wet. There's middle ground here.
- kepeko 11mo ago
  Agree. team needs to know about the shit. It's important information that helps them prioritize their work and motivates them as they know that what they do is important for the bigger bosses. If manager shields me from everything I go apathetic, not knowing why I even do the boring stuff if manager doesn't tell me his manager is giving shit
  - taurath 11mo ago
    I hate having to rely on my own sense of what happened in a meeting, or which executive is upset about something. While its usually accurate, it's been borne out of chaotic leadership and shouldn't be necessary, especially if its to try to get off the tracks when a freight train is coming. Sometimes the culture of poor management is so ingrained and normalized people really don't understand what the problem is. That usually ends with me looking elsewhere, as taking on the responsibility other's won't while not having authority has lead to multiple full years lost to burnout.
RA_Fisher 11mo ago
Excellent analysis. It’s like: servant of whom (themselves)?
ChrisMarshallNY 11mo ago
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.
- Traubenfuchs 11mo ago
  If the dishonesty worked, you never know it happened! So you can never tell how much of it there really is…
  - ChrisMarshallNY 11mo ago
    > If the dishonesty worked Try it in an old-fashioned Japanese company, and let me know how it works out. They tend to verify a lot. I saw some real disasters, when their culture clashed with modern SV culture.
ponooqjoqo 11mo ago
We should stop normalizing referring to managers or employers as leaders. These are different things.
shevy-java 11mo ago
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.
derekcheng08 11mo ago
The biggest omission that immediately stands out to me is: "provides a clear sense of direction". I've seen so many examples of teams and organizations that experience a lack of clarity, with all sorts of negative downstream consequences - muddled strategies, moving goalposts, fatigue/low morale. Having a leader that can provide that clarity is so important.
weitendorf 11mo ago
Kind of a weird hyper-literal interpretation of "servant leadership" IMO. Upskilling and empowering your team, not making yourself a SPOF, treating your adult colleagues like adults, all sounds like servant leadership to me...
ef2k 11mo ago
I think the premise is a little shaky since a good servant leader is already transparent. But there's some good takeaways. Leaders should inform their team of what's happening behind the scenes and allow them to understand why things are playing out the way they are. Allowing people to take on more responsibility, if they want it, is a healthy sign of an organization, but it shouldn't be imposed nor expected if they already have enough on their plates.
herval 11mo ago
> Servant leadership seems to me a lot like curling parenting: the leader/parent anticipate problems and sweep the way for their direct reports/children. That's not what "Servant leadership" is. It's about _letting the team lead_ - and they can come to you if they need help - instead of _pushing the team_. So in practice it's the opposite of anticipating problems. If something, servant leadership gets a bad rep for being used as an excuse to let people fall on the sword, instead of protecting them The rest of the post is just describing the role of "Management".
siliconc0w 11mo ago
The problem I've found with servant leadership in large orgs is the direct manager usually has little agency over problems. The best you can get is maybe they can provide additional context on the good intentions behind the bad decisions. This is essentially by design, a critical role they play are to be the scape goats and shock absorbers for the bad machinery above them.
zetazzed 11mo ago
This is actually not such bad advice for a manager who manages other managers, though I can see why ICs find it very frustrating. If you are giving high level platitudes and counseling-disguised-as-coaching to a junior new hire, they can rightly ask WTF. But managers, especially those recently moved from IC tech roles, often do benefit from this kind of forced introspection. If they have an underperforming employee, they should bounce ideas around with a more experienced manager, but the first line manager ultimately needs to be the one deciding how to rebalance work to maximize learning or to ultimately make the call to part ways with the employee. If a servant senior leader over them is actually doing the slog of working through the hardest issues (interpersonal conflict, serious direction change needed for team, firing people, top performers at risk of leaving), the first line manager is never going to grow. Similarly "cut out the middleman" advice in the article is great for senior ICs/quasi-architects or sub-managers but potentially toxic for junior engineers who may get steamrolled by the classic "1000 urgent requests issue" that managers or potentially very senior ICs need to drive.
- dpark 11mo ago
  Why is forced introspection good for managers but not for ICs? I’m not saying that the extreme “I do nothing except act as a sounding board and tell my team to solve their own problems” is a good approach. But pushing people to solve their own problems does help them grow. It needs to be a balance. A good manager should be able to see what someone is capable of solving with zero, a little, or a lot of help and engage accordingly. And sometimes they can’t solve it at all and the manager has to take it in directly or pull in someone else who can.
adverbly 11mo ago
Between the article and the comments in this thread there is actually some pretty good advice here and reasonable and nuanced takes to management. Bit surprised by this. Has the hn community aged into management or something? I guess we are not as young and naive as we used to be...
browningstreet 11mo ago
In a world where we've walked away from master/slave, blacklists.. why is servant still being used?
- deleted 11mo ago
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- ahoka 11mo ago
  What historical systematic injustice do you associate this word with?
  - 9rx 11mo ago
    Serfdom.
krosaen 11mo ago
The founder of Zingerman's (famous deli and family of businesses in Ann Arbor) description of servant leadership is a bit more complete and overlaps heavily with what the author of this post is advocating for: https://www.zingtrain.com/article/servant-leadership/ https://www.zingtrain.com/article/servant-leadership/
maxdtroll 11mo ago
I've come to define Leadership as "The ability to smooth things out for everyone while helping them accomplish their goals" I think it helps differentiate the "authoritarian" leader or the "Servant leadership" from the "legitimate" one. All kinds of leadership (sports, education, business, relationships) come from understanding people's needs and providing more efficient strategies to meet them.
codyb 11mo ago
Managing upwards beats being managed in my experience. Seems to work with most managers, and reduces surprises which reduces stress all around and causes course corrections and course alignments earlier. I tend to do status updates in public channels before anyone can ask me but I've been the fortunate loner for the last couple years where I get to work with a lot of people but outside a lot of process.
lunarcave 11mo ago
I can't remember where I heard this, but the moment it flipped for me is when someone phrased this as - "be a heat shield". A heat shield has some leakage of heat that the people inside know that there's heat, but enough cover that the team is shielded somewhat.
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
rietta 11mo ago
I think the author is significantly straw-manning the concept of servant leadership. The short take presented in the article doesn't match my lived experience with this style, both in secular and faith-based circles. The core idea is absolutely not that of a "curling parent." Instead, it embodies living the walk, walking the talk, and putting the team's needs before your own ego. In fact, this profound concept goes all the way back to Jesus Christ, who modeled it by washing the feet of his disciples—a task reserved for the lowliest servant of the time. This act was deliberately shocking and context-defying. He effectively "turned the world upside down" by saying, "Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all." I'm not trying to proof-text, but this idea is ancient and deep. It's a profound leadership style that is unfortunately often executed poorly or misunderstood by modern practitioners. Poor execution doesn't invalidate the concept itself.
trunnell 11mo ago
Having a bad manager in past roles can be some of the best "manager training." If one your past managers did something recommended in this article but it caused problems, that's ok! It just means you have seen another failure mode that the author didn't experience. I remember being in a meeting with a bunch of the best managers at a former company. "Why did you originally want to be a manager?" was one of the first questions passed around the circle. The most common answer was, "I had this one really bad manager and I figured that surely I could do better."
- Devasta 11mo ago
  > I had this one really bad manager and I figured that surely I could do better. The only thing worse than being invited to a lot of meetings is not being invited to those meetings.
- mrguyorama 11mo ago
  >"I had this one really bad manager and I figured that surely I could do better." That doesn't mean that those people are learning from prior bad management. That could instead mean that management tends to be people who are convinced of their own above average competence. Did anyone ask the reports of those managers whether they were any good?
ErrantX 11mo ago
I suspect this is written by someone who stepped into managing a team and no further. My reflection overall is; he's probably heard of servant leadership but not understood it? It's not about sweeping away problems but more a mindset that your role is to empower. I feel strongly that all new managers should embrace and get good at this because it instills the mindset that the best leaders ultimately only succeed through their team. A servant leader who becomes overworked is either not doing their job well (delegation isn't contrary to the mindset!) or, more likely, has a poor leader themselvesw. I actually love the concept of transparent leadership but sadly I can't see it come through in his points. They are all things a good leader, a good servant leader, should also do. For me transparent leadership becomes more critical as you move up the stack. Once you get to multiple teams or teams of teams leaders must pivot strongly to strategy setting, and in this your servant leadership comes in painting a clear destination for everyone to get to. At this point I believe the best leaders are genuinely transparent and the worst keep secrets. One of my most respected mentors framed it as deliberately over-sharing. Which I love, even if I get into trouble for it constantly! (I do like the writers anarchic streak; the best leaders are radicals)
hintymad 11mo ago
> continuously trains their replacement, and > generally makes themselves redundant. This is the advice we get from many business books and leadership advices. However, I see more often than not leaders in a company do the opposite to keep their power. There is a missing link to making the good advice actionable: what can the leader do to keep becoming more valuable while making themselves "redundant".
jjk166 11mo ago
Comparing leadership to parenting right out the gate tells me all I need to know about this person's management ability. Your direct reports are not children. You are not raising them out of an altruistic drive to guide the next generation. You are a part of a team of grown adults. You are not above the team, you have a roll on the team. It is an important roll: as a leader you provide high level direction so people are working towards the appropriate goal and confident it is achievable. Likely you are also acting as a manager, coordinating resources and resolving internal and external stakeholder conflicts. This makes the team more efficient, it's important. But the people you are leading are the ones actually doing the work. They are likely more skilled at their particular role than you, and knowledgeable about much more. You are not leading them because you are better, you are leading them because that's how you can best contribute to the team. Leadership has absolutely nothing to do with coaching, connecting, teaching, explaining, linking, growth inducing, or training their subordinates. Zero. Zip. Nada. It is the role of more senior practitioners to mentor their more junior colleagues. Leaders often are drawn from more senior ranks, so it's not uncommon for a person in a leadership role to also be in a mentoring role, but they are two separate and unrelated positions. If anything, the most important skill of a good leader is effectively soliciting the right information and wisdom from the right team members so they can most effectively leverage their team's expertise. You shouldn't be teaching everyone how to communicate with the customer well, you should be identifying the person who is already great at such communication and making sure the rest of the team is giving them what they need to communicate effectively. The person who is great at such communication should be the one teaching that communication to their peers, and not through coaching but by showing everyone how it's done. A leadership style of getting your direct reports to do your job for you is transparent in the sense that your subordinates will see right through you.
- geoffbp 11mo ago
  Role* Sorry
  - jjk166 11mo ago
    Thanks
JoshCole 11mo ago
It is pleasantly sensible since servant leadership in a sense creates an innocence because of the incents; the underlying reality is that wisdom dwells with prudence. Principles of revelation arise from incentive compatibility. Aiming at the apparent target is good hearted folly.
evolve2k 11mo ago
I want to reproblematise the word ‘leadership’ here. The phrase ‘servant leadership’ is actually a paradigm shift away from classic ‘out-the-front’ ‘the-boss-knows-best’ ‘dominate-others’ leadership. What the author is missing is parallelisation. By definition in systems of clear one person in charge leadership the work bottlenecks and power centralises, hard. In models of servant leadership, it’s possible for multiple people to bring leadership and leadership skills all at once. In a group of a dozen or more people, huge bottlenecks and ego power crap are resolved as multiple people can bring servant leadership. It’s single core vs parallel, in the later leadership can then come from all participants, even the very young and vulnerable involved in the group can learn to do this. The emphasis is on skill sharing and being of service OVER power hoarding.
geoffbp 11mo ago
Servant leadership to me always meant that as a manager I am a servant to the team. Pretty sure that was the intended meaning of it.
rasengan0 11mo ago
>transparent leadership. In my book, a good leader ... I practice this in my day job, as in that is the default mode for continued employment. Not sure how these practices are new. I wonder if it is a generational thing.
jedberg 11mo ago
Looking back at the best leaders I've ever worked for, they all followed that philosophy that was explicitly stated at Netflix: Context not Control. The goal of the manager was to explain to their reports what problems the team need to solves and why. Make sure the team was aware of any factors elsewhere in the org that might make a difference, and then connect the people on their team with the people on other teams who they need to talk to. Beyond that the leader's job was to seek out such context from their peers and leadership. But then it was up to the IC to figure out the how. The manager never told me how to accomplish the task unless I asked, and that was more of a mentorship than as a manager. And when I was a junior, most of that mentorship came from my more senior peers than my manager.
- rester324 11mo ago
  Yeah, this makes sense. What I am missing from both the blogpost and the comments is that the most valuable contribution a manager can provide is information and not some elusive, esotheric, corporate-speak mumbo-jumbo. And when I write information I mean information in advance (you can call this call for comments if you wish), not after the fact when decisions have been already made. 99% of managers rather focus on some self-patting feel good mindfulness guru teachings instead, and I wonder why...?
paofii 11mo ago
My worst managers were “transparent” as in they were basically a telephone game actor between me and my skip, with a little extra anxiety mixed in. Needless to say, I couldn’t quit those jobs fast enough. Who comes up with this nonsense?
justatdotin 11mo ago
leadership is not a role it is a shared responsibility; an emergent effect we can all nurture.
jimnotgym 11mo ago
I have a few management tips I think are worth something, perhaps I'll start with this one. Take all the things you don't like about your former managers, and don't do them. Then take all the things you thought were good and copy them. That's it
lloydjones 11mo ago
I don’t really relate to many comments here stating “my approach is X”, or “I went from servant-leader to process-master-whatever leader”. I’ve found that trying to be anything but flexible to the environment is unrealistic and even egotistical. E.g, There are some environments where the CEO is so “command and control” that the “I want us all to bring our authentic selves to the peace circle of work, and from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs, we will figure out a synergy that works for all” just won’t ever work. And for me, being unable to adapt the approach to environment suggests ‘one trick pony’.
- rester324 11mo ago
  ‘one trick pony’ Yeah, shallow dismissal of people's effort to try to make a change must be because they are a ‘one trick pony’. Is that all you brought to the conversation?
iisan7 11mo ago
I appreciated the parallels in this idea to the concept of wu wei (無為), or achieving by doing nothing. The idea appears in writing attributed to Confucius and Lao Zi, that regarding political leadership, the best leaders can order their group or society even simply by the strong example that they set and correct judgments that they execute. This isn't meant to be carried to its extreme of course, a leader doesn't do nothing all day, and may indeed pitch in to work, but they should be making time to think and reflect. I read it as an ideal (you know when things are good when you can do nothing), not as an instruction (do nothing).
danfunk 11mo ago
All these comments are from the standpoint of being managed, with a derogatory view of someone who would stoop so low as to take a management role. I liked the article. Managing people is ass hard. Doing so is a way to make peoples working lives better, anf to tackle problems larger than a single person can accomplish. Thinking about how to do it better is good thing. It takes courage.
- rester324 11mo ago
  I think this is the attitude that most people take issue with that this comment represents. So please tell us why we are wrong? Because I can just go and claim in the same vein of your comment to say: "Managing people is easy peasy"
alexashka 11mo ago
This is FAANG bro's 'let them eat cake'.
rester324 11mo ago
What I am missing from both the blogpost and the comments is that the most valuable contribution a manager can provide is information and not some elusive, esotheric, corporate-speak mumbo-jumbo. And when I write information I mean information in advance (you can call this call for comments if you wish), not after the fact when decisions have been already made. 99% of managers rather focus on some self-patting feel good mindfulness guru teachings instead, and I wonder why...?
sheepscreek 11mo ago
'Management' is not one size fits all. Every company is different. Its needs are different. What a manager is supposed to do is different too. If someone behaves the same way as a manager no matter the company or the people they work with, I think that's terrible. Being a manager is about listening. It is about tuning into the environment. It is about being there for the team in whatever way they need support. Sometimes that means being a coach. Other times it means fighting for them. And sometimes, when an unpopular decision is made above your pay grade, it means breaking it down for the team in a way that they 'get it'. You want them to understand without completely losing morale or slipping into rebellion. Brutal honesty sounds great on paper. But not everyone can handle it or is ready for it. It is a balancing act. Even if everyone "knows", bitch*ng about the company to your reports can only lead to bad outcomes. So you acknowledge the company's shortcomings. At the same time, you try to help the team find purpose and fulfillment in other ways.
lewo 11mo ago
In the same kind of spirit, when i was the tech team manager in a company without any transparent salary policy, i've been practicing what i've been called the "symmetrical salary management": when I knew the salary of a managed team colleague, i told him/her my salary. I also asked to keep my salary private, as I kept their salaries private. I think this is a pretty important requirement to build trust in a team.
chnmig 11mo ago
The way you lead a team depends on the size and level of competence of the team. Coaching, supporting and even commanding has its place. It is important that you use the right approach at the right time.
motbus3 11mo ago
To not dox anyone, I know someone who's boss now treats every employee as a chat gpt chat.
KurSix 11mo ago
I agree with the aspiration, but I think the limiting factor is less the leadership philosophy and more the org's appetite for managers who don’t hoard control and headcount
mr_windfrog 11mo ago
Absolutely — leaders must learn to delegate. Without delegation, you end up doing everything yourself, which isn’t sustainable and will burn you out. Effective leaders trust their team and distribute responsibilities wisely.
rotbart 11mo ago
Nothing wrong with the attributes the author groups under 'transparent leadership', but the article shows a certain misunderstanding of servant leadership. At the core of servant leadership is the idea that leaders shouldn't hoard power, but instead share it and empower their reports. That they are accountable to their reports, rather than the other way. Nothing to do with acting like a parents and becoming a single point of failure.
imilev 11mo ago
Really cool blog. I have been thinking about this recently as I was a center piece of our startup, and to me the hardest part of giving away responsibilities has been 2 phase: firstly that suddenly I feel like I am not in control, and second that people are spending time on things they don't like and because of that we are not leveraging their true potential/string sides (moneyball). Curious to hear what other think about that - should you leave people focus only on their strong sides, or they should still help out with e2e things.

514 points by ibobev 11mo ago

dpflan 11mo ago

With "servant leadership" in its current form being attributed to Greenleaf, here is the "source of truth" on servant leadership: https://greenleaf.org/what-is-servant-leadership/ https://greenleaf.org/what-is-servant-leadership/ "Growth" of those being led is a key concept it seems, which I would think is really only possible when the leader doesn't do everything by themselves as a die-hard servant, but utilizes the "leadership" part to help subordinates learn to lead themselves. Granted this realm of ideas can be a gray-area, but it seems like servant leadership as presented by the author here does not incorporate the concept of growing those that they lead -- as indicated by the fact they have self-invented a new "buzzword" which actually seems to be involve the behaviors as laid out by servant leadership -- am I missing something?

kagrenac 11mo ago

I've noticed a number of pieces lately that seem to suggest that managers and leaders doing nothing is actually good. It's been this way for a while - "bring me solutions, not problems" is the classic boss's abdication, placing themselves above their teams as judges and deciders rather than leaders - but I wonder if this current glut is caused by AI anxiety. After all, if your job is to just choose between options that other people will implement, why not have Claude do that? But if it's a good thing for your boss to do nothing, maybe he can keep his job.

ramon156 11mo ago
Sometimes bosses will repeat your idea to sound like he solutioned it for you, without taking e.g. workload or priority into account. I haven't met a boss that wasn't incompetent. Not saying they don't exist, though.
aranelsurion 11mo ago
> “bring me solutions, not problems" If someone says this unprompted, I’d suspect they aren’t a manager, they aren’t even an employee. They provide roughly the same input one provides while ordering food at a restaurant. Basically they are a customer, but also on the payroll. That being said, there are some cases where this might be said out of frustration. I’ve seen in my life a few people whose output is mostly finding and bringing issues to the table for someone else (who?) to magically solve them. That still brings some value, and maybe they’d make excellent auditors, but it wears the team and maybe their managers down.
- cgearhart 11mo ago
  When I say something like this it usually means “I don’t want to dictate your job to you. You’re here because you’re smart, ambitious, and capable. We’ve talked at length in team settings and 1:1 about our goals. What do you think are the problems that need attention, and what solutions do you propose?” The anti-pattern I’ve seen from some folks is that they never want to propose solutions because then it’s someone else’s fault if those fail. These folks often demonstrate minimal ownership of any decisions, so they don’t feel bad complaining about all the problems they see. Not only is that unhelpful, it can actually be very toxic for the team. (As you mentioned.) So when I’m saying “bring solutions” what I’m really asking for is some shared ownership of the choices and consequences—I’m asking folks to act like the main character in the story. And don’t worry, I own the consequences of the mistakes in my team to my leadership—this isn’t about throwing them under the bus. (Getting this to work well requires a lot of trust both ways.)
  - jmye 11mo ago
    > When I say something like this it usually means… Yes, exactly. This isn’t “do my job for me”, this is “do the job you have, and solve the problems you should be able to solve”. It’s also, at times, “pointing at fires is junior shit - find a fire extinguisher while you call 911.”
    - cgearhart 11mo ago
      I love the way you phrased this.
AnimalMuppet 11mo ago
But see, Claude can do nothing even better than it can choose between options. So why should that boss keep his job again? "Bring me solutions, not problems" can mean "You are a competent, knowledgeable employee, who has identified a problem. You know enough to look at the alternatives and decide which is best, or at least which ones are workable. Bring me that, not just the problem." And if it does mean that, it's empowering. You with your hands on the situation, you get to tell the boss what you think the best answer is, and the boss backstops you from deciding something that won't work in the bigger picture.

alistairSH 11mo ago

I was never taught that servant leadership should be some weird "manager as parent" relationship. Instead, servant leadership implies the manager serves the team (as the name implies). That includes removing impediments, but also includes empowering the team, ensuring their careers are growing, etc.

mergy 11mo ago
Yes indeed. Thank you.
rietta 11mo ago
Very succinct, I agree. I honestly have never heard anyone—even those executing it poorly—try to frame Servant Leadership the way the original author did here (the "curling parent" analogy). I have certainly seen people fail badly at practicing this style, but that failure was invariably due to a lack of character, poor communication skills, or other individual execution matters, not an issue with the core concept of servant leadership itself.
awb 11mo ago
Exactly. It’s the concept of a management chart as an inverted pyramid with each layer holding up and supporting the layer above them. If you imagine a promotion as working your way down the corporate pyramid, then it’s easier to see how the managers at the bottom are carrying more weight and deserving of higher pay. As opposed to a pyramid where it’s visually represented as the broader management layers supporting the layers above them. In a pyramid, it looks like the CEO has a cushy, overpaid job. In an inverted pyramid it looks like they have the weight and responsibility of the company on their shoulders.

phoronixrly 11mo ago

You see, this only works in orgs that don't suck. It breaks down the moment employees must be manipulated in some way to the benefit of the company and to the detriment of the employees. Unfortunately a regular occurrence even in countries that have employee protection laws.

yet-another-guy 11mo ago

This is just trying too hard. "Servant Leadership" is a buzzword invented to divert the general opinion from the power mechanics that hierarchical organizations are funded upon, i.e., the boss (sorry, leader) commands and the direct reports execute. Being "servant" basically just means being a decent human being, as per putting people in the right condition to carry out their duties, not coming up with unrealistic expectations, and do the required 1:1 coaching/mentoring for career development. Hand-helding employees as this "blocker removal" interpretation of servant leadership seems to imply is just the pathway to micromanagement. It's ok to shield your juniors from the confusing world of corporate politics, but if your direct reports need you to do a lot of the sanitization/maturation of work items and requirements then why should you even trust their outputs? At that point you're basically just using them as you would prompt an AI agent, double- and triple-checking everything they do, checking-in 3 times a day, etc. This "transparent" leadership is the servant leadership, or what it's intended to be anyway in an ideal world. Some elements of it are easily applicable, like the whole coaching/connecting/teaching, but they also are the least measurable in terms of impact. The "making yourself redundant", i.e., by avoiding being the bottleneck middle-man without whose approval/scrutiny nothing can get done is fantasy for flat organizations or magical rainbowland companies where ICs and managers are on the exact same salary scale. And it will continue to be as long as corporate success (and career-growth opportunities) is generally measured as a factor of number of reports / size of org. managed.

zeroq 11mo ago
"Servant leadership" is not a buzzword but it's been misused and abused by Big Corporations to the point that it basically lost its meaning [1]. For me - personally - the idea is about being less of a boss and more of a nightwatchman or janitor. I believe in agency and ownership and - in sane environment - people can be left alone with clear objectives. It's more about removing obstacles. I'll give you a simple example. Once a week a maid comes to our apartment. Despite a clear power balance disproportion (it's easier to find a new maid than a senior engineer) and her being used to being transparent and prioritizing to not disturb tenants for me it's the other way around. I'm super happy to hastily finish a call or leave my room is she feels the need to disturb me, and if she needs an extra pair of hands I'm happy to help her with anything. After all, I'm more interested with the final result than feeling important. We have a bucket list of tasks than has to be performed that slightly exceeds her capacity and she has a full right to prioritize things. It took my a while but I eventually convinced her that it's ok to skip things - like cleaning the windows - if she's feeling under the weather or it's cold outside rather than faking it. Most of the pointy hairs I worked in corporate environments would probably prepare a list of requirements and walked through the apartment with a checklist every time she would finish giving her a full, harsh performance review. But that doesn't build trust and long term relationship. And after some time she developed - what people around here call ownership - and sometimes I feel she cares about the household more than I do. Hope that makes sense.

CodeMage 11mo ago

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 life easier for the manager, regardless of what the manager's reports really need. I've seen this whole "I will empower you to do everything on your own" principle in action and it's exhausting. Especially when the word "empower" is a used as a euphemism for "have you take on additional responsibilities". Look, boss, sometimes empowering me is just what I need, but sometimes I need you to solve a specific problem for me, so I can keep solving all the other problems I already have on my plate.

zoeysmithe 11mo ago
Yep, this is just a ploy to create a PMC that actually has no skill workers in it. You just shove MBAs, nepos, etc into these roles and just have them gobble up some managerial course which is often nothing but: delegate, CYA, and 'manage expectations.' I dont think we need to go back to the old ideas of The Manager who is Above It All and Doesn't Get Their Hands Dirty. At least at middle levels.
Forgeties79 11mo ago
>Look, boss, sometimes empowering me is just what I need, but sometimes I need you to solve a specific problem for me, so I can keep solving all the other problems I already have on my plate. One of the reasons I really like my current manager is he spends a lot more time reminding us he can/offering to "take care of any blockers." His whole management style can be summed up as "Why is it blocked? Ok, leave it to me." Frankly I love it. If it's something we should take care of he's very specific about it too.
- eithed 11mo ago
  Agree and follow this principle to certain degree, however there are caveats here - something being a blocker shouldn't prevent you from trying to resolve the blockers by yourself or work with your boss to resolve them ie - "hey boss, I'm blocked with task A with refactor of this code; are you happy for me to do XYZ?". Then I have options to say: "yes! excellent! go ahead!" or "no, we need to do ASD here" or "no, we cannot do XYZ right now". If every time people encountering blockers would come to me to resolve them, or wait until they're resolved I'd not get anything done. On the flipside, if every time a blocker is encountered people were to handle it themselves, then a) it might not align with my vision on what actually needs to be done here b) I'm blindsighted with what was actually done. Clear boundaries and strategies eliminate these caveats = team members are aligned on what they can make decision for and general direction the team is heading towards.

kentf 11mo ago

Love this, thank you for sharing.

bbstats 11mo ago

this is so silly. porque no los dos?

great_wubwub 11mo ago

I once worked for a guy who'd obviously seen the term Servant Leadership on a bumper sticker somewhere and figured that meant he was the leader and we were the servants. Worst boss I ever had, and I've been doing this 30+ years and have had a bunch of bad bosses. Why not just 'competent leadership', where 'competent' means 'figure out what your people need you to do and do it'?

onion2k 11mo ago

"Servant Leadership" is a term was coined by Robert Greenleaf in his 1977 book "Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness", which is very specifically about being a church leader. Many of the more generic ideas are applicable in any leadership scenario but if you read the book it's very clear that it was not designed with business leadership in mind. You shouldn't really expect it to apply to being a leader in a tech company.

codingdave 11mo ago
Many terms and frameworks evolve beyond their original intent, so I'm not too worried that this has evolved, too. I've always found it is easier to understand servant leadership as the opposite end of the spectrum from autocratic leadership: Is the leader primarily concerned about growing their own power/success, or growing the power/success of those who work for them? There is a lot of middle ground between those two extremes, but without that contrast in mind, you can easily lose track of what the terms mean. The article does a decent job of trying to find a healthier middle ground, IMO.
- bluGill 11mo ago
  The problem is when things evolve we no longer know if someone refers to the evolved form or the original. Or more importantly if the evolved form retains the important parts of the original.
  - f1shy 11mo ago
    Exactly. And like evolution, what of the millions of species it evolved to are referring to. IMHO either stick with the original, or say “like X with following changes/details” or just go with a new thing.
- onion2k 11mo ago
  The problem with servant leadership is twofold: Firstly, in 'proper' servant leadership as taught by Greenleaf the leader is supposed to put the church before their own needs and wants. It is not about serving the people who report to you; it's about serving the organisation first. In a business context that's horribly toxic and a great way to spend years being exploited by a company that will grind you to burnout for very little money. Thankfully most people don't actually follow what Greenleaf teaches because they think it's about the people. Secondly though, people don't bother to read much about it. They hear the term and a basic summary, and then fill in the blanks based on their own biases and assumptions. Consequently when someone says they practise servant leadership you can't know what they mean unless you know them well. People who practise their version of servant leadership assume other people mean the same thing by it, and automatically align themselves with that person based on (probably) false assumptions. It is not a helpful term because it's used for a huge range of leadership styles.

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

neilv 11mo ago

Some good points to think about. But also note that sometimes you can shield and assist a team on things you can't be transparent about with the team. So a hybrid of the two schools of thought might be better than either one (depending on the larger org).

usernamed7 11mo ago

They just described servant leadership and called it something else. It's not about parenting or treating people like children.

hartator 11mo ago

> Teach a man to to fish “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Don’t teach a man to fish… and you feed yourself. He’s a grown man. And fishing’s not that hard.”

didip 11mo ago

Can’t wait for AI Slack plugins to replace all low tier middle managers. You can achieve so much transparency since the data is already out there anyway. There has to be a better way to organize how ICs communicate. More productivity to unlock.

esafak 11mo ago
That's not going to fix the social problems. What happens when your team needs something from another team?
- mattm 11mo ago
  Your AI agent asks their AI agent

vinceguidry 11mo ago

Author gives own take on what they thinks servant leadership means, then invents a supposedly different kind of leadership that is just servant leadership, taken into a different context than the original church one, then gives it a new name, one that doesn't really tie into their definition.

jppope 11mo ago

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_ADP-6-22-C1-FINAL-WEB.pdf 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 leadership.

AndrewKemendo 11mo ago
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.
- lostlogin 11mo ago
  It sounds like you have been burnt, badly. There is surely a business out there that does fit your world view, though the pay and conditions might not. In my view, the need for growth at any cost is toxic and leads to all sorts of horrible behaviours.
  - AndrewKemendo 11mo ago
    There are no good organizations, only ones that aren’t completely corrupt yet. Consider that to start and maintain an organization takes significant capital and energy expenditures upfront, which means you need to fund them from somewhere and ask sources of funding are corrupted. Consider: there are no long lasting egalitarian, distributed power, grassroots organizations that can compete at a level of social influence that can overcome or resist the existing power structure. I’ve looked at every possible organization that could theoretically fit including; MSF a.k.a. doctors without borders, swords to plowshares, goodwill industries (who employ significant numbers of disabled people for sub min wages while the CEO makes 3M+), Mondragon etc… and they all have exactly the same fucked up incentives why? because there is no way to survive as a structure, if your org is made up of people who want to eat and don’t want to be a monk. unless your organization is the lead maximalist resource dominator you will be overrun by some organization with no ethics Ultimately it comes down to the fact that people have to trade physical and mental work for money to survive. So there is no alternative to do the “right thing” without also risking your own safety and stability in your chosen society. 99.99999% of people are completely unwilling to risk their life on behalf of any particular philosophy - if only because those people don’t feel strongly enough about any particular philosophy to actually put themselves on the line for it. So whoever has the most money, has the ability to get the most people to work for their goals. Unfortunately the people with all the money/power do not care about anything other than growing their own personal power

pragma_x 11mo ago

I must have misunderstood what "Servant Leadership" actually is. I identify as such, but I also do just about all of the "Transparent Leadership" things called out in the article. I may have to re-evaluate my orientation. There's only one place I disagree and that's when it comes to empowering the team to do every last thing within your charge ("become redundant"). Depending on the organization, there are some actions that only a manager is empowered to do. Someone still needs to be present to weigh in on disputes/arguments, break ties, handle performance, reviews, interviews, PIPs, dismissals, and handle _other_ managers when necessary. It's simply not possible delegate these things and in the case of dealing with other managers, can imperil a person's employment. Also, I would caution anyone to avoid directly comparing management to parenthood, even as a metaphor. A lot of people have terrible parents, and so model the worst behaviors: they can't nurture a houseplant let alone a human being. I've seen people like this bring the worst possible models for management into the workplace this way, and they do a ton of damage to businesses, psyches, and careers in return. Instead, I urge anyone to look to the carpenter/gardener dichotomy and how good leadership requires a bit of both: https://www.intellicoach.com/ep14/ https://www.intellicoach.com/ep14/

alistairSH 11mo ago
I must have misunderstood what "Servant Leadership" actually is. You did not. Or, at least we share an understanding of what the term means which differs substantially from the author's.

mergy 11mo ago

This article is a great example of the Strawman Fallacy. I suppose it's a method to generate traffic but I would argue a key aspect of servant leadership is being transparent that you are in a role that should collectively support and lead to enable and expand the team. I feel attributing any sort of parental concepts belittles the meaning here.

chzblck 11mo ago

Coming from the Sales world sometimes I don't want to be taught to fish. I'm coming to my VP for help because I already tried diff baits, went to diff ponds, and tried diff reels. I'm coming for a fish finder not a lecture on maybe my casting was off

dogman144 11mo ago

Not a great post, I’d not follow it if interested in leading teams long term. A Self-admitted self taught manager learns the good parts about servant leadership via self-learning (nice!) but figures that is all there is instead of - “this is interesting, this seems to work but have gaps, what is there to this?” If the author did that, they’d discover a massive body of knowledge to include the specific problem they point out - you solve problems for your team, how do they start to solve their own problems? Servant leadership works if paired with the following, tuned to the capabilities and maturities of the specific employee: - servant leadership: resource your team, umbrella your team, let the smart people you hired do smart things, or turn so so employees into great ones by resourcing them to learn, getting them mentorship, and “sun is strong than cold wind” sort of thinking. - Left/right limits and target outcome: consistently inform your team their duty, in exchange for all the above manager work that’s way past the least-effort bar, is to get comfortable solving problems within the bounds of what the solution does and does not need to look like. Force this issue always, and they start solving their own problems at growing speed, and you have a QA check as a manager via documenting those boundaries per project etc - train your replacement: part serving your team is reaching there’s probably another sociopath on it who wants to lead teams, wants raw power, and so on. Enable that! Teach them how to lead teams in the above fashion. They’ll realize it works. You’ll train someone who can take over the remaining problem solving. This won’t hurt your own job either. Put it all together you’ll get very loyal productive teams of employees who’ll respect you outside of work in your industry where it matters for networking purposes, and you can live with yourself after the laptop closes as you know you’re treating your fellow man/woman the right way while surving in crazy corporate environments. In short, bad advice in that article. There’s a whole corpus to leadership beyond what the author figured out in the side and describes here ha. Edit - ironically the author then argues for arguably similar as the above, but claims it’s something else of their own invention. Engineers should really grok how there are existing bodies of very useful knowledge for all the things that seem easily dismissible as gaps or weak points from tho social sciences. It’d save them a lot of time.

MrDrDr 11mo ago

IMO: I think there is a helpful distinction to be made between leadership and management. Leadership provides purpose and inspiration. Management provides, coordination and motivation. I’m not saying one person can’t do both. I do agree that most management books read like parenting books - but I’d add that whats more important than the method is consistency in whatever approach you believe in. I’m not sure that managers/leaders will ever do that well relying on a book or a special ‘way’ they have read. They really need to have worked this out for themselves.

ordinaryradical 11mo ago

I think this has somewhat strawmanned “servant leadership,” which is more about humility in posture than purely intercepting annoyances and blockers, but nevertheless the conclusions are solid.

simonw 11mo ago

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 projects are high priority, and protecting them from the shit doesn't actually help with that at all.

wmeredith 11mo ago
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.
michaelcampbell 11mo ago
You CAN tell the team it's raining and details of the weather without letting them get overly wet. There's middle ground here.
kepeko 11mo ago
Agree. team needs to know about the shit. It's important information that helps them prioritize their work and motivates them as they know that what they do is important for the bigger bosses. If manager shields me from everything I go apathetic, not knowing why I even do the boring stuff if manager doesn't tell me his manager is giving shit
- taurath 11mo ago
  I hate having to rely on my own sense of what happened in a meeting, or which executive is upset about something. While its usually accurate, it's been borne out of chaotic leadership and shouldn't be necessary, especially if its to try to get off the tracks when a freight train is coming. Sometimes the culture of poor management is so ingrained and normalized people really don't understand what the problem is. That usually ends with me looking elsewhere, as taking on the responsibility other's won't while not having authority has lead to multiple full years lost to burnout.

RA_Fisher 11mo ago

Excellent analysis. It’s like: servant of whom (themselves)?

ChrisMarshallNY 11mo ago

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.

Traubenfuchs 11mo ago
If the dishonesty worked, you never know it happened! So you can never tell how much of it there really is…
- ChrisMarshallNY 11mo ago
  > If the dishonesty worked Try it in an old-fashioned Japanese company, and let me know how it works out. They tend to verify a lot. I saw some real disasters, when their culture clashed with modern SV culture.

ponooqjoqo 11mo ago

We should stop normalizing referring to managers or employers as leaders. These are different things.

shevy-java 11mo ago

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.

derekcheng08 11mo ago

The biggest omission that immediately stands out to me is: "provides a clear sense of direction". I've seen so many examples of teams and organizations that experience a lack of clarity, with all sorts of negative downstream consequences - muddled strategies, moving goalposts, fatigue/low morale. Having a leader that can provide that clarity is so important.

weitendorf 11mo ago

Kind of a weird hyper-literal interpretation of "servant leadership" IMO. Upskilling and empowering your team, not making yourself a SPOF, treating your adult colleagues like adults, all sounds like servant leadership to me...

ef2k 11mo ago

I think the premise is a little shaky since a good servant leader is already transparent. But there's some good takeaways. Leaders should inform their team of what's happening behind the scenes and allow them to understand why things are playing out the way they are. Allowing people to take on more responsibility, if they want it, is a healthy sign of an organization, but it shouldn't be imposed nor expected if they already have enough on their plates.

herval 11mo ago

> Servant leadership seems to me a lot like curling parenting: the leader/parent anticipate problems and sweep the way for their direct reports/children. That's not what "Servant leadership" is. It's about _letting the team lead_ - and they can come to you if they need help - instead of _pushing the team_. So in practice it's the opposite of anticipating problems. If something, servant leadership gets a bad rep for being used as an excuse to let people fall on the sword, instead of protecting them The rest of the post is just describing the role of "Management".

siliconc0w 11mo ago

The problem I've found with servant leadership in large orgs is the direct manager usually has little agency over problems. The best you can get is maybe they can provide additional context on the good intentions behind the bad decisions. This is essentially by design, a critical role they play are to be the scape goats and shock absorbers for the bad machinery above them.

zetazzed 11mo ago

This is actually not such bad advice for a manager who manages other managers, though I can see why ICs find it very frustrating. If you are giving high level platitudes and counseling-disguised-as-coaching to a junior new hire, they can rightly ask WTF. But managers, especially those recently moved from IC tech roles, often do benefit from this kind of forced introspection. If they have an underperforming employee, they should bounce ideas around with a more experienced manager, but the first line manager ultimately needs to be the one deciding how to rebalance work to maximize learning or to ultimately make the call to part ways with the employee. If a servant senior leader over them is actually doing the slog of working through the hardest issues (interpersonal conflict, serious direction change needed for team, firing people, top performers at risk of leaving), the first line manager is never going to grow. Similarly "cut out the middleman" advice in the article is great for senior ICs/quasi-architects or sub-managers but potentially toxic for junior engineers who may get steamrolled by the classic "1000 urgent requests issue" that managers or potentially very senior ICs need to drive.

dpark 11mo ago
Why is forced introspection good for managers but not for ICs? I’m not saying that the extreme “I do nothing except act as a sounding board and tell my team to solve their own problems” is a good approach. But pushing people to solve their own problems does help them grow. It needs to be a balance. A good manager should be able to see what someone is capable of solving with zero, a little, or a lot of help and engage accordingly. And sometimes they can’t solve it at all and the manager has to take it in directly or pull in someone else who can.

adverbly 11mo ago

Between the article and the comments in this thread there is actually some pretty good advice here and reasonable and nuanced takes to management. Bit surprised by this. Has the hn community aged into management or something? I guess we are not as young and naive as we used to be...

browningstreet 11mo ago

In a world where we've walked away from master/slave, blacklists.. why is servant still being used?

deleted 11mo ago
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ahoka 11mo ago
What historical systematic injustice do you associate this word with?
- 9rx 11mo ago
  Serfdom.

krosaen 11mo ago

The founder of Zingerman's (famous deli and family of businesses in Ann Arbor) description of servant leadership is a bit more complete and overlaps heavily with what the author of this post is advocating for: https://www.zingtrain.com/article/servant-leadership/ https://www.zingtrain.com/article/servant-leadership/

maxdtroll 11mo ago

I've come to define Leadership as "The ability to smooth things out for everyone while helping them accomplish their goals" I think it helps differentiate the "authoritarian" leader or the "Servant leadership" from the "legitimate" one. All kinds of leadership (sports, education, business, relationships) come from understanding people's needs and providing more efficient strategies to meet them.

codyb 11mo ago

Managing upwards beats being managed in my experience. Seems to work with most managers, and reduces surprises which reduces stress all around and causes course corrections and course alignments earlier. I tend to do status updates in public channels before anyone can ask me but I've been the fortunate loner for the last couple years where I get to work with a lot of people but outside a lot of process.

lunarcave 11mo ago

I can't remember where I heard this, but the moment it flipped for me is when someone phrased this as - "be a heat shield". A heat shield has some leakage of heat that the people inside know that there's heat, but enough cover that the team is shielded somewhat.

deleted 11mo ago

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rietta 11mo ago

I think the author is significantly straw-manning the concept of servant leadership. The short take presented in the article doesn't match my lived experience with this style, both in secular and faith-based circles. The core idea is absolutely not that of a "curling parent." Instead, it embodies living the walk, walking the talk, and putting the team's needs before your own ego. In fact, this profound concept goes all the way back to Jesus Christ, who modeled it by washing the feet of his disciples—a task reserved for the lowliest servant of the time. This act was deliberately shocking and context-defying. He effectively "turned the world upside down" by saying, "Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all." I'm not trying to proof-text, but this idea is ancient and deep. It's a profound leadership style that is unfortunately often executed poorly or misunderstood by modern practitioners. Poor execution doesn't invalidate the concept itself.

trunnell 11mo ago

Having a bad manager in past roles can be some of the best "manager training." If one your past managers did something recommended in this article but it caused problems, that's ok! It just means you have seen another failure mode that the author didn't experience. I remember being in a meeting with a bunch of the best managers at a former company. "Why did you originally want to be a manager?" was one of the first questions passed around the circle. The most common answer was, "I had this one really bad manager and I figured that surely I could do better."

Devasta 11mo ago
> I had this one really bad manager and I figured that surely I could do better. The only thing worse than being invited to a lot of meetings is not being invited to those meetings.
mrguyorama 11mo ago
>"I had this one really bad manager and I figured that surely I could do better." That doesn't mean that those people are learning from prior bad management. That could instead mean that management tends to be people who are convinced of their own above average competence. Did anyone ask the reports of those managers whether they were any good?

ErrantX 11mo ago

I suspect this is written by someone who stepped into managing a team and no further. My reflection overall is; he's probably heard of servant leadership but not understood it? It's not about sweeping away problems but more a mindset that your role is to empower. I feel strongly that all new managers should embrace and get good at this because it instills the mindset that the best leaders ultimately only succeed through their team. A servant leader who becomes overworked is either not doing their job well (delegation isn't contrary to the mindset!) or, more likely, has a poor leader themselvesw. I actually love the concept of transparent leadership but sadly I can't see it come through in his points. They are all things a good leader, a good servant leader, should also do. For me transparent leadership becomes more critical as you move up the stack. Once you get to multiple teams or teams of teams leaders must pivot strongly to strategy setting, and in this your servant leadership comes in painting a clear destination for everyone to get to. At this point I believe the best leaders are genuinely transparent and the worst keep secrets. One of my most respected mentors framed it as deliberately over-sharing. Which I love, even if I get into trouble for it constantly! (I do like the writers anarchic streak; the best leaders are radicals)

hintymad 11mo ago

> continuously trains their replacement, and > generally makes themselves redundant. This is the advice we get from many business books and leadership advices. However, I see more often than not leaders in a company do the opposite to keep their power. There is a missing link to making the good advice actionable: what can the leader do to keep becoming more valuable while making themselves "redundant".

jjk166 11mo ago

Comparing leadership to parenting right out the gate tells me all I need to know about this person's management ability. Your direct reports are not children. You are not raising them out of an altruistic drive to guide the next generation. You are a part of a team of grown adults. You are not above the team, you have a roll on the team. It is an important roll: as a leader you provide high level direction so people are working towards the appropriate goal and confident it is achievable. Likely you are also acting as a manager, coordinating resources and resolving internal and external stakeholder conflicts. This makes the team more efficient, it's important. But the people you are leading are the ones actually doing the work. They are likely more skilled at their particular role than you, and knowledgeable about much more. You are not leading them because you are better, you are leading them because that's how you can best contribute to the team. Leadership has absolutely nothing to do with coaching, connecting, teaching, explaining, linking, growth inducing, or training their subordinates. Zero. Zip. Nada. It is the role of more senior practitioners to mentor their more junior colleagues. Leaders often are drawn from more senior ranks, so it's not uncommon for a person in a leadership role to also be in a mentoring role, but they are two separate and unrelated positions. If anything, the most important skill of a good leader is effectively soliciting the right information and wisdom from the right team members so they can most effectively leverage their team's expertise. You shouldn't be teaching everyone how to communicate with the customer well, you should be identifying the person who is already great at such communication and making sure the rest of the team is giving them what they need to communicate effectively. The person who is great at such communication should be the one teaching that communication to their peers, and not through coaching but by showing everyone how it's done. A leadership style of getting your direct reports to do your job for you is transparent in the sense that your subordinates will see right through you.

geoffbp 11mo ago
Role* Sorry
- jjk166 11mo ago
  Thanks

JoshCole 11mo ago

It is pleasantly sensible since servant leadership in a sense creates an innocence because of the incents; the underlying reality is that wisdom dwells with prudence. Principles of revelation arise from incentive compatibility. Aiming at the apparent target is good hearted folly.

evolve2k 11mo ago

I want to reproblematise the word ‘leadership’ here. The phrase ‘servant leadership’ is actually a paradigm shift away from classic ‘out-the-front’ ‘the-boss-knows-best’ ‘dominate-others’ leadership. What the author is missing is parallelisation. By definition in systems of clear one person in charge leadership the work bottlenecks and power centralises, hard. In models of servant leadership, it’s possible for multiple people to bring leadership and leadership skills all at once. In a group of a dozen or more people, huge bottlenecks and ego power crap are resolved as multiple people can bring servant leadership. It’s single core vs parallel, in the later leadership can then come from all participants, even the very young and vulnerable involved in the group can learn to do this. The emphasis is on skill sharing and being of service OVER power hoarding.

geoffbp 11mo ago

Servant leadership to me always meant that as a manager I am a servant to the team. Pretty sure that was the intended meaning of it.

rasengan0 11mo ago

>transparent leadership. In my book, a good leader ... I practice this in my day job, as in that is the default mode for continued employment. Not sure how these practices are new. I wonder if it is a generational thing.

jedberg 11mo ago

Looking back at the best leaders I've ever worked for, they all followed that philosophy that was explicitly stated at Netflix: Context not Control. The goal of the manager was to explain to their reports what problems the team need to solves and why. Make sure the team was aware of any factors elsewhere in the org that might make a difference, and then connect the people on their team with the people on other teams who they need to talk to. Beyond that the leader's job was to seek out such context from their peers and leadership. But then it was up to the IC to figure out the how. The manager never told me how to accomplish the task unless I asked, and that was more of a mentorship than as a manager. And when I was a junior, most of that mentorship came from my more senior peers than my manager.

rester324 11mo ago
Yeah, this makes sense. What I am missing from both the blogpost and the comments is that the most valuable contribution a manager can provide is information and not some elusive, esotheric, corporate-speak mumbo-jumbo. And when I write information I mean information in advance (you can call this call for comments if you wish), not after the fact when decisions have been already made. 99% of managers rather focus on some self-patting feel good mindfulness guru teachings instead, and I wonder why...?

paofii 11mo ago

My worst managers were “transparent” as in they were basically a telephone game actor between me and my skip, with a little extra anxiety mixed in. Needless to say, I couldn’t quit those jobs fast enough. Who comes up with this nonsense?

justatdotin 11mo ago

leadership is not a role it is a shared responsibility; an emergent effect we can all nurture.

jimnotgym 11mo ago

I have a few management tips I think are worth something, perhaps I'll start with this one. Take all the things you don't like about your former managers, and don't do them. Then take all the things you thought were good and copy them. That's it

lloydjones 11mo ago

I don’t really relate to many comments here stating “my approach is X”, or “I went from servant-leader to process-master-whatever leader”. I’ve found that trying to be anything but flexible to the environment is unrealistic and even egotistical. E.g, There are some environments where the CEO is so “command and control” that the “I want us all to bring our authentic selves to the peace circle of work, and from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs, we will figure out a synergy that works for all” just won’t ever work. And for me, being unable to adapt the approach to environment suggests ‘one trick pony’.

rester324 11mo ago
‘one trick pony’ Yeah, shallow dismissal of people's effort to try to make a change must be because they are a ‘one trick pony’. Is that all you brought to the conversation?

iisan7 11mo ago

I appreciated the parallels in this idea to the concept of wu wei (無為), or achieving by doing nothing. The idea appears in writing attributed to Confucius and Lao Zi, that regarding political leadership, the best leaders can order their group or society even simply by the strong example that they set and correct judgments that they execute. This isn't meant to be carried to its extreme of course, a leader doesn't do nothing all day, and may indeed pitch in to work, but they should be making time to think and reflect. I read it as an ideal (you know when things are good when you can do nothing), not as an instruction (do nothing).

danfunk 11mo ago

All these comments are from the standpoint of being managed, with a derogatory view of someone who would stoop so low as to take a management role. I liked the article. Managing people is ass hard. Doing so is a way to make peoples working lives better, anf to tackle problems larger than a single person can accomplish. Thinking about how to do it better is good thing. It takes courage.

rester324 11mo ago
I think this is the attitude that most people take issue with that this comment represents. So please tell us why we are wrong? Because I can just go and claim in the same vein of your comment to say: "Managing people is easy peasy"

alexashka 11mo ago

This is FAANG bro's 'let them eat cake'.

rester324 11mo ago

What I am missing from both the blogpost and the comments is that the most valuable contribution a manager can provide is information and not some elusive, esotheric, corporate-speak mumbo-jumbo. And when I write information I mean information in advance (you can call this call for comments if you wish), not after the fact when decisions have been already made. 99% of managers rather focus on some self-patting feel good mindfulness guru teachings instead, and I wonder why...?

sheepscreek 11mo ago

'Management' is not one size fits all. Every company is different. Its needs are different. What a manager is supposed to do is different too. If someone behaves the same way as a manager no matter the company or the people they work with, I think that's terrible. Being a manager is about listening. It is about tuning into the environment. It is about being there for the team in whatever way they need support. Sometimes that means being a coach. Other times it means fighting for them. And sometimes, when an unpopular decision is made above your pay grade, it means breaking it down for the team in a way that they 'get it'. You want them to understand without completely losing morale or slipping into rebellion. Brutal honesty sounds great on paper. But not everyone can handle it or is ready for it. It is a balancing act. Even if everyone "knows", bitch*ng about the company to your reports can only lead to bad outcomes. So you acknowledge the company's shortcomings. At the same time, you try to help the team find purpose and fulfillment in other ways.

lewo 11mo ago

In the same kind of spirit, when i was the tech team manager in a company without any transparent salary policy, i've been practicing what i've been called the "symmetrical salary management": when I knew the salary of a managed team colleague, i told him/her my salary. I also asked to keep my salary private, as I kept their salaries private. I think this is a pretty important requirement to build trust in a team.

chnmig 11mo ago

The way you lead a team depends on the size and level of competence of the team. Coaching, supporting and even commanding has its place. It is important that you use the right approach at the right time.

motbus3 11mo ago

To not dox anyone, I know someone who's boss now treats every employee as a chat gpt chat.

KurSix 11mo ago

I agree with the aspiration, but I think the limiting factor is less the leadership philosophy and more the org's appetite for managers who don’t hoard control and headcount

mr_windfrog 11mo ago

Absolutely — leaders must learn to delegate. Without delegation, you end up doing everything yourself, which isn’t sustainable and will burn you out. Effective leaders trust their team and distribute responsibilities wisely.

rotbart 11mo ago

Nothing wrong with the attributes the author groups under 'transparent leadership', but the article shows a certain misunderstanding of servant leadership. At the core of servant leadership is the idea that leaders shouldn't hoard power, but instead share it and empower their reports. That they are accountable to their reports, rather than the other way. Nothing to do with acting like a parents and becoming a single point of failure.

imilev 11mo ago

Really cool blog. I have been thinking about this recently as I was a center piece of our startup, and to me the hardest part of giving away responsibilities has been 2 phase: firstly that suddenly I feel like I am not in control, and second that people are spending time on things they don't like and because of that we are not leveraging their true potential/string sides (moneyball). Curious to hear what other think about that - should you leave people focus only on their strong sides, or they should still help out with e2e things.