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Shift from a leader-follower to a leader-leader approach
- appplication 4mo agoI thought I’d be annoyed reading this, as the blog seems to brazenly rip off name recognition from the significantly more popular and presumably preceding “Practical Engineering” channel/blog… and to some degree that feeling did cheapen the content. But overall I agree with at least enough of the points to find it is a decent post worth a read.
- Aurornis 4mo agoThe foundation of this approach is non-controversial: Don’t micromanage, be a good coach, don’t force work to go through the manager, and other simple truths. When I get to the recommendations to “ban” words and force engineers to speak in certain phrases I start having flashbacks to all of the bad managers from the past who read a few management books and thought those tricks were going to make them a good manager. Like when the management book trend was to write user stories in the form of "As I user, I want to" and my manager would force us to write "As I user, I don't want to the app to crash when I" when filing bug reports because that's what their book said we should do. This type of management guidance is not good, and it doesn’t produce good results. Yes, it’s good to direct teams to express intent. No, it’s not good to ban phrases and force your team to speak in prescribed sentence structures. This is how good advice turns into cargo cult rituals that everyone hates.
- Erem 4mo agoAfter a couple years I realized the key part of “As an X I want Y so that Z” is the “so that Z”. When managing teams these days, the only part I keep is the “so that Z” — what beneficial change in the world does this ticket make? If the ticket name is just “fix this bug” then I’m not certain the engineer knows why it’s important, and knowing the importance of your work is itself important.
- boxed 4mo ago> Yes, it’s good to direct teams to express intent. No, it’s not good to ban phrases and force your team to speak in prescribed sentence structures. This is how good advice turns into cargo cult rituals that everyone hates. The article talks about just a few such terms that are a symptom of the mindset of the leader-follower approach. Weak Saphir-Worff applies imo. For example, I got way better as a dance teacher when I stopped using phrases like "do this", "this is correct", "that is wrong", etc and instead put all that effort into "try this", and "if you do that, this happens". Students were more open, less confused, saw possibilities instead of problems to fix. But I get it, if I hadn't seen this change myself and heard others talk about it I would also be skeptical. It sounds a bit too good to be true.
- autumnstwilight 4mo agoCurrent workplace has cargo-culted this so hard the tickets look like "As a backend foo-server, I need to modify the baz function to create an interface for blargh requests."
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- 866-RON-0-FEZ 4mo agoThe difference here is with a win-win-win approach, we all win.
- __s 4mo agoI worked in an office last year. We had these “Wacky Shirt Wednesdays.” On the first Wednesday I was able to participate, I decided to wear the shirt my mom was wearing when I was born. Now there’s some leftover placenta and uterine lining, so it isn’t the cleanest shirt. BUT it’s the thought that counts. That what momma says. This f’n Karen decides to come over to my desk and tell me it’s “inappropriate” and “gross” and “ur mom’s placenta will get in my salmon salad”. Win for me: keep wearing the shirt Win for Karen: stop having me wear the shirt Win Win Win: frame the shirt on my office wall so there’s never a chance of getting placenta in Karen’s salad. Win Win Win!!
- orsorna 4mo agoDo we all win the same equity vesting schedule?
- hyperhello 4mo agoIf everyone is a leader, who is doing the work?
- mountainriver 4mo agoReally?
- steve1977 4mo agoClaude
- mazinz 4mo agoIs an interesting idea but don’t think it scales. Once a company gets beyond like 100 people you need some structure and past 1000 is chaos is everyone is a leader.
- jamesgill 4mo agoIt's not a framework, and it requires no diagram. It's just trusting and empowering people to do the job, then getting out of their way. People tend to rise to your level of trust. I wrote about this, because after a long career I've come to see that most people have no idea what leadership is, or how it works: https://thinkhuman.com/the-leader-ship/ https://thinkhuman.com/the-leader-ship/
- tamimio 4mo agoGreat article, people mix commanders with leaders, leaders main job is influencing while others do it their approach, their style, but still align with the goals you influenced. > People tend to rise to your level of trust. One of the companies that I almost worked for, had all the “we trust we empower our employees etc”, good promises, and later they were requiring full uninterrupted camera access while you do the work :)
- noitpmeder 4mo agoWe're the employees taking advantage of that trust? Seems a strange thing to mandate unless that trust has been severely broken.
- alemanek 4mo agoStill the wrong response. Discipline the people abusing your trust. Part of being a good manager is knowing when to step in and have a private conversation with people before things get too bad. If the bad behavior continues then you follow the process of formal write up’s and eventually termination. Collective punishment is the sign of a manager who doesn’t know what they are doing and will kill a team.
- noitpmeder 4mo agoNo argument there, id eject from any company that even started to consider such measures (unless they're adding a few zeroes to my paycheck)
- 4mo ago
- tamimio 4mo agoIt’s a flat management style, I love it and I appreciate people who are doing it, but throughout all the years I have only seen it done twice properly, of the already rare occasions of using it anyway. The vast majority are your typical corpo hierarchal BS, or even worse, a small early stage startup trying to pull the same corporate style, while mixing it with startup one resulting in the downside of both. In one company, the engineering manager wanted to have a daily standup with scrum style (apparently he wanted it because his wife was working in a remote silicon valley job and just knew about it..) for a team who none of them is working in the same product, and most aren’t even software, and got offended when get told it’s stupid and it’s better to use other approaches, of course he refused because it’s about power dynamics now, I left shortly with other 3 engineers in the same month due to bad management style.
- anonymousiam 4mo agoSome styles may work better in a uniformed military environment than they would in the real world. In the military, there are strict guidelines on conduct, whereas in the private sector, it's almost anything goes, and workers are often pushing the limits of what they can get away with. Also, in the military, rank and pecking order are clearly established. Regardless of whether or not the style is "Leader-Leader", everybody knows where they stand with regard to who they need to salute, and who they must obey.
- steve1977 4mo ago> Regardless of whether or not the style is "Leader-Leader", everybody knows where they stand with regard to who they need to salute, and who they must obey. So it's just bullshit then effectively.
- doveyoung 4mo agoI think everyone can be their own leader.
- notepad0x90 4mo agoi clicked thinking he was mocking this! I hate it so much. no, dude, not everyone can be a leader. no we're not all "leaders"?!?!? come on. this is such a dilution. it screams refusal to take responsibility for anything. diversifying responsibility so that no one is held accountable. Or a massive lack of understanding why and how naturally humans organize using a hierarchical structure. This is a cowardly way of managing people, a leader blaming those under him/her for not also being "leaders" when they fail, that's what it seems like to me, and how I've seen this mindset abused. I don't care if you're a two person team, one follows and the other leads. the problem is actually the opposite of what this guy describes usually. A refusal to accept hierarchy, and an immaturity resulting from not being able to understand, that leadership comes with responsibility, not just rights, as does following. There is this massive ideological disease in corporate america that I won't rant about here, but what is needed is managers with balls (regardless of their sex) and gumption, who can say "they buck stops with me, I'm responsible for the outcome". Not everyone else because "we're all leaders" not hired consultants you hired to c.y.a., not the "lack of talent",etc.. If you're in a team where someone says "all reviews and prs go through me" and they have they seniority and experience to back that up, count yourself fortunate! It's not secret for example that most successful open source projects are run by a BDFL (not the least of which is the Linux Kernel). Everyone in the car can't be responsible for driving it, same as they can't for navigation. With the approach in this post, my guess is instead of driving the car, proponents will be back-seat drivers. Two more things: everyone in a team must trust each other to do their part, that includes the leader when they lead, and team members when they fulfill their tasks. In order to lead, you have to know where and how to lead others, the problem is people are put into leadership positions in corporate america using the system of "promotion until incompetency", where if a person is competent at all they are promoted, and they end up in positions where they have the least amount of competency, earn the most, and thus are at the highest risk of elimination, and this breeds: the modern middle manager that strives to spread responsibility that comes with their position so that they can take credit for success of their team, but have plenty of blame they can throw around for failures. Even when they want to do the opposite of that in earnest, it becomes impractical. For everyone to be a leader, the way human psychology works needs to change. what you end up with is informal hierarchy immune from accountability, transparency and scrutiny by outsiders. Good people getting frustrated and leaving your team, and those who can manipulate the informal power structure well and help with the blame spreading, succeeding and staying Failing upwards as some call it. And then enshittification. I haven't solved the part where things are actually working in a repeating cycle and will all be good some day.
- steve1977 4mo ago> Even though today we lead people, we've most likely climbed the engineering ladder through technical excellence. The article already starts with a strong assumption that I would challenge.
- rohitsriram 4mo ago[flagged]
- ares623 4mo agowhat the hell are we even doing
- andsoitis 4mo agoLeaders lead.
- xg15 4mo ago> Leader: "What do you think I'm wondering right now?" (This was D. Marquet's default question) > Leader: "Exactly. Convince me it's the right move." > Leader: "Is it the right thing to do?" I think the general approach is the right one - but I can say, I personally find it extremely annoying if superiors talk like this. For me it comes across as wanting to play mind games or leaving me with an unclear state of responsibility. By all means, give me more autonomy to choose tasks to work on and also expect a good justification from me. But at the end, I'd like at least clear feedback if my proposal was accepted and we should be moving in that direction (and I should be getting to work) or not.
- tikhonj 4mo agoPart of the idea—which requires non-trivial effort from the leaders to build up sufficient trust—is that people should believe that their proposals (for their own work) are accepted by default. People don't have to wait for their idea to be accepted, but they have to communicate enough so that leaders can surface specific issues or mismatches only if they have them.
- Alupis 4mo agoIn the book "Turn the Ship Around", these questions are only temporary, and are part of how the leader transforms the team from traditional Leader-Follower into Leader-Leader. These questions condition people to think ahead, and eventually present the information unprompted. This ultimately is part of Intent-Based Leadership, where "followers" present the "leader" with their intentions, information and reasoning - and the "leader" just agrees usually. This in essence transforms "followers" into leaders, since they are the ones deciding what happens, when and why. Marquet goes so far as to even avoid giving orders, instead just approving or questioning the intentions of his team. It took him a long time to get to that point in reality, but it's a really interesting take on leading highly intelligent, skilled teams.