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> it seems like the best leader would be the one who best facilitates the performance of the individual contributors This is just as wrong as a the "perceived

by nnq 13y ago

> it seems like the best leader would be the one who best facilitates the performance of the individual contributors This is just as wrong as a the "perceived leader fallacy" the post is trying to debunk. The person you refer to is a "facilitator" or manager. Leader don't always have to "facilitate" or manage. The manager is almost never the true leader. Leaders should bring the vision AND set the direction AND provide the main motivation (if one person doesn't bring all 3, then you have a collective leadership situation, which is probably the most healthy anyway). In this example, the actual leader is the unseen person that actually identified that bug as "critical" and decided that the software should in under no circumstances be released without that bug fixed! (or if we want to find a leader here, at this level, it would be whoever came up with the idea of "what to look for in order to fix the bug" - Martha may have had the idea herself, most likely, or she may have fished it from the discussion happening around her and just happened to be the first one lucky to find the bug while following this "fished" strategy)

spiffyman 13y ago
Not sure about what you're saying here. In no way did Martha bring vision, set direction (see note below), or provide motivation. She sat and read the code for a while until she found the problem. Without any more detail, it seems likely enough that Arnie was setting the vision/direction and providing motivation. They just didn't reach their goal before (relatively uninvolved) Martha figured things out. Not trying to devalue Martha's contribution. I love the Marthas in my workplace. But, very often, they're not leaders. They're the people leaders know to turn to in times of crisis. They're extraordinarily valuable, and should be compensated/lauded accordingly, but that doesn't mean they're the leaders. Nor, in my experience, do they always wish to be. Note: Martha did, of course, "set the direction" at the end of the meeting, when she'd found the bug. But I take direction-setting to generally be an event prior to the activity (in this case, debugging). Martha did not do that.

by nnq 13y ago

spiffyman 13y ago

Not sure about what you're saying here. In no way did Martha bring vision, set direction (see note below), or provide motivation. She sat and read the code for a while until she found the problem. Without any more detail, it seems likely enough that Arnie was setting the vision/direction and providing motivation. They just didn't reach their goal before (relatively uninvolved) Martha figured things out. Not trying to devalue Martha's contribution. I love the Marthas in my workplace. But, very often, they're not leaders. They're the people leaders know to turn to in times of crisis. They're extraordinarily valuable, and should be compensated/lauded accordingly, but that doesn't mean they're the leaders. Nor, in my experience, do they always wish to be. Note: Martha did, of course, "set the direction" at the end of the meeting, when she'd found the bug. But I take direction-setting to generally be an event prior to the activity (in this case, debugging). Martha did not do that.