Your leadership looks like?

[BurnedOut]

Ironically enough, i have been thrusted into leadership positions at school and colleges and generally had this perception of being the guy who can troubleshoot anything without causing a drama. It might sound very arrogant but my thinking prowess has in all leadership positions surpassed the combined brainstorming of the group which many times leads me to be this data processing machine as i munge on the inputs and prepare the result that the authority demands.

I have realized that if i am gonna be the troubleshooter then i have to check up on every team member to see what they are doing and delegate clerical tasks. I have seen that it always takes a good leader to periodically but not intrusively check up on the teammates because morale really goes down fast when the task is complex and requires coordination.

My philosophy in leadership has been conflicted though. If i should be the action processing machine or let my teammates carry out actions at their own volition. Perhaps it is a blind spot of my own but my expectations from results from the framework are quite high but also realistic. It annoys me when the group simply just tries to shoddily pass a result behind my back and many times I have to divide tasks to them like there are individual functions in the main source code and i am the main() do-what-i-mean() (dwim (borrowed from emacs))

 

[dr froyd]

a bit heavy on the self-congratulatory side - coming from a kid who managed a couple of school projects - but it should be said that people with a clear vision of a project and the ability/willingness to guide a team towards a result is not common. Maybe you have it, which is good.

im leading a department in a business, and i can say it's not easy. Thing with managing adults is that everyone has their own interests and agendas - and being adults they are much harder to mold into what you want them to be. You're also answering to the higher-ups - who are measuring your performance in terms of results (not how good you are at following orders). In this scenario you can't complain about your employees and put lack of results on them; lack of results simply means you mismanage people and resources. The goals themselves can also be very broad and vaguely defined and it's up to you to both create a vision and create a path towards that vision. Sometimes you even have to manage - in a sense - the higher-ups because they often don't exactly know what constitutes realistic goals. These are components of corporate politics.

my style of leadership is just trying to understand how people think, what their incentives are, their character, etc. And then try to figure out how to combine that with my goals and how to impress upon them what those goals are. You see, ultimately you are leading people, not functions in a computer program.

 

[BurnedOut]

Never mind. That congratulatory bit came right off my asshole when my current team just chose the dumbest way to create the expense sheet which is extremely time consuming, chaotic and is going to probably cost everybody money for no reason. I ain't no leader I realized it lol. Worst bit is I finally figured a python program to not only resolve these stupid conflicts but also automate the whole consolidated excel sheet process but for fuck's sake just because the uni's format was different, nobody even bothered to try and sacrificed 15 minutes for hours long drudgery which I am forced to carry out because our de-jure attention whore of a leader is going through some trauma at the expense of money and grades of all of us while these lazy dumb fuckers with 0 neurons are sitting on their asses twiddling their eyes until the last moment not caring about the kind of trouble this kind of irresponsibility with stipends can lead to.

 

[fluffy]

Average IQ of uni grads is 110 - 115

There will be at this level no innovation and just following rules. They learn rules good but don't question them so if something new is needed they will not see it nor come up with solutions. They just sit there as you said. Doing nothing because nobody is telling them what to do. Blank stares happened to me often in school. It was the reason I kept to myself.

 

[sushi]

if there is a large hole, or too much incompetence i might step it

other than that , it seems like too much work to tell people what to do

 

[Hadoblado]

I've got whiplash from the sheer power of that heel-turn BO :P

I see leadership as a multidirectional relationship that exists independent of imposed hierarchical structures. Responsive influence.

 

[fluffy]

It would be nice if people listened.

 

[ZenRaiden]

I don't know much about leadership and I think a lot of it comes down to having the right people at hand, more so than ones own competence. That might sound more like lack of agency, but molding a team to cohesively do the right thing is pretty much more about telling people what to do, but about right kind of indoctrination so the team has the right mindset from get go.

Its why companies need proper adjusted slave labor not just anyone. That is why army has boot camp and that is why we have schools to make us work.

The key point is also no one can make people motivated, if the incentives are not there.

Unless you have charisma level 9000 thousand and over.

That said I think a big part of modern leadership is ability to play your hand to best of ability with constraints that usually mean you have to kind of either do more, or be ahole to people so they do more.

Either way nothing wrong with feeling confident in your skill and you sound a lot like a young INTJ.

I think leadership is innate skill, but it can be trained as well.

 

[Puffy]

I think it's less about telling someone what to do and instead coaching them to improve. It's better like what froyd says when this is based upon goals that that person has independently chosen for themselves.

If someone kept telling me what to do or kept coming in and re-doing my work I'd probably assume that person didn't trust me very much, was critical of me, or was attempting to micromanage or control me. I've had bosses like that and I became very resentful of working with them.

A lot of people will show resistance to these kinds of behaviours. Sometimes it's also about finding a way of less resistance even if it doesn't fit your ideal. This comes with accepting that you can't control everything. Sometimes you have to delegate to others and just trust them to do the work in the way they decide how to do it. As long as there's clear definitions of "good enough", they're doing it on time and accountability mechanisms are in place for when people repeatedly fall short it's fine.

 

[fluffy]

I know a few smart people in my life who can make stuff. The only problem is that they don't ask for help or advice. This also applies to everyone else I know but I am ENTp? so it could be I take things differently, more thoughouly. What bothers me is that the communications barrier is high where I can see what is wrong and they can't and it takes effort to allow them to make mistakes. Peoples lives can be ruined by mistakes but then I cannot help if they don't believe me.

I haven't been in any position to lead people to any high degree. Taking charge of the situation requires there to be something important at stake and a group to be on the same page. That has never happened to me. Usually the groups I have been in had no important goals. I would just follow along in case and remind people if anyone needed to be reminded what was happening so no one got left behind. More like the coherent backbone than the head. People would wonder off quite often.

 

[ZenRaiden]

I think it's less about telling someone what to do and instead coaching them to improve. It's better like what froyd says when this is based upon goals that that person has independently chosen for themselves.

That is the ideal. Leaders often don't get ideal conditions, hence they have to play the cards they are dealt. Often times the goal is to get the numbers up, pump up the commodities, and reason in limited boxes of ceos that hover over them. Meaning, you are correct, but often times companies are not made in this way.

If someone kept telling me what to do or kept coming in and re-doing my work I'd probably assume that person didn't trust me very much, was critical of me, or was attempting to micromanage or control me. I've had bosses like that and I became very resentful of working with them.

This sounds about right. All my bosses, were like you describe, minus one guy who gave me goals that I had no idea how to achieve. Then leave, and then expect me to be done. Very anxious times.

A lot of people will show resistance to these kinds of behaviours. Sometimes it's also about finding a way of less resistance even if it doesn't fit your ideal. This comes with accepting that you can't control everything. Sometimes you have to delegate to others and just trust them to do the work in the way they decide how to do it. As long as there's clear definitions of "good enough", they're doing it on time and accountability mechanisms are in place for when people repeatedly fall short it's fine.

Lots of jobs don't work this way though, simply because bosses often don't know that this could work.

 

[Puffy]

I think it's less about telling someone what to do and instead coaching them to improve. It's better like what froyd says when this is based upon goals that that person has independently chosen for themselves.

That is the ideal. Leaders often don't get ideal conditions, hence they have to play the cards they are dealt. Often times the goal is to get the numbers up, pump up the commodities, and reason in limited boxes of ceos that hover over them. Meaning, you are correct, but often times companies are not made in this way.

If someone kept telling me what to do or kept coming in and re-doing my work I'd probably assume that person didn't trust me very much, was critical of me, or was attempting to micromanage or control me. I've had bosses like that and I became very resentful of working with them.

This sounds about right. All my bosses, were like you describe, minus one guy who gave me goals that I had no idea how to achieve. Then leave, and then expect me to be done. Very anxious times.

A lot of people will show resistance to these kinds of behaviours. Sometimes it's also about finding a way of less resistance even if it doesn't fit your ideal. This comes with accepting that you can't control everything. Sometimes you have to delegate to others and just trust them to do the work in the way they decide how to do it. As long as there's clear definitions of "good enough", they're doing it on time and accountability mechanisms are in place for when people repeatedly fall short it's fine.

Lots of jobs don't work this way though, simply because bosses often don't know that this could work.

Yeah, fair. I work in the software industry, more specifically UX, and maybe take for granted that a lot of industries haven't caught up with technology, which tends to be quite progressive in my experience.

To me I've been brought in by the leader to do a job as I'm the expert at it. So it's up to me to work out how to do the job. It's the leaders job to troubleshoot, as they have more experience than me, and to mentor me, and I grow eventually into that leaders position, probably in a different company, as I get more competent and experienced.

Either way though, I think it's generally better when people can own their own work as it makes someone more likely to be internally motivated. I get that some people don't want to own their work, don't feel motivated and want to be told what to do, in which case the command & control method probably works well.

 

[ZenRaiden]

There is certainly more than one way to do leadership.
A big part of it is how much training people have and what goals individuals have.

I think a lot of dumb leadership methods come down to low training and fordism.
Other things are related to how leaders give space to individuals, and how much understanding leaders have of people.

 

[fractalwalrus]

For a time when I worked construction, I was thrust into a de facto position of leadership against my preference. I tended to simply outline what needed to be done in a rather detached manner and let the others figure it out. I was more like a presenter of information than anything else. I also tended to work right along side them though, performing the same tasks, which seemed to earn their respect.

 

[dr froyd]

Never mind. That congratulatory bit came right off my asshole when my current team just chose the dumbest way to create the expense sheet which is extremely time consuming, chaotic and is going to probably cost everybody money for no reason. I ain't no leader I realized it lol. Worst bit is I finally figured a python program to not only resolve these stupid conflicts but also automate the whole consolidated excel sheet process but for fuck's sake just because the uni's format was different, nobody even bothered to try and sacrificed 15 minutes for hours long drudgery which I am forced to carry out because our de-jure attention whore of a leader is going through some trauma at the expense of money and grades of all of us while these lazy dumb fuckers with 0 neurons are sitting on their asses twiddling their eyes until the last moment not caring about the kind of trouble this kind of irresponsibility with stipends can lead to.

tbh i regretted the way i put it in my previous post. You sound like someone who naturally takes responsibility and has high standards. I would emphasize that that most people are not like that, and you might be an excellent leader. I kinda just wanted to point out something I learned myself the hard way - leadership rapidly becomes extremely complex and goes beyond the scope of mere delegation of workloads, into psychology, politics, etc etc

your frustration with laziness etc sounds very much like my own thought process on a regular basis lol, but reality is that you just have to accept that most people are like this. There's not even any point in judging them for it, just like you don't judge a sloth for being a sloth. You just have to figure out either 1) how to make them tick or 2) if you can find better people

 

[BurnedOut]

your frustration with laziness etc sounds very much like my own thought process on a regular basis lol, but reality is that you just have to accept that most people are like this. There's not even any point in judging them for it, just like you don't judge a sloth for being a sloth. You just have to figure out either 1) how to make them tick or 2) if you can find better people

It's easy to say that when you can influence people into not being idiots but that's rarely the case and such attempts to gaslight people into being better only leads to wastage of time and resources unless there is an exam or explicit selection criteria