A leader leads from the front seeking adventure and a better world away from harm for his/her people; work with his/her people whenever necessary; and will stand back to allow credit to go to his/her people.
Consider these - all based on true events. A young engineer working on a project noticed that an important feature was missing from the requirement and discussed it with his manager. This young engineer proceed to detail what he thinks is the right way to implement that feature. His manager agrees that the feature should be implemented but override the young engineer on the formulae for some calculation despite the young engineer's protest. When the solution was deployed in the field it was found that it has implemented a faulty formulae just as the young engineer has expected. As this formulae calculates amount of money owing, the sh*t very quickly hit the fence. All blame was then channeled by the manager to this young engineer!
Compare that with this. A team was under fire for some mistake and their manager, as one of the team member describes it, threw herself left, right and center to take all the bullets! Then back at the office behind closed door, this manager would, like a strict parent, make sure that everyone learned from it and not repeat the mistake. A very though manager I was told yet she has many followers.
Lastly this. A team worked long hours over 8 or so months to tape-out a chip on schedule. During this period, the team overcame all issues encountered without troubling their manager. The silicon came back and functions as expected with no major problem. In other words, bugs found were very minor where software work-around can be found. The manager was credited for the success. In the subsequent spin of the design, the manager had a tough schedule to meet and that was passed to the team. A schedule that could not be met given the limited compute resource available to the team. But the manager couldn't or wouldn't do anything about it. As one of the team member commented, "how would he know, he was asleep when we tape-out the first chip."
See this team got their fingers burnt by shielding their manager from the difficulties they were going through with the first silicon. They didn't want to trouble their manager unnecessary but what happened is that the manager got the impression that it was easy and it was his leadership that got them through the first silicon hence him accepting the credit for the success and thought nothing of it when he gave the team a tougher schedule.
2 comments:
"A leader leads from the front seeking adventure and a better world away from harm for his/her people; work with his/her people whenever necessary; and will stand back to allow credit to go to his/her people"
However, staying 'above'/'keep that distance' enough to 'draw the lines' when needed is always important, right?
It depends. You may have to with some people/team but it need not always be the case. A leader of a team, if you think about it, is also a team member. Also, the person who lead the team at one stage may not be appropriate when the team transition into another stage. That is why you would frequently see company changing their CEO after IPO.
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