When I was 9 years old, I\u2019d play pick up soccer at recess. A couple of kids \u2013 the \u201cleaders\u201d would pick teams, and then we\u2019d play. Since we were kids, the leaders of the teams were sometimes the best players, but usually the loudest kids. Leadership was short-lived, but effective for the purpose. I imagine that it works the same way with the 9-year olds of today.<\/p>\n
But we\u2019re not kids anymore.<\/p>\n
Leaders today \u2013 the good<\/strong> leaders, still may not be the best players on the team, but they\u2019re not the loudest anymore.<\/p>\n Leaders care about making progress in their work and in sharing their results. More importantly, they care about the work and progress far more than they care about their popularity. Good leaders are excellent decision makers (despite ambiguity), and are humble, honest, and accountable when they blow it. They know how to use conflict to draw out insights, and how to create harmony in a bad situation. Simply put, they lead.<\/p>\n I just wish we had more leaders. Leaders who cared more about progress than fighting decade-old arguments; leaders who strive to collaborate more than alienate; leaders more concerned about communication than being the loudest voice in the crowd; and leaders who foster and demand innovation from their followers.<\/p>\n But we don\u2019t \u2013 or I can\u2019t find them\u2026but somehow I know they\u2019re out there. Maybe they’re just quiet \u2013 or maybe they don\u2019t know they\u2019re leaders yet.<\/p>\n But we need them now.<\/p>\n Note: Sheesh!<\/strong> I’ve already heard from three people who think I’m picking on testing people. I guess it’s because testing people read this blog, but I wasn’t thinking about testing when I wrote this (although I suppose it does apply to leaders in testing).<\/em><\/p>\n I recently re-read Seth Godin’s <\/em>Tribes and Patrick Lencioni’s <\/em>The Five Temptations of a CEO. The latter (which is really about leadership)\u00a0 was the primary inspiration for this post – not the loud folks in the testing field.<\/em><\/p>\n Hope that slows down the hate mail.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I was 9 years old, I\u2019d play pick up soccer at recess. A couple of kids \u2013 the \u201cleaders\u201d would pick teams, and then we\u2019d play. Since we were kids, the leaders of the teams were sometimes the best players, but usually the loudest kids. Leadership was short-lived, but effective for the purpose. I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allposts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}