I was thinking about this on the way to work today, and thought I\u2019d try to spit out a quick blog post before I got side-tracked again.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been very fortunate to have had success with organizational change with teams at Microsoft. Whether it\u2019s getting programmers to run integration tests before check-in, or helping a team get to a daily zero-bug bar, my leadership style is the same. I believe that people will do things that they think are valuable. In fact, this quote from Eisenhower (which is, admittedly, overused) aligns tightly with my style.<\/p>\n
\nLeadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because [s]he wants to do it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
I talk with people to understand what their concerns and motivations are. I communicate plans and strategies to the team. Often, I \u201cplant seeds\u201d \u2013 for example, I may mention to a manager a few of the benefits of keeping engineering debt low and give a few examples. No judgement or decree \u2013 just an idea to put in their head. Later, I may mention that it would may be a good idea to keep pri 1 bug counts at zero, and maybe overall bugs below some arbitrary number. Often, a few weeks later, I\u2019ll see that manager\u2019s team with zero pri 1 bugs. Or, I\u2019ll mention in a meeting that I\u2019d like to get the whole team down to zero bugs, and I generally have support from everywhere I planted a seed.<\/p>\n
The big advantage of this style of change management (in my experience) is that the team owns the change, and accept it as part of the way they work. The disadvantage, is that it takes time. To me, that time investment is worth it.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a faster approach, but I don\u2019t like it \u2013 yet I see it used often. It probably has a better name, but I\u2019ll call it the do-it-because-I-said-so <\/strong>style of leadership. Eisenhower also said that leadership doesn\u2019t come from barking orders or insisting on action (paraphrase because I\u2019m too lazy to look it up). To me, leadership isn\u2019t about your <\/em>ideas, it\u2019s about working with others and building your tribe. Too many so-called leaders think that leadership is being the loudest voice, or being the one that makes mandates to an organization. That\u2019s not leadership to me. That\u2019s being a dick.<\/p>\n
That said, there\u2019s a middle ground there, that I see often enough to respect, but not often enough to completely understand. I know some leaders who are able to make explicit mandates and have their team rally around them immediately. They don\u2019t do this often, and I think it helps. They are humble and I think this helps. They have a relationship with their followers \u2013 and this helps too. Maybe the answer is that they\u2019ve waited until they\u2019re a real <\/em>leader (rather than a self-proclaimed chest-thumper), and waited until circumstances were necessary before making a mandate.<\/p>\n
What kind of leader do you want to be?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was thinking about this on the way to work today, and thought I\u2019d try to spit out a quick blog post before I got side-tracked again. I\u2019ve been very fortunate to have had success with organizational change with teams at Microsoft. Whether it\u2019s getting programmers to run integration tests before check-in, or helping a…<\/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":true,"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-977","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\/977","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=977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/977\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}