[usmeteora]

and I am glad you brought up this point. To me, I'm a pretty introverted person and once was put in a leadership position a bit reluctantly. I didn't feel unconfident about the technical capabilities, just exuding the charisma and extroversion people expect from leaders. I got solid feedback, but the avalanche of horrible unconstructive criticism and just pushing me to my limits for no apparent reason except to try to frustrate me really made me have to draw the line between embracing conflict and standing up for yourself. Also interestingly enough, the most criticism came from people I did not work directly over or with or under, but other people surrounding the situation, but still with alot of influence. With so much dialogue about say for example leaders in Silicon Valley, and creating a public discussion amongst the tech industry about almost every decision a well known leader makes in their company, it makes me wonder who much of the criticism is perceived and created by the outside looking in versus the the actual team working under the leader, as I experienced a microcosm of this scenario myself.

It turns out when you stand up for yourself in cases where you really feel the feedback and composed conflict is out of line and destructive, that is when people begin to respect and trust you. Still, it was frustrating. It was also a very political role with non developers, and I have made sure if I ever go into a leadership position again, it won't be with no technical people. Yes, software developers can have the same mentality, but overall there's alot more objective ability to define and measure how much time someone is putting into creating constructive things versus composing destruction for the sake of challenging leadership or protecting their own entrenched interests.

Theres a fine line between embracing everyone's feedback and being a complete pushover and letting other people steamroll you based on their own motivations. Ultimately, I believe sometimes the best leaders make controversial decisions and stick to them regardless of what other people think, and ultimately the people who work under those people are people who have observed their decisions tend to lead to good outcomes, and they acknowledge the objective positive feedback loop from working under a person like this over the masses criticism of someone who does not please everybody.