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by dikkechill
3009 days ago
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I truly believe that if you can't do the job of the people below you: you're not qualified to lead them. If you can't motivate people to work harder to solve the issues that they're stumbling on: you don't deserve leadership. If you can't get your team together to coordinate their activities in a way that makes Russian ballet seem like a circus full of bears - you need to get out of the way and get someone in who can handle the machine-like precision needed to coordinate an organization and start making real headway to building the business. I disagree that if you can't do the job of the people 'below' you, you're not qualified to lead them. When I first lead a team, I worked with people that were a lot more competent in specific areas than I ever will be. In turn, I could still learn from my 'managers', but in different areas than where I have my skills. So everybody learns from one another. I do agree that motivation is very important. I had to think of theory X or Y. Do you distrust (X) or trust (Y) people to do their work well? These believes tend to be self-fulfilling, but can still be useful in different situations. Distrust tends to lead to a lot of control and micromanagement, which imho for knowledge workers does not work. Trust has advantages and for me leads to a better working culture, but can also lead to the issues described in the article. I learned a lot from an online version of Harvard's Psychology 1508: The Psychology of Leadership given by Tal Ben-Shahar. If you can find it somewhere (there are some classes on youtube), highly recommended! |
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> Distrust tends to lead to a lot of control and micromanagement, which imho for knowledge workers does not work.
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To each their own, and I have had this argument elsewhere before, but I will say this: brittle organizations are built on the basis of competency; if you cannot do my job, why should I trust you to understand my issues?