[jbell0385]

I experience "servant leaders" crash and burn. It's often done so poorly. They never make decisions, they just keep making vague requests for the team to come to a consensus and it's chaos. Also, another con of servant leaders is that they often don't hold people accountable. Bad behavior on the team starts to spread and moral tanks. Yes, the concepts of a servant leader sound nice, but it's often implemented horribly. Sometimes the leader needs to be aggressive, make unilateral decisions, and hold people accountable.

[iamcasen]

I agree with your point entirely. In practice, the software industry seems to be rife with a cult-like worship of humility and team consensus. So much so that consensus and humility have lost all meaning! Leaders should naturally rise for valid reasons, and their decisions and opinions should also naturally have more weight to them.

I'm all for letting the little guy get a seat at the table, and I'm all for hearing out people's ideas, but at the end of the day, someone has to make the call. That should be the leader's role. The leader will ultimately take the fall if their choice was incorrect, so the team should trust them.

The best companies I've worked for have had decisive leaders who cut through the nonsense ideas coming from their team (respectfully of course).

[hopsoft]

You’ve setup a false dichotomy. Servant leadership can & should be decisive.

[jbell0385]

Sure maybe there's a "right way" to be a servant leader. I'm telling you how it's often executed in practice...which is poorly.

[yarper]

I think that's describing no leadership rather than a variety of it, but yeah most leaders suck, especially in software