
Clear and Present Leadership - tate
https://blog.davidtate.org/clear-and-present-leadership/
======
m0zg
Having been an executive myself (in the past), my theory is the "clear" part
of this is the root cause of ageism in tech. On anything more complex than
Minesweeper, unless you've done it a couple of times in the past you won't be
"clear" on anything when you lead people. You can create the _impression_ of
clarity, but it'll be clear as mud to you all the same. Younger people don't
see through this facade, so they take your bullshit at face value. Older
people for whom it's not the first rodeo see right through it and most
"leaders" feel really insecure in this situation.

When I was younger myself, I sort of assumed competence on the part of
everyone. The older I get the more I see that people around me (as well as
myself) don't really know much about anything and don't care to know. This
includes "leadership" and, as painful as it is to say, myself.

Coincidentally, the article doesn't mention "honesty" even once. I've found
honesty to be the best policy. I can't _always_ be honest when I lead
(everyone would quit and go into depression if I were perfectly honest), but I
try to minimize the blind spots and somewhat accurately give people a sense of
difficulties and tradeoffs without making the situation look as hopeless as it
usually looks to me when running "hard" projects. That way, if they care at
all, they'll steer things in the right direction on their own, and focus on
the right things.

I'm in my mid-40's though, so I sort of assume (knowingly incorrectly) people
around me think like I do, and bullshit doesn't work in the long term.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
This is an underrated comment IMO and hits on a critical point that people
complain about but don't really understand.

That is, "The people at the top don't know what they are doing."

For IC's and other people actually doing most of the work, they interpret this
as base incompetence on the part of leadership. It's certainly fair to say
that there is a lot of incompetency at the top. However, even for very
competent senior leaders it's often completely unclear how to get from "Here"
to "There" because the organization may not be positioned to actually get
there.

It's an extension of the technical debt problem, what made you successful in
the past may not be what makes you successful in the future - and as a senior
leader, it's your job to help the organization make that transition. The
costs/risks to getting "There" might be considered impractical or devastating
to the current organization. You can see this with any major company that
fails to capture some huge new market.

On one hand you want to take care of your people, and a complete pivot with a
20,000 person organization might see huge layoffs or "restructuring." Is doing
that, not knowing if it's going to work in the long run the right plan? We
praise those who made the right pivots, but forget those who mistimed them, so
corporate survivorship is real - and it's not about pure genius competence.

Now, try and communicate all of that to everyone on the team, considering all
of the market dynamics, funding personnel issues etc... for context, and it's
just not something that is feasible to communicate with everyone in a way that
doesn't totally spook the whole organization.

That said, it doesn't mean you shouldn't try. Communicating WHY smaller
decisions are made and what the assumptions and context behind them are made
is something feasible at some levels generally. This is where competence and
maturity do play a huge role, and where great leaders distinguish themselves.

------
Ididntdothis
“Let me how I can help"

Besides not forgetting the word “know” make sure that you are actually
prepared to honestly listen and act on what people tell you. I hear this
phrase quite a bit but when you tell them how to help they promptly ignore it
because it wasn’t what they wanted to hear.

A lot of today’s management phrases are totally empty and just sound good
without any meaning. “Let me challenge that assumption” or “but what if we had
an anti-gravity drive?” are fashionable phrases that sound insightful to the
person saying them but really aren’t.

~~~
chrisseaton
> “but what if we had an anti-gravity drive?”

What does this one mean? I know you said you think they're meaningless, but in
what context is this one used?

~~~
Ididntdothis
I have been in several meetings where somebody said that a thing is simply not
possible and a manager asked "but what if it was possible?". How are you
supposed to respond to that? It's just a silly thing to say. Now if somebody
says "I think it may be possible because of A, B and C" you have something to
discuss. Otherwise it's just an empty phrase.

~~~
deanCommie
> somebody said that a thing is simply not possible and a manager asked "but
> what if it was possible?"

I've been an Individual Contributor, and a Manager, and am back to being an
IC.

I've been on both sides of this conversation.

One of the benefits of being a manager is being able to see the forest from
the trees while your team members may be so focused on their tasks they do not
see the big picture.

Sure, sometimes the answer to "but what if it was possible?" if just "it's
not."

But a lot of times, the good managers I've had would propose an approach to
MAKING it possible that I just simply didn't see. And I've been able to do the
same in their shoes.

Sometimes it requires a paradigm shift -

Q: "How do we get to the other town faster?"

A: "The horses are running as fast as they can"

Q: "What if we found a faster horse?" (e.g. a car)

But honestly in day to day office culture it rarely needs to be so
revolutionary -

Q: "Could we finish the project faster if Bill's team helped us?"

A: "No, it's not possible. Bill's team said they are completely swamped"

<Goes off to do some managerial work>

Q: "Okay, I've chatted to Bill, and his team is fully available to help us
finish the project."

I'll leave you with this "Expert" saying that something is simply not
possible:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg)

And an actual expert showing how it can be done:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7MIJP90biM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7MIJP90biM)

~~~
wiz21c
interestingly, your examples revolve around making things faster. Which
basically is understood as : "well, we've already too much pressure and our PM
wants to put even more pressure on us". Going faster (or being more efficient)
always mean being able to take more work.

~~~
scarejunba
No, it doesn't. For instance, at a place I worked at, we wanted to build a
particular ad tech product to reinforce strength in a different area. The
correct answer to "how do we make this faster" was "buy the guys who do it and
then integrate via a bunch of CSVs on GCS and some RPC". We canned our forays
into the space and bought them. Less work for all the engineers and data
scientists. More work for M&A but they like doing that so it's not upsetting.

At a more granular level, in a different project, the answer to "how do we
develop this faster" was "lose these requirements, and just use AWS services
for those". Less work in total.

------
ra1n85
>Vision, goals, key results, what we are allowed to do and not do, are clear.
Likely written down, understood, repeated frequently, taught to new members of
a team.

On the nose.

Amazed by how many leaders that I've worked under that can't seem to set
direction. That's all - communicate what's important, what's going to make the
company differentiate itself, and then allow the smart folks you have hired to
set their priorities accordingly, execute, and then adjust where needed (but
sparingly).

------
woozyolliew
I value clarity. But I fear some of this advice about being present could be
badly misinterpreted by those inclined to micro-management.

------
alexfromapex
If they’re not clear and present it’s a good sign of clear and present danger

------
fourthark
You shouldn’t use a phrase just because it sounds familiar, without
considering the meaning of that phrase.

It wasn’t a bad article, but in my head I was hearing “danger, danger,
danger!”

------
EliRivers
_" Let me how I can help" isn't just a phrase, but means what it says_

Does it. Does it really.

~~~
vecter
From the HN guidelines:

"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A
good critical comment teaches us something."

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
EliRivers
I can see why you might think it was a shallow dismissal, but it actually has
depth. You see, the words I was highlighting for their lack of meaning are
themselves talking about meaning. It's possible this was an accident on the
author's part, but it's also possible that it was deliberate, in which case
the author is using irony (actual irony, not that rubbish the kids say is
irony) to make their real point, and I'm applauding it. Hardly a dismissal.

Either way, the reader extracts extra layers of meaning at this point.
Remember all that stuff in school about literature and how to read beyond the
literal, that HN tends to ignore in favour of pretending to be rational
cyborgs? It was for this sort of thing.

You missed the _possible_ original point of the author, and my point as well.
On the plus side, this comment could well have been a learning experience for
you, so you should be happy with it.

~~~
Aeolun
Honestly, I think you are seeing things here. Nowhere in the original message
do I detect even a hint of irony.

Maybe this is something that is only visible for you because of your
particular situation (e.g. someone always uses that phrase)?

To be honest, I’m more bothered by the lack of a question mark though.

------
Guthur
Why is this the only spot where a gender pronoun is used

`The leader is aware of her staff as complete human beings and has empathy
towards them.`

Reinforcing the stereotype that female is the emphasising gender.

The rest of the article is gender free from what I can see.

~~~
sverhagen
I noticed that in the text too.

But could you elaborate on the expression "female is the emphasizing gender"?
My search skills failed me here.

~~~
nostromo95
Believe they meant “empathizing gender.”

------
readingnews
One way to strive for clarity is to not make structural errors in a blog. Like

"Avoid a having a hard conversation because of how uncomfortable it is, or
fear for how poorly it can go."

~~~
exotree
A rather simple mistake should not be used as a reason to dismiss the overall
message.

~~~
hinkley
I wonder what the correlation is between people who feel threatened by a
message and those who nitpick at it.

There's a certain number of people in any crowd who get lost in the weeds,
regardless of 'sides'.

