
A Conventional but Flawed View of Leadership - greenyoda
http://secretsofconsulting.blogspot.com/2014/04/a-conventional-but-flawed-view-of.html
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fishtoaster
I'm not sure I understand.

The implication _seems_ to be that martha is the leader here. However,
consider a situation where all four members behaved exactly as Martha, staring
at the printout for an hour in silence, looking for the solution. In this
hypothetical, Martha still gets the answer first.

In that example, it seems pretty clear that Martha was not the leader, since
they all behaved exactly the same; she was merely the strongest individual
contributor. It seems like that's probably the case in the blog post example
as well, since Martha's behavior is the same.

This post seems to be pushing the idea that the loudest and most social person
in the room is not necessarily the best leader, which I can agree to. However,
it also seems to be saying that the person who contributes most directly to
the solution may be the leader, which I'm not sure is accurate. In a situation
like the one described, it seems like the best leader would be the one who
best facilitates the performance of the individual contributors- that is,
leaves Martha alone.

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nnq
> it seems like the best leader would be the one who best facilitates the
> performance of the individual contributors

This is just as wrong as a the "perceived leader fallacy" the post is trying
to debunk. The person you refer to is a "facilitator" or manager. Leader don't
always have to "facilitate" or manage. The _manager_ is almost never the _true
leader_. Leaders should bring the _vision_ AND set the _direction_ AND provide
the _main motivation_ (if one person doesn't bring all 3, then you have a
collective leadership situation, which is probably the most healthy anyway).

In this example, the actual _leader_ is the unseen person that actually
identified that bug as "critical" and decided that the software should in
under no circumstances be released without that bug fixed!

(or if we want to find a leader here, at this level, it would be whoever came
up with the idea of "what to look for in order to fix the bug" \- Martha may
have had the idea herself, most likely, or she may have fished it from the
discussion happening around her and just happened to be the first one lucky to
find the bug while following this "fished" strategy)

~~~
spiffyman
Not sure about what you're saying here. In no way did Martha bring vision, set
direction (see note below), or provide motivation. She sat and read the code
for a while until she found the problem. Without any more detail, it seems
likely enough that Arnie was setting the vision/direction and providing
motivation. They just didn't reach their goal before (relatively uninvolved)
Martha figured things out.

Not trying to devalue Martha's contribution. I love the Marthas in my
workplace. But, very often, they're not leaders. They're the people leaders
know to turn to in times of crisis. They're extraordinarily valuable, and
should be compensated/lauded accordingly, but that doesn't mean they're the
leaders. Nor, in my experience, do they always wish to be.

Note: Martha did, of course, "set the direction" at the end of the meeting,
when she'd found the bug. But I take direction-setting to generally be an
event prior to the activity (in this case, debugging). Martha did not do that.

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ams6110
Martha was the best problem-solver, in that she found the problem before
anyone else did. But I don't see how it follows that problem-solving ==
leadership.

~~~
wisty
What if the problem is one that doesn't have a self-evident solution? Like
"who should we hire", or "what is the best way to implement our current
goals".

~~~
avmich
Are you implying that Martha found a self-evident solution? :)

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late2part
Leaders are followed by people. That's how you define and recognize leaders.

Competence is often more valuable than leadership. Martha in this case was
highly competent, and all the great leadership in the world wouldn't affect
this issue.

Leadership CAN be great if it inspires people and helps them go in the right
directon.

~~~
avmich
That's sort of a problem. It is unfortunately often implied that leadership
beats all other traits. Here we have a - specific - example when it doesn't.
This example won't change the culture which values leadership above everything
else (if, e.g., we have such a culture). And that's, I think, an important
idea out of the story.

Leadership could be valued so high that someone would automatically equate
success with leadership. I.e., that who solves the problem is the leader by
definition. Which is not - but might be overlooked too often.

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thrush
A though provoking anecdote, yet who is in charge, versus who has final
influence are often times different. Although Martha influenced the outcome,
she was not involved throughout the entire process. She could have worked with
her colleagues to find the answer faster rather than on her own. To argue in
her favor, maybe directed analysis was the right approach and her success will
guide her colleagues in the future to take a similar strategy.

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teemonasty
He writes, "Then Arnie, Phyllis, and Weber resumed their agitated discussion"
to make it seem like the group did not consider Martha's lone contribution.
Then in the next line he describes how it took 10 whole minutes! to confirm
that this was the actual solution. I feel like he was trying to portray Martha
as someone who neglected by the rest of the group when in fact she was seen as
just as important.

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niels_olson
A framework of leadership types:

\- positional (the boss) \- subject matter expertise (the PhD) \- many social
connections (the politician) \- particularly valuable/strategic connections
(the guy dating the owner's daughter) \- charismatic (the guy who talks the
talk, may or may not walk the walk)

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rheide
Solving bugs does not make you a leader.

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gburt
Quality vs. quantity.

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wcarss
I have two things.

First, in the revised action table, 'effective influencing action' seems to be
used as 'action along the causal path to the solution', which is a departure
from the context in which it was introduced:

    
    
        There are two principal ways to identify the leaders of a group:
        1. asking the members to identify which members they
           regard as most inﬂuential in directing the group, or
        2. asking observers to name the most inﬂuential members,
           or to record the frequency of effective inﬂuencing actions.
    

In summary,

1\. "influential in directing the group" 2\. "influential members" ...
"effective influencing actions"

The introduction of the term implies (to me, at least), that effective
influencing actions ought to be used as 'actions effective in altering the
course of the group'. I suspect that "effective" as a modifier is just
misleadingly simple enough to make this non-obvious. It leaves the question
"Effective at what?" in the air, and everyone is free to imagine their own
answer, and to assume that we all share one common answer.

Second, I think Arnie was a leader, just not a good leader.

As has been discussed in other threads here, Martha does not exhibit
leadership in this scenario -- she exhibits some individual problem-solving
skills. And, as has been said in other threads, this can lead to a number of
implications about leadership != solution-finding. Whether the article is
proposing that she was the leader is unclear to me.

Arnie was initially reported as having the highest number of 'effective
influencing actions', and by the group's definition, he was their leader. He
influenced the actions of the group the most. But think about some information
we have about the scenario:

    
    
        - he left Martha sitting there alone, being silent
        - the rest of the group fell into "agitated discussion"
        - no clear progress was made over the hour
    

I'm going to suggest a possible narrative of "leading" this situation by
taking imaginary control of Arnie:

After some initial wildness ("agitated discussion"), it would be apparent that
the group needs some direction. Trying to take a rational, rather than
authoritative approach, Arnie could suggest that everyone propose some courses
of action for the group, and write them on a whiteboard, to aid in
systematically choosing one / ruling some out. He may have to snap Martha into
participation here to get a suggestion from her. This may set her back in her
solution -- unfortunate, but necessary.

Now, all the suggested approaches would be up on a board. It sounds like
Martha's would be "let's just think it through very carefully", and the
others, apparently, would write "let's talk about it", or at least different
enough approaches that they warrant agitated discussion.

Seeing the polarization, Arnie could suggest that everyone work on their own
approach for 20 minutes, taking some notes, and then report their progress to
the team. At that point, if any approach is clearly winning or losing, the
team can refocus their efforts. If not, they'll deal with that then.

Twenty minutes later, three or four different approaches would be partly
documented (no matter what, some progress is made), and if Martha made more
progress than the others, they can now help her break down the problem space.
If it can't be broken down, and she's making good progress, everyone else can
now go back to doing other work until she's stuck or finished. Then they can
help (e.g. unstick her or check it over).

In this scenario, Martha may have finished 10 minutes later, but: the group
would spend less time arguing. They might finish earlier by helping her. If
that's impossible, they can get other work done while she finishes. If a
different approach was more promising, they'd know. And even if no one were to
succeed, they'd have documented their approaches and any progress made on
them. Arnie could offer to write it all up on the wiki.

There are likely flaws to my scenario, but my point is this: good leadership
is not control of the solving of a problem. It also is rarely steps taken to
directly solve a problem. Good leadership is facilitating useful communication
and organization, preventing distractions, and removing blockers.

Arnie may have been loud and influential, and he was probably the group's
leader, but more important than identifying a leader is identifying good
leadership. He was just not a good leader.

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jessaustin
Hmm, seems like another meeting that should never have been called. Martha
could have said that over IM, email, etc.

~~~
analog31
Yes, except that tuning out and working during a meeting was her first hour of
un-interrupted zone time all month. Been there.

~~~
jessaustin
I have to admit I haven't heard this particular justification for excessive
meetings before. b^)

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jpmattia
The story looks like it's more about personal branding than leadership.

