Even though from a software engineer’s perspective, this essay by Rands is one of the best things I’ve read about what it really means to manage people on a day-to-day basis.
The money quote?
Leadership is not just about effectively getting stuff done, but demonstrating through your composure that you aren’t rattled by the freakish.
And I like this on meetings:
You go to a lot of meetings. You already knew this, but Managers Go to Meetings. Meetings are the bane of my existence and I consider it my personal goal to kill as many possible, but I still go to a lot of meetings. As best I can tell, there are two useful types of meeting: alignment and creation. Briefly:
Alignment meetings sound like this: “It’s red, are we all in agreement it’s red? Ok, swell. Wait, Phil thinks it’s blue. Phil, here are the 18 compelling reasons it’s red. Convinced? Done now?”
Creation meetings sound like this: “We need more blue. How are we going to do that? Phil, you’re our blue man. What should we do here?”
Top marks, Rands.
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