This is the kind of argument that makes people come up with middle manager stereotypes in the first place. In fact, the whole post is a great example of why middle manager stereotypes exist: it starts with a straw man argument and comes up with a "better alternative" that makes life easier for the manager, regardless of what the manager's reports really need.

I've seen this whole "I will empower you to do everything on your own" principle in action and it's exhausting. Especially when the word "empower" is a used as a euphemism for "have you take on additional responsibilities".

Look, boss, sometimes empowering me is just what I need, but sometimes I need you to solve a specific problem for me, so I can keep solving all the other problems I already have on my plate.

I eventually realized that this is a terrible management philosophy! Your team would much rather understand what's going on, why things are happening and why certain projects are high priority, and protecting them from the shit doesn't actually help with that at all.

https://talent.army.mil/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/ARN20039_...

The doctrine is a no-nonsense, no-fluff document based on 200+ years of military tradition where the effectiveness of the leadership is actually life and death. Definitely worth a read if you are interested in leadership.

Instead, servant leadership implies the manager serves the team (as the name implies). That includes removing impediments, but also includes empowering the team, ensuring their careers are growing, etc.

Hand-helding employees as this "blocker removal" interpretation of servant leadership seems to imply is just the pathway to micromanagement. It's ok to shield your juniors from the confusing world of corporate politics, but if your direct reports need you to do a lot of the sanitization/maturation of work items and requirements then why should you even trust their outputs? At that point you're basically just using them as you would prompt an AI agent, double- and triple-checking everything they do, checking-in 3 times a day, etc.

This "transparent" leadership is the servant leadership, or what it's intended to be anyway in an ideal world. Some elements of it are easily applicable, like the whole coaching/connecting/teaching, but they also are the least measurable in terms of impact. The "making yourself redundant", i.e., by avoiding being the bottleneck middle-man without whose approval/scrutiny nothing can get done is fantasy for flat organizations or magical rainbowland companies where ICs and managers are on the exact same salary scale. And it will continue to be as long as corporate success (and career-growth opportunities) is generally measured as a factor of number of reports / size of org. managed.

The goal of the manager was to explain to their reports what problems the team need to solves and why. Make sure the team was aware of any factors elsewhere in the org that might make a difference, and then connect the people on their team with the people on other teams who they need to talk to.

Beyond that the leader's job was to seek out such context from their peers and leadership.

But then it was up to the IC to figure out the how. The manager never told me how to accomplish the task unless I asked, and that was more of a mentorship than as a manager. And when I was a junior, most of that mentorship came from my more senior peers than my manager.

"Growth" of those being led is a key concept it seems, which I would think is really only possible when the leader doesn't do everything by themselves as a die-hard servant, but utilizes the "leadership" part to help subordinates learn to lead themselves.

Granted this realm of ideas can be a gray-area, but it seems like servant leadership as presented by the author here does not incorporate the concept of growing those that they lead -- as indicated by the fact they have self-invented a new "buzzword" which actually seems to be involve the behaviors as laid out by servant leadership -- am I missing something?

If one your past managers did something recommended in this article but it caused problems, that's ok! It just means you have seen another failure mode that the author didn't experience.

I remember being in a meeting with a bunch of the best managers at a former company. "Why did you originally want to be a manager?" was one of the first questions passed around the circle. The most common answer was, "I had this one really bad manager and I figured that surely I could do better."

That's not what "Servant leadership" is. It's about _letting the team lead_ - and they can come to you if they need help - instead of _pushing the team_. So in practice it's the opposite of anticipating problems. If something, servant leadership gets a bad rep for being used as an excuse to let people fall on the sword, instead of protecting them

The rest of the post is just describing the role of "Management".

Bit surprised by this. Has the hn community aged into management or something?

I guess we are not as young and naive as we used to be...

What the author is missing is parallelisation. By definition in systems of clear one person in charge leadership the work bottlenecks and power centralises, hard.

In models of servant leadership, it’s possible for multiple people to bring leadership and leadership skills all at once.

In a group of a dozen or more people, huge bottlenecks and ego power crap are resolved as multiple people can bring servant leadership.

It’s single core vs parallel, in the later leadership can then come from all participants, even the very young and vulnerable involved in the group can learn to do this.

The emphasis is on skill sharing and being of service OVER power hoarding.

I do agree that most management books read like parenting books - but I’d add that whats more important than the method is consistency in whatever approach you believe in. I’m not sure that managers/leaders will ever do that well relying on a book or a special ‘way’ they have read. They really need to have worked this out for themselves.

Why not just 'competent leadership', where 'competent' means 'figure out what your people need you to do and do it'?

I think this is a pretty important requirement to build trust in a team.

Being a manager is about listening. It is about tuning into the environment. It is about being there for the team in whatever way they need support. Sometimes that means being a coach. Other times it means fighting for them. And sometimes, when an unpopular decision is made above your pay grade, it means breaking it down for the team in a way that they 'get it'. You want them to understand without completely losing morale or slipping into rebellion.

Brutal honesty sounds great on paper. But not everyone can handle it or is ready for it.

It is a balancing act. Even if everyone "knows", bitch*ng about the company to your reports can only lead to bad outcomes. So you acknowledge the company's shortcomings. At the same time, you try to help the team find purpose and fulfillment in other ways.

This is the advice we get from many business books and leadership advices. However, I see more often than not leaders in a company do the opposite to keep their power. There is a missing link to making the good advice actionable: what can the leader do to keep becoming more valuable while making themselves "redundant".

I've seen so many examples of teams and organizations that experience a lack of clarity, with all sorts of negative downstream consequences - muddled strategies, moving goalposts, fatigue/low morale. Having a leader that can provide that clarity is so important.

"transparent leadership. In my book, a good leader

coaches people"

So ... why does coaching people require transparent leadership?

I think people can be sneaky and secretive; or transparent. Both can easily be used for coaching and training and teaching people. The other points have a similar issue in my opinion. The article is more like a "feel-good" statement - people subscribe to "be nice and kind". But are all leaders nice and kind? Are evil and mean leaders automatically incompetent and ineffective? I think the analysis part should be decoupled from ethics in regards to "xyz beats abc". One has to define what the goal is.

For instance, some CEO firing 50% of the people will be critisized by many - but greedy shareholders may get more money that way, so for them they may prefer a CEO that is mean-spirited here. That same mean-spirited CEO could be an awesome family guy and super-friendly with his close reallife friends and family, but when it comes to the company, he is ruthless. And so on and so forth.

I feel attributing any sort of parental concepts belittles the meaning here.

I’ve found that trying to be anything but flexible to the environment is unrealistic and even egotistical.

E.g, There are some environments where the CEO is so “command and control” that the “I want us all to bring our authentic selves to the peace circle of work, and from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs, we will figure out a synergy that works for all” just won’t ever work.

And for me, being unable to adapt the approach to environment suggests ‘one trick pony’.

I'm coming to my VP for help because I already tried diff baits, went to diff ponds, and tried diff reels. I'm coming for a fish finder not a lecture on maybe my casting was off

So a hybrid of the two schools of thought might be better than either one (depending on the larger org).

The short take presented in the article doesn't match my lived experience with this style, both in secular and faith-based circles. The core idea is absolutely not that of a "curling parent." Instead, it embodies living the walk, walking the talk, and putting the team's needs before your own ego.

In fact, this profound concept goes all the way back to Jesus Christ, who modeled it by washing the feet of his disciples—a task reserved for the lowliest servant of the time. This act was deliberately shocking and context-defying. He effectively "turned the world upside down" by saying, "Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all."

I'm not trying to proof-text, but this idea is ancient and deep. It's a profound leadership style that is unfortunately often executed poorly or misunderstood by modern practitioners. Poor execution doesn't invalidate the concept itself.

"The ability to smooth things out for everyone while helping them accomplish their goals"

I think it helps differentiate the "authoritarian" leader or the "Servant leadership" from the "legitimate" one. All kinds of leadership (sports, education, business, relationships) come from understanding people's needs and providing more efficient strategies to meet them.

I tend to do status updates in public channels before anyone can ask me but I've been the fortunate loner for the last couple years where I get to work with a lot of people but outside a lot of process.

https://www.zingtrain.com/article/servant-leadership/

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Don’t teach a man to fish… and you feed yourself. He’s a grown man. And fishing’s not that hard.”

I did everything he mentions in "Transparent Leadership," but also the stuff he talks about in "Curling Parenting."

I did it for 25 years. Seemed to work. I kept my job.

In my company, Personal Integrity and Honesty were very important. Not sure how representative that is, in today's world. It was an old-fashioned Japanese corporation.

A heat shield has some leakage of heat that the people inside know that there's heat, but enough cover that the team is shielded somewhat.

Take all the things you don't like about your former managers, and don't do them.

Then take all the things you thought were good and copy them.

That's it

I practice this in my day job, as in that is the default mode for continued employment. Not sure how these practices are new. I wonder if it is a generational thing.

My reflection overall is; he's probably heard of servant leadership but not understood it? It's not about sweeping away problems but more a mindset that your role is to empower. I feel strongly that all new managers should embrace and get good at this because it instills the mindset that the best leaders ultimately only succeed through their team.

A servant leader who becomes overworked is either not doing their job well (delegation isn't contrary to the mindset!) or, more likely, has a poor leader themselvesw.

I actually love the concept of transparent leadership but sadly I can't see it come through in his points. They are all things a good leader, a good servant leader, should also do.

For me transparent leadership becomes more critical as you move up the stack. Once you get to multiple teams or teams of teams leaders must pivot strongly to strategy setting, and in this your servant leadership comes in painting a clear destination for everyone to get to.

At this point I believe the best leaders are genuinely transparent and the worst keep secrets. One of my most respected mentors framed it as deliberately over-sharing. Which I love, even if I get into trouble for it constantly!

(I do like the writers anarchic streak; the best leaders are radicals)

There has to be a better way to organize how ICs communicate. More productivity to unlock.

Your direct reports are not children. You are not raising them out of an altruistic drive to guide the next generation. You are a part of a team of grown adults. You are not above the team, you have a roll on the team. It is an important roll: as a leader you provide high level direction so people are working towards the appropriate goal and confident it is achievable. Likely you are also acting as a manager, coordinating resources and resolving internal and external stakeholder conflicts. This makes the team more efficient, it's important.

But the people you are leading are the ones actually doing the work. They are likely more skilled at their particular role than you, and knowledgeable about much more. You are not leading them because you are better, you are leading them because that's how you can best contribute to the team.

Leadership has absolutely nothing to do with coaching, connecting, teaching, explaining, linking, growth inducing, or training their subordinates. Zero. Zip. Nada. It is the role of more senior practitioners to mentor their more junior colleagues. Leaders often are drawn from more senior ranks, so it's not uncommon for a person in a leadership role to also be in a mentoring role, but they are two separate and unrelated positions. If anything, the most important skill of a good leader is effectively soliciting the right information and wisdom from the right team members so they can most effectively leverage their team's expertise.

You shouldn't be teaching everyone how to communicate with the customer well, you should be identifying the person who is already great at such communication and making sure the rest of the team is giving them what they need to communicate effectively. The person who is great at such communication should be the one teaching that communication to their peers, and not through coaching but by showing everyone how it's done.

A leadership style of getting your direct reports to do your job for you is transparent in the sense that your subordinates will see right through you.

There's only one place I disagree and that's when it comes to empowering the team to do every last thing within your charge ("become redundant"). Depending on the organization, there are some actions that only a manager is empowered to do. Someone still needs to be present to weigh in on disputes/arguments, break ties, handle performance, reviews, interviews, PIPs, dismissals, and handle _other_ managers when necessary. It's simply not possible delegate these things and in the case of dealing with other managers, can imperil a person's employment.

Also, I would caution anyone to avoid directly comparing management to parenthood, even as a metaphor. A lot of people have terrible parents, and so model the worst behaviors: they can't nurture a houseplant let alone a human being. I've seen people like this bring the worst possible models for management into the workplace this way, and they do a ton of damage to businesses, psyches, and careers in return. Instead, I urge anyone to look to the carpenter/gardener dichotomy and how good leadership requires a bit of both:

https://www.intellicoach.com/ep14/

A Self-admitted self taught manager learns the good parts about servant leadership via self-learning (nice!) but figures that is all there is instead of - “this is interesting, this seems to work but have gaps, what is there to this?”

If the author did that, they’d discover a massive body of knowledge to include the specific problem they point out - you solve problems for your team, how do they start to solve their own problems?

Servant leadership works if paired with the following, tuned to the capabilities and maturities of the specific employee:

- servant leadership: resource your team, umbrella your team, let the smart people you hired do smart things, or turn so so employees into great ones by resourcing them to learn, getting them mentorship, and “sun is strong than cold wind” sort of thinking.

- Left/right limits and target outcome: consistently inform your team their duty, in exchange for all the above manager work that’s way past the least-effort bar, is to get comfortable solving problems within the bounds of what the solution does and does not need to look like. Force this issue always, and they start solving their own problems at growing speed, and you have a QA check as a manager via documenting those boundaries per project etc

- train your replacement: part serving your team is reaching there’s probably another sociopath on it who wants to lead teams, wants raw power, and so on. Enable that! Teach them how to lead teams in the above fashion. They’ll realize it works. You’ll train someone who can take over the remaining problem solving. This won’t hurt your own job either.

Put it all together you’ll get very loyal productive teams of employees who’ll respect you outside of work in your industry where it matters for networking purposes, and you can live with yourself after the laptop closes as you know you’re treating your fellow man/woman the right way while surving in crazy corporate environments.

In short, bad advice in that article. There’s a whole corpus to leadership beyond what the author figured out in the side and describes here ha.

Edit - ironically the author then argues for arguably similar as the above, but claims it’s something else of their own invention. Engineers should really grok how there are existing bodies of very useful knowledge for all the things that seem easily dismissible as gaps or weak points from tho social sciences. It’d save them a lot of time.