Leadership Slacklining (Part A)
Leadership Slacklining (Part A)
"The road to success is always under construction." - Lily Tomlin
If you have tried slackline, you know it is super fun but also hard as hell. Slacklining is “the art” of walking, running or balancing along a suspended length of flat webbing that is tensioned between two anchors (most usually between 2 trees).
In today’s article*, we are discussing the fragile balance the engineering leader has to maintain between performance / output and creating a safe space that continuously inspires team growth.
* writing 25 posts until Christmas is harder than I thought, but, nevertheless, I will do my best to catch up 😁
Show me … performance!
Every leader is facing this requirement. Kent Beck and Gergely Orosz recently contributed a 2 part essay reflecting on software engineering metrics and developers’ performance. Here’s an interesting first quote:
CEOs and CFOs are increasingly frustrated by CTOs throwing up their hands and saying software engineering is too nuanced to measure, when sales teams have individual measurements and quotas to hit, as do recruitment teams in the number of positions to fill. The executive reasoning goes: if other groups can measure individual performance, it’s absurd that engineering cannot.
(via Measuring developer productivity? A response to McKinsey, K. Beck & G. Orosz, Pt. 1)
What this part says is that companies’ executives are used to do performance reviews based on metrics. And so the question becomes: “what should leaders measure?”
The authors are reviewing the DORA and SPACE metrics and also reflect on McKinsey’s proposal for measuring developers’ productivity as presented in this article. They are making the observation that metrics often focus on measuring outcomes and impact, and they are phrasing their concerns that there might be a dark side to that approach:
we have seen the dark side of only focusing on measuring – and rewarding – outcomes and impact: that people game the system for their own benefit in ways that defeat the purpose of measurement, and ultimately disadvantage the business by generating junk data.
(via Measuring developer productivity? A response to McKinsey, K. Beck & G. Orosz, Pt. 2)
…and then they move to what is, in my personal opinion, the $1M question:
What’s more important, team performance or individual performance?
[I want to briefly pause here and thank the authors for praising Greece’s (my country’s) national football team for winning Euro 2004. Otto Rehhagel’s awesome coaching is a great example of the difference good leadership can make to a team]
If I were to answer that question from my personal experience, I’d say: The collective engineering brain / strength of the team is reflecting its strength, and the average morale of the team members, reflects the morale of the team.
In that sense, the team performance is way more valuable as the individual contributor’s performance. The author’s opinion seems to be aligned with the one I just shared:
We see similar dynamics in software engineering: teams punching well above their skill and experience level by working together, morale being high, and a manager with the right intuition.
(via Measuring developer productivity? A response to McKinsey, K. Beck & G. Orosz, Pt. 2)
How can we achieve team performance, then?
Team performance is achieved when the skills and abilities of the team members are effectively combined and put to work. In order for this to happen, a coordinator is needed. And that is where the concept of the “servant leader” can make a difference.
The servant leader’s priority is to understand the team members both on a professional level but also in a cultural, human level. Knowing what kinds of things our team members love, fear, are inspired from or get devastated every time they face, allows us to:
have a good sense of our team’s energy levels and
make sure that we provide a working environment where our team members have the opportunity to feel safe to function and outgrow their limitations. Why? Because the team muscle is stronger than the individual contributors. Now our team members start to feel stronger within the stronger, protective team cocoon!
The second thing a servant leader should do is identify blockers the team members are facing and, gradually, improve the processes and tools to help eliminate these blockers. This is a very hard thing to do, and usually it is considered a risky path from the leaders themselves because, if done right, the team starts functioning independently and effective, so that the leader feels less and less needed.
What are some indicators that we see in bonded, strong teams:
High levels of proactivity and accountability.
No signs of blaming culture.
Attention to detail.
Ownership of mistakes and genuine interest in doing better next time.
Team members want to be up-to-date and relevant to their technical domain.
Resources of the day
What makes a leader great?
“Leadership is the awesome responsibility to see those around us rise.”
- Simon Sinek
How The Inverted Pyramid Leadership Structure Can Drive Better Results And Empower Employees?
In this article by Forbes we are being introduced to the inverted pyramid leadership structure where clients are on top and management in the bottom:
The inverted pyramid structure, which places clients at the top and C-suite leaders at the bottom, isn’t a new invention, but businesses that haven’t yet taken advantage of this way of thinking might not realize what they’re missing.
For some, the typical chain of command is the only way they know how to do business, even if it comes at the expense of their employees, who actively engage with clients and customers on a routine basis. In my organization, for example, empowering employees to make decisions has resulted in better work performance and increased customer satisfaction and employee retention.
The servant as leader by Robert K. Greenleaf
This is the book that introduced the world to the concept of the servant leader. Robert K. Greenleaf explains in it what a servant leader is and how to become one.
You can read the book for free, via the Internet Archive.
BONUS: If you are more of an acoustic person rather than a reader, I highly recommend the audiobook The Heart of Leadership by Mark Miller. Available on audible (paid).
That was it for today! I hope you enjoyed this article of the Software Advent Calendar 2023 series! See you tomorrow 🖖.