Leadership — like growing a plant

I’m reading this book — “Becoming a technical leader” by Gerald Weinberg now and I came across something very profound in the introductory section and I thought I’d write about it here.

So the author is talking about an Organic Model of Leadership and contrasting it with a Linear or Threat/Reward model and talks about a bunch of developers trying to solve a difficult problem. All but one of them are vehemently debating ideas and discussing with each other. The other developer, Martha, unlike others is quietly going through the code without participating in any of the discussions. To a person observing from the outside it seems as though Martha isn’t doing much. But in the end Martha figures it out and the team solves the problem.

One of the observations the author makes on this little story is how the other members of the team showed leadership by letting Martha work in her own style without forcing her to fit into the group’s style.

He says and I quote —

Leading people requires that they relinquish control over their lives. Leading the process is responsive to people, giving them choices and leaving them in control.

And then —

They are empowered in much the same way a gardener empowers seeds — not by forcing them to grow, but by tapping the power that lies dormant within them.

Leadership in the seed sense is creative and productive through other people. It is an organic definition, because it works through creating an environment rather than confining itself to a few focused actions — threads or rewards — in a few specific instances to create a few specific results.

This is an amazing analogy comparing how seeds are grown. I think it sums up everything a leader or a manager should and should not do.

Over the last few months I’ve read some classic books like The Mythical Man Month, Peopleware & Slack. These books deal with a variety of topics including team management and leadership. And the authors of these books also have this same idea that is expressed by Weinberg as one of the central ideas. In brief —

The job of the manager is to remove all obstacles that stand in the way of the team and create an environment that empowers them to do great work!

Plants also need a lot of care. In his book Peopleware, Tom deMarco shares a lovely story about how one of his managers, Sharon Weinberg, influenced his opinion on what management is.

With a product demo fast approaching, Tom suddenly fell sick one day. But he still dragged himself to work that day. Sharon saw what Tom was doing and how sick he was and immediately went out and got hot soup for him and made him take it. After finishing the soup Tom asked Sharon how she found time to do this for him amid all the pressures of running the project to which Sharon responded saying — ‘Tom, this is management’.

Caring for the team and your people is really important and it needs to be genuine. Gerald Weinberg again talks a lot about this in the book as well.

And then there is motivation. I have mixed feelings on this one. On one hand there is the idea that developers and knowledge workers in general are inherently motivated and that they love their work much like how motivated a plant is to grow and produce blossoms (sorry for stretching the metaphor too much). Again I wanna quote the following from Peopleware —

There is nothing more discouraging to any worker than the sense that his own motivation is inadequate and has to be “supplemented” by that of the boss.

The same applies to motivational posters around the office. Once again quoting from Peopleware (you can tell how much I love this book) —

These motivational accessories, as they are called (including slogan coffee mugs, plaques, pins, key chains, and awards), are a triumph of form over substance. They seem to extol the importance of Quality, Leadership, Creativity, Teamwork, Loyalty, and a host of other organizational virtues. But they do so in such simplistic terms as to send an entirely different message: Management here believes that these virtues can be improved with posters rather than by hard work and managerial talent. Everyone quickly understands that the presence of the posters is a sure sign of the absence of hard work and talent.

But then there are ways to make a real connection with your people and Weinberg has dedicated a whole chapter on this topic in the Becoming a Technical Leader book. So I really recommend reading the whole book.

Have you read this book? I’m curious to know what you think of it and which parts have had the most impact on you. So leave a response :)