This is an email I need to send myself every three months or so… every time I hit one of my jaded cycles and turn into a sarcastic cynic.
It’s not so hard to find fault in projects, people, processes, etc. It’s not hard to point these things out publicly, and to make people feel small when they challenge your analysis. What’s more challenging, and what separates the good leaders from the merely average is working with people to address the faults in a productive manner.
The uncivilized leader (me in my cynical phases) sees faults and looks for the least tedious solution. It’s often tempting to discount people as incompetent and processes as useless. The quickest solution seems to be to marginalize people and ignore processes. However in the long run (at least in a large corporation) this leads to a team made up of mostly marginalized people, and chaotic processes that start crushing projects.
Instead of marginalizing a problem person, ask how they could make a productive contribution to the group. Instead of bitching about a process, propose a new, better one. Instead of tearing apart a technical design somebody has a deep emotional investment in, coach them on how to fix the current design and build a better one next time.
