Take the time to listen to everyone and to form an educated decision. Explain your conclusion once, twice and even thrice. But sometimes teams can get caught in an endless futile discussion over details that don't matter for the stated goals.
In that case, it's *your duty* as the leader to play the dictator and impose order. "If you want to make everyone happy, don't be a leader. Sell ice-cream", Steve Jobs reportedly once said.
If it happens though, don't forget to re-establish trust with your team members and make sure they understand the circumstances that led you to act in that way.
It worked at first with a good team. Then later I inherited a fragment of another team with some older know-it-all engineers who thought everything modern was garbage and we should be doing everything like they did 25 years ago. I wasted too much time letting them stonewall everything while thinking we’d eventually reach a consensus.
Then at some point you realize you have to put your foot down and pick a direction after they’ve had a chance to state their position.
Autocratic-style hierarchy and coercion isn't necessary for avoiding decision paralysis in organizations. It appears to be the practical route but has all sorts of harmful and counterproductive consequences.
But I guess, if that's the environment you're in, then you're stuck with autocratic leadership (no matter what label it claims for itself), and your only choice is to leave or not.
I’m basing these comments out of experience - one example is a workgroup/committee operating under a similar model that was completely unable to do anything due to decision paralysis. The committee grew significantly more effective when we reformed the decision making process to have a small group of owners to handle pitching and (potentially) implementing the decision, then had approval be a simple yes/no majority vote.
Define your roles and expectations of each role then run the program and edit as needed.
True in technical leadership and true in life. Engineers are especially prone to this sort of frustration, where you're technically right but socially aren't speaking the right language for your audience.
I don't see much of that.
People care about different things, so trying to focus just on facts can end up with people talking past each other, because they have different goals, value systems, or other fuzzy human feelings that can't be graphed in an Excel spreadsheet and compared numerically.
I'm not saying that emotional appeals and sophistry are fine, but I find that often when people accept an emotional appeal over a cold purely factual argument, it's because the factual argument is missing the point. A more important part of the discussion is understanding what other people actually care about to make sure we're not all talking past each other, or spending hours arguing details that won't matter in the end.
You think you can just politely work around him -- that's how you get vaccine skeptics dismantling the CDC.
readthenotes1•2h ago
The software examples are dated, but the wetware observations and advice stands.
https://www.amazon.com/Becoming-Technical-Leader-Gerald-Wein...