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Comment by pmiller2 | Hacker News Reader

TL;DR: New team lead learns that "leadership" isn't about giving orders?

I agree with the other commenter who says "Sounds like he did it right." Leadership isn't ordering people around. It's more like steering a ship in the proper direction.

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And I think it's hard for a young person coming in, even a very talented one (or maybe especially one), not to go in thinking they know all the answers and creating a lot of friction. Or thinking that obviously things should be done differently.

I agree that in general a lot of senior people (including myself) have no interest in managing. But my best managers have always understood to manage liqhtly.

Yeah, I get that. It's ironic that not knowing all the answers is the key to managing well. More specifically, not believing that you have to know all the answers. That's part of why you have people on a team.

I have read (somewhere) that the single most important role of a leader is to create consensus. It is not your job as a leader, ideally, to make the decision, but to facilitate your team members coming to a consensus on the best decision. Sometimes, of course, you will have to make a decision, and that is where having a strong background in the area helps out, but that is when a consensus could not be reached or some other constraint got in the way of your team coming to the best conclusion themselves.

Also a Steve Jobs quote I always found informative on leadership, “You don’t hire smart people to tell them what to do; you hire smart people so that they can tell you what to do.”

I really liked the TL;DR, I should tweet that.

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