Bedtime stories for leaders

Preamble

Maybe it sounds a little stupid, but looking at all the social media where people upload things that have been created by somebody else, sharing pictures and videos of celebrities, liking articles from CEOs they never met (and will never meet in their whole life) and all that kind of stuff, I thought why not write about things that just came to my own mind. Most likely these thoughts are not as spectacular as an automotive CEO announcing a new electric platform, but I can guarantee that they are authentic and not copied from somewhere else in the internet.

Remark: Should I use quotes, I will certainly provide a reference to the originator.

That's the reason why I would like to open a series of short bedtime stories dealing with the well-known and both difficult and important topic of leadership. It is something that has an impact on every one of us because almost every human being has a person he or she has to report to, and
therefore we all are somehow influenced in our daily work by somebody that we call our boss.?

Before we begin please let me clarify one extremely important thing: these stories are not referring to any particular person or one particular company. This is a summary of all the impressions that I have collected over the years from many, many different people in various different positions in a wide range of companies. The people mentioned in these stories will of course remain anonymous and it's neither my intention to insult nor expose them. Their actions are just examples which demonstrate that there's still room for improvement in all of us, and I would be more than happy if they would start a process of self-reflection with the one or the other.

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Vol. I: Project managers and football coaches

A football coach has a team of 11 players on the field, running and trying to win the match, and the bosses and managers of the club on the terraces, who are not happy when they lose the match. Each player has a specific task to fulfill, e.g. the goal keeper, the defenders who try to prevent goals, and forwards who try to score as many goals as possible.

A project manager has a team as well where every team member has a specific task to fulfill, and also different levels of managers asking for regular project reports (and of course they are also not happy when they hear bad news).?

There are of course a lot more things in common, but for this short comparison it will be sufficient to demonstrate that these two positions, although in totally different areas are not that far from each other as one may think.

By the way: I'm purposely neglecting the supporters, who would represent our customers, just to keep it simple.

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Let's have a look at one example how project managers behave today and what the analogue would on the football field:

I once had a project manager in software development who usually entered the team room every morning at 7:30am shouting the following:
"Guys (short pause), the errors (a slightly longer pause), the errors (longer pause), the errors in our software (short pause), these errors (no pause) have to be removed."

Wow, that was a really important, exciting, and meaningful statement because on one hand we had never thought about this and on the other we had forgotten about it overnight - so it was good that he reminded us each and every day. I think I don't have to mention anything about the team's reaction. After this important morning mantra, he usually left the room as fast as he came in.

Have you ever seen a football coach telling his team during the half time break at a score of 0-3 that they have to score at least 4 goals to win the match? Of course not, because it's a logical thing which does not have to be mentioned. A good coach analyzes the first 45 minutes, highlights the strengths and weaknesses of the opposing team and tries to find ways to react on them, just to give a few examples.


Coming back to our project manager it would have been much more efficient to ask for the reasons why certain errors were not resolved:
- Do we already know the root cause of the problem and it's a matter of finding the right solution or are we still struggling with the problem as such?
- Does one guy have too many errors (football: an extremely fast forward that he can't stop on his own and so he needs a backup) and needs support?... and so on ... and so on.

Don't misunderstand me: this guy was an experienced and intelligent colleague who was solely driven by the ambition to bring this particular project to a successful end. Basically this is something that I really appreciate and it is the right attitude for a project manager but the way he acted was simply wrong. But he simply did not have a clue what to do instead. He was helpless because (most likely) he was treated in a similar way by his boss.

But what would have been the right thing to do? Of course it's always easy to judge things in hindsight but in this case it's just to make people learn out of this experience. I’m not almighty and I’m also not a know-it-all but below there’s a few things mentioned from which I am convinced that they would have had a much more positive impact than just counting software errors.

- don't lead the team but coach it - be a part of the team instead of being the boss.

- don't coach the strong guys but focus on the ones who are struggling; find out why they do not perform as they should and provide support.

- give the exhausted colleagues a break instead of asking for Saturday shifts

… if you have further ideas feel free to write them in a comment.

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In short words: PROJECT TEAMs need COACHes rather than MANAGERs

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I don't know if these measures would have been more successful in the end, meaning that we would have been faster or better or whatever but one thingis for sure - it could certainly not have been worse!

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That's it for tonight - sleep well and never forget: DEYS