The ramblings on leadership by an introvert IT-Person

About me

• Mayer Briggs situates me as ISTJ (Introversion, Sensing, Thinking, Judgement).
• DiSC proves me a “clean” ‘C’ (Conscientious).
• My Gallup Strengthsfinder top 10 are: Learner, Deliberative, Strategic, Relator, Analytical, Intellection, Input, Responsibility, Restorative and Arranger.?

I belong to a not so rare breed of not so outspoken but highly intelligent people and some of us has learned to speak up

Experience

Throughout my +25 years, working in IT across multiple, both local Danish companies but not at least quite a few multinational companies, I have come across a lot of excellent leaders and a little too many that could have learned a little something more on leadership.

On the downside, poor leadership means that I have suffered stress, retaliations, social isolation, sidetracking, unreasonable demands eg. many nights as third level support & long long working hours etc.

On the upside, good leaders means that I have enjoyed good colleagues, personal & professional challenges, personal growth & development, teamwork & team spirit and I have had tons of fun and good experiences at work all fostered through excellent leaders.

I have worked at many levels from service assistant, first line support, trainee, programmer, solution architect, technical project manager, consultant to enterprise architect.

• And I have some leadership experience from the Danish Defence.

I was not born a natural leader; I am deeply introverted, however I have learned a lot about leadership throughout the years; and I believe that I have learned to become an ample technical leader. I am never going to grow pointy elbows nor would I venture into any type of political games that I have seen play out in many organisations, benefiting nobody but the key players, often at the expense of employees and deliveries.

Leadership

There a many types or styles of leadership, that works well for introverts like me, but most important I find the Pull-*ings

And thanks to Bo Klausen for augmenting me with the “Periodic Table of Leadership” for inspiration.

In this article I will not be venturing into the push-*ings, then this could be one long rant what went wrong and I will not dive into all the pull-*ings, however I want to dwell on:

Enabling?

Providing the context and resources to execute.

• I was working with a partner in the company and he really understood how to position me for various jobs and deliveries; together we both understood each other, provided the platform and in close collaboration with the customer delivered excellent, to the point work.

• In my own style of technical leadership; I aspire to create a platform of scope and common understanding. My job is primarily to clear the way, so that everybody can drive for the realisation and let me run with clarifications.?
• Thus I am very poor on various “soft” aspects like “feelings”, “empathy” and “personal ambitions”, my focus is entirely on the task ahead.?And that requires me to be extremely aware that my peers do not feel trampled down by me - one of my many shortcomings.

Empowering

To complete an assignment, it is hugely important that the assignees are empowered in the organisation, to deliver the required work. It is extremely troublesome to have to get input for, and approval for every little detail needed for the completion.

• One company I was working in, I had to get hours to spend if I had to ask anyone in the company for input, so that they could register that they spent time helping me on my assignment, even if just less than ? an hour.?
• Another company, it was simply good style, that you helped your colleagues.
• It is quite easy to figure out which approach provides the best velocity and collaboration.

I have many many times run into the issue, where my analysis or deliveries were a threat or competitor to somebody's ambitions, “life’s work”, perceived importance or perceived position, this is one of the places where strong leadership and empowerment could have helped significantly.?

• That and working with the organisation into embracing change.?
• Change is not just required - It is essential for survival!

Trusting?

Trusting in the ability to deliver and trusting, not the least in the sense of judgement.?

• I was in a team of really good people, responding to an RFP and there was a huge gap between what the client put forward as technical requirements and what they described as the business need.?
• Management went with the team’ judgement and it ended with the team being applauded out the door after the presentation to the client.

• The team delivered way beyond just answering the RFP and had a really good time doing it. The situation could have been taken directly from a course in “Leading High Performance Teams” - KUDOS to the management.!

Listening

There is a difference in expressing demands and expressing needs and a good leader can deduct employee needs in a conversation. Needs might be in the bottom of the Maslow pyramid, but it could also be the needs required for completing an assignment.

Caring

The bottom of the Maslow pyramid; safety, health, job security etc. Tending the employee by caring both for the employee and the employee’ context. Helping reports to help them selves, but also understanding the employees needs - This will only in a possitive way emotionally tie the report closer to both the manager and the employer.

Challenging?

At times people need to be dared out of their comfort zone when they have the abilities, if they are to develop their full potential. Challenging could both be on performance, acquiring knowledge, responsibilities and assignments.

• I liked it when, once both the employer and my manager could see that I could do more and challenged me to do so, despite that the “more” was in the grey area of my comfort zone. - Dare to Care!

Motivating

Leaders do not have to be specialists on everything, however it is important that they can motivate or coach their employees on reaching goals and achieve their best. Mentoring on the line of business could be built into the organisation through assigning mentors to employees.

• Personally I have enjoyed working with the same mentor across two companies and fortunately I am once again lucky enough to be working with my former mentor.

With the Danish defence, I often applied unconventional tactics to motivate the troops; e.g. in wargames when expected to be on the defensive in a Kobayashi Maru scenario, then turning to the? offensive and either provide an preemptive strike or roll up a flank of the opposing force. I do not believe in no-win scenarios and doing “something” is a lot more motivating than rolling over.

• It is not possible ever to motivate anybody by starting the conversation with: “I know it is stupid/cumbersome/unnecessary . . . . .” or if wanting to completely kill off all motivation, starting a conversation with overwhelming critisism.

Collaborating

Often an assignment cannot be delivered in isolation and requires more people collaborating and by both constructing the team and coaching the team on being a team; the team can be a lot more functional than a randomly thrown together team with no common platform but the assignment.

• On the fun side, at IBM the Global Talents had an offsite with team-building activities and the lot of us really challenged the external coaches on their rules throughout the activities; if not prohibited, then it could be a solution.?
• That ties into one of my hobby-horses; state the what and “how” only if needed and spend less time on the “how not”?

Acknowledging

People need to be acknowledged once in a while; at least not having colleagues or managers acknowledged or taking credit for others' work.

• Once I was building a technical reference architecture with a brilliant contractor and we were generally well acknowledged for the work we had delivered on the technical reference architecture across the organisation.
• - The close collaboration with the solution architects also meant, that the general motivation for applying the technical architecture grew exponentially with everyone seeing the opportunities and advantages and not being blocked by the drawbacks.

• Unfortunately I have many times experienced that others would claim the acknowledgement for other teams or people’ work - Which is a stone cold killer for both innovation and motivation.

Encouraging

Interesting enough some of the companies I have worked in, that expected the most from their employees, were also the ones giving the most in terms of Pull-*ings.

Diversifying (not mentioned in the *ing-forces above)

A diverse work-space is way more gratifying to work in than any form of mono-culture.?

• People tend to augment each other and where there are differences; new synergies arise and real innovation can surface. Eg. a mother of two twice-exceptional children could offer a whole other perspective than a middle-aged white male (like me) could his own and a healthy culture of positive reciprocity & acceptance can foster.
• Working in multi -cultural, -ethnic, -nationality workspaces & in general very diverse companies has been an enriching experience for me.
• Diversity is a lot more than gender identification, culture, ethnicity and LGPT+. As a learner, I thrive learning about other cultures, ethnicities, countries etc.

Leaders & Leadership

Many organisations promote specialists with no natural instincts for leadership to leaders, without proper leadership training. Often, when a good specialists is promoted as leader it quickly turns into something that resembles a Hollywood movie; where a soldier, fireman, entrepreneur, policeman, burglar, journalist or similar must save his family or the world through “firemanning” , “entrepreneuring” or * …..

Being a skilled professional specialist is a poor substitute for neither learned nor natural leadership. It is not possible to eg. “firewall’ing” or “Java’ing” an employee or a team instead of leading (either from the front or rear).? And on top of it, the organisation loses a good specialist!

• I am a big proponent of specialisation inside a profession, so that leadership is not the only promotion available to specialists. But a specialist should have Junior , Associate ,Consultant , Senior & Master * available as a viable career-path.
• And a different career path for leaders.

Another type of leaders are the ones driven entirely by ambitions .? Ambition can be an excellent and powerfull motivator for many people and may be applied for good as well as bad:

• Bad when it is meant, only promoting the leader, that then basically predates on the reports.
• Good when it is on the macro-level; the good of the client ->? the good of the company -> the good of the employees -> then it is also good for the leader.

Especially thanks to Jarl Ross , John Nikolajsen , Bjorn Jacobsen & Troels Agergaard Jacobsen for helping me find a better version of Kristian.

/EoR (end of rant)