My ethos

A large part of how I am effective in teams is as a leader. My approach to leadership is based on my own experiences of work and life, and what I have observed to work best.

The empty promise of rationalism

Because we are engineers, we like to think that we can quantify things that concern us. If it works for chemicals and compute clusters, it must also work for colleagues. And yet it does not. My experience is that attempts to “manage” teams that focus on the tools, and ignore the people, are bound to cause conflict and dissatisfaction. I may have all the tasks in Jira, but I don’t have the nagging doubts of one engineer and the wild dreams of another. Both may be crucial to my business. I may have story points for the tasks, but I can’t account for the morale loss when someone is forced to do something they don’t like. I may have “scripts” for handling difficult situations, but I lose the nuance of the actual living, breathing individual sitting in front of me.

A maze of twisty people, all different

As I note in my remarks on travel, my own journey has taken me to a number of places. And the most important thing I learned is to stop believing what I think – a concept known in Buddhism as “don’t know mind” or “beginner’s mind”. And of course, the first step of don’t know mind is to quit the self-satisfied preaching that one has achieved don’t know mind….

The philosophical side of this realization is that I have learned to hold my own, and others’, beliefs lightly. In so doing, I align myself with people like Monica Guzman and Irshad Manji, and organizations like Braver Angels. My go-to reference for the origins of the human psyche is The Folly of Fools by Robert Trivers, which argues that self-deception is a highly adaptive – but fraught – trait we all share. And The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt offers a compatible account of how we come to form our ideas and the coalitions we build around them.

Another great influence has been the practice of somatic experiencing, which has taught me to sit with my own feelings – however difficult – and cherish them for what they are. This has been nothing short of a sea change in my life. Imagine welcoming a feeling of anxiety, or jealousy, or grief, as an old and trusted friend, and not immediately acting to try to make it go away. Imagine the self-love you can have if you just accepted yourself, but also did not try to control others. Imagine learning to take space before acting.

Service leadership

My approach, then, is that I exist to serve my team. And in particular, my “competition” as a leader is not some other potential leader. My “competition” is the state of having no leader at all. I want my team to choose me because I make their work better and happier and more effective. I want them to choose me because I help them improve their ideas, and do not take away their credit. I want them to choose me because I listen and care about them.

And to do so, I must be vulnerable, and encourage others to do the same, in an environment that has high standards but is also safe. It’s not easy to do, but when it works, it is magical.