Leadership That Leads by Example
I've had the privilege to work with some incredible leaders over my 20-year career (and some, well, not-so-great leaders). What separates the two? Good leaders do a few simple things:
- They set the example of excellence for their whole team to follow (and don't just bark orders from the top).
- They understand the impact of their decisions on the team as true problem solvers, not just decision makers.
- They can speak to all areas of the job and get into the trenches with the rest of the team.
- They lift their team up towards the next great thing (one day all students should surpass the teacher).
There's a lot more to being a good leader, of course, but these are consistently present in those people who've made the biggest impact on my career.
Balance Prevents Burnout
"You're salaried. 40 hours is the minimum, just get it done."
I've been told this more than a few dozen times in my career. I've been told to be grateful for the job I have. I've been told I'm appreciated because I survived this year's layoffs (while I watched friends get escorted to the door). I should be working hard and happy about it.
There's a difference between working evenings and weekends to catch up and working to get ahead - and that's the painful fine line that separates personal development from burnout. I prefer to devote my personal time to my career, not my job.
When my work is impactful and my effort is honestly appreciated, it's not a "job" anymore - it's just what I do, and at that point, 30 hours, 40 hours, 50 hours - it doesn't matter what I put in as long as I'm doing something meaningful - but I always try to balance the catch up work with the getting ahead work to prevent burnout.
Don't Hype, Deliver
We're all familiar with the hype cycle. New product! New service! The latest and greatest AI-doodad will change everything!
And then the delivered product is an MVP - the dreaded "minimum viable product" that gets shipped because time and money are scarce while hype is cheap and plentiful.
I value the other MVP: maximum value product. What can deliver the most value and with the highest quality? Sure, maybe the product only does one or two things - but it does those few things extremely well and without frustration. I ship products, not hype.
Chasing Titles Sucks
We all know at least one title chaser in our work families (Zazu voice: "two in mine, actually"). I've been told that ambition only goes up - if I'm not working towards the next big promotion, then my career with --REDACTED-- is pointless.
Ouch. Okay, it can't be that bad, right?
More often than not, title chasers tend to live and breathe their job, but not necessarily have a passion for it. Even worse, they typically have a hollow kind of personality - the "one with the company" types who are "loyal to the end!" (Gag me.)
I've climbed titles and roles throughout my career from lowly helpdesk tech to programmer to solutions architect to manager. While I'm always striving for The Next Great Thing in my career, that trajectory doesn't always go up. In my case, happiness comes from doing what I love, no matter the label under my name.
Critical Thinking (For Yourself)
With the rise of GenAI and agentic AI, critical thinking skills are in danger of being a deprecated asset. Maybe I'm fear mongering a little bit, but I'm starting to see entire meeting agendas, emails, and even business decisions being handed off to GenAI.
AI plays a role in every job nowadays. It certainly can play a role in making decisions or helping someone understand a complex situation, but as "human in the loop" becomes a selling point of agentic systems, it's important to remember what the "human" part of that brings: a big brain to question, double-check, and think critically about what AI is spitting out.
Communication Is Everything
If this list were ordered by importance, this would have been at the top. Communication is everything. Full stop. Communication makes or breaks my job satisfaction more than any other factor.
Communication should be clear, concise, and consistent. Consistency is the most critical of these. Organizations are made up of many departments, many leaders, and many layers. Communicating consistently between all these is the best way for a company to be successful.
My smallest employer was just ten people, and our biggest issues arose because someone didn't walk down the hallway and share some critical info about a phone call or email. My largest employer was over 60,000 people, yet everyone knew how to succeed in their jobs thanks to clear, concise, and consistent communication from the top down.