An Engineering Team Where Everyone Is a Leader
Regarding all these alternative ways of organizing, what's wrong with a leader taking responsibility, delegating it where feasible, and selecting for team members to whom they can delegate responsibility with confidence?Taking direction or orders from a manager is only ever stressful if that manager doesn't take accountability for their decisions and directions. I'm not sure the solution to that is a new framework where managers can direct without responsibility or accountability. Set a bar for managers that includes ownership, and the ability to delegate responsibility while persuading staff to willingly take on their own level of ownership.This "manager as peer," approach I have seen in a number of organizations is dishonest and seems to just mean forfeiting responsibility, while opportunistically cherry picking successes to take credit for.Team members don't need to be "heard," or need sympathy from managers, they need confidence that their leadership understands the environment they work in, takes responsibility for decisions, and gives them direction based shared competence.Of the problems to solve for, improving the quality and selection of managers seems smarter than contorting ourselves into new frameworks to work with ones who avoid responsibility.If you want to be liked, just be nice. If you want to be respected, take responsibility.