So, you’re new to leading people and you’ve got your first team ready to go. Where do you start?
Your plan of action for leading—rather than managing—your team is short. There are three disciplines to focus on:

Setting the tone

Getting your head around the concept
The hard way: giving a formal presentation on your values and […]

OK, so you want to be a part of the executing team, but not just as a manager. How will you know if you’re doing it right? Or wrong?
You will know that you have been successful in your drive to lead rather than manage when you become the least important person in your organization.
Decisions—the right […]

Leading a team is hard, mostly because managing seems to be part of our nature. To know and control everything that goes on around you always seems to be the best way to minimize your risk of failure or of being seen to make a public mistake.
You will find yourself fighting the manager within you […]

So last time we were talking about technology as a creative activity and the need to motivate creative people with leadership rather than trying to herd them through management.
Despite the fact that the leadership approach works (and I think it works best), by many standard organizational measures the management approach can appear successful, especially from […]

In most technology companies, services like facilities or physical-plant management are provided to support the creative force behind the company.
Creative? Yup!
Despite all the press from the art community that would indicate they have the lock on the world’s creative output, technology professionals are creative people. We create the products, services, and technologies that will shape […]

So, you’re a “manager”.
First of all, don’t be. A manger, that is.
As we’ve discussed already, leaders and managers differ in their approach to motivating people. Management is often about directing and prodding people (the way the shepherd and his sheep dogs prod the sheep); its about keeping a group of people within a predefined set […]

Let’s move on now to talk about some of the principles of the philosophy of technology leadership that will apply to you as (or if) you move up in your organization, gaining responsibility for and authority over larger and larger groups of people and projects.
These principles don’t replace what we’ve already discussed. Rather, so far […]

If you’re following along in the book (shameless plug!), you’ll have noticed that we’ve covered pretty much everything in the first chapter on leadership philosophy.
This is not to say that there won’t be any more discussion of philosophical point-of-view issues. But the rest of those discussions will be more focused on a specific context: leading […]

Teach what you know.
As a lightweight way to steer my life in the direction of making some small positive difference I’m a pretty big fan of that phrase. And if you are serious about developing yourself into a leader who makes a difference, you might want to consider adopting it for yourself.
Teaching as a way […]

Here’s another mom-and-apple-pie post, but hey, just because your mom said it doesn’t mean it’s not worth thinking about!
Most of what we’ve been talking about in this leadership philosophy series of posts is about a point of view—specifically, the point of view that I’ve adopted in my development as a leader and had some success […]