Things managers do that leaders never would

https://simonsinek.com/stories/5-things-managers-do-that-leaders-never-would-according-to-simon/

by 9x39 • 10 months ago

118 118 10 months ago

simonsinek.com

kumarvvr• 10 months ago

1. Managers Hoard Information. Leaders Overshare.

And, bad managers play politics with information privy to them.

2. Managers Weaponize Policy. Leaders Bend Rules for People.

This is absolutely true. There is a saying that comes to my mind, said by a good manager, "Break the rules and justify it, I am here to ratify it"

3. Managers “Fire Fast.” Leaders Coach, Then Help People Land Softly.

Also true, bad managers consider people as "resources" to be used and disposed off.

5. Managers Reward Compliance. Leaders Reward Dissent.

This is directly related to the control issue. Compliance means control is easy. But this will not prevent them from blame dumping and un-ethical acts.

mgh22• 10 months ago

Tell these to Steve Jobs

maxbond12• 10 months ago

I see your Steve Jobs and raise you an Elizabeth Holmes.

slowmovintarget• 10 months ago

You do realize that all of these are false dichotomies.

Leaders share the right amount of context so their people understand the overarching strategy and goals. They don't overshare.

Leaders help move their people away from rule-breaking in the first place.

Leaders prioritize the health of the team. While this should include giving timely correction and assistance to help people to the right track, and finding ways to lean in to individual strengths, it also absolutely includes removing people with poisonous attitudes, disruptive behavior, or someone dragging the team down with poor performance.

Leaders reward justified, rational dissent. Compliance is an expected norm until someone can demonstrate either an exception or the need for a new norm. Compliance is more often related to things that can sink the entire company, so no, it doesn't just mean "control." Compliance is not the same as conformity.

stuaxo• 10 months ago

Felt like I was reading a lost on linkedin, with this talk of "leaders".

Its just a kind of bad management vs a kind of good management.

danaris2• 10 months ago

I mean, obviously if you're presenting it in the format that the article does, it comes across as a false dichotomy. I read it as one part exaggeration to make the point that what too many managers do is actively detrimental to team health, and one part emphasizing the direction in which to err to be a good leader.

Obviously (just to pick one of the dichotomies there) blindly rewarding dissent is not really any better than blindly suppressing it. All of these need to be done with nuance and judgement. Because those are absolutely vital skills of any good leader.

The point is that managers (of a certain type) are approaching these particular issues in exactly the wrong way, and need to be shown that.

ern• 10 months ago

This “manager” vs “leader” thing is slightly overdone in general.

A manager who doesn’t lead will end up the issues raised in the article.

A leader who can’t manage will face administrative chaos.

IncreasePosts• 10 months ago

1 thing that leaders do that managers never do: Call themselves leaders

ayntkilove2• 10 months ago

Rather a manager mentality in a leadership role calls themselves a leader. True leaders rarely have to assert this notion, it is naturally assumed and respected by those around them. The world is awash with people ill-suited to "leading" people leading people. We are all suffering the overburdening of society with the "educated".

danparsonson• 10 months ago

Actually based on the characterisation here, that's one thing that managers do that leaders don't

jama2117• 10 months ago

I’m not sure that refutes anything in the article

sakjur• 10 months ago

It nuances ”leader” and ”manager” from something you are to descriptions of problem-solving toolkits when dealing with people.

In that sense it could be reconstructed as ”soft power mode” and ”hard power mode” where the former inspires confidence and encourages creativity and the latter emphasizes compliance and alignment. Any person in a position of power will utilize strategies that could be seen as signs of either mode depending on the situation.

leakycap21• 10 months ago

I don't think I agree with #5 based on my experiences working in tech a few decades

Dissent is rarely rewarded by leadership to the point I can't think of a single example of it happening

dsr_• 10 months ago

If it is dissent with someone other than the leader, and it pays off...

leakycap21• 10 months ago

I still can't think of situations where it paid off for the dissenter.

Maybe I'm limited by the small number of experiences I've had at work related to someone being disagreeable, or maybe it is rare to be rewarded for dissent even when "you're right"

ayntkilove2• 10 months ago

Then based on the premise of the post you have interacted with managers in leadership roles.

leakycap21• 10 months ago

My comment is pointing out that I don't agree with the premise. The article may have some truth but isn't necessarily an infallible truth.

shermantanktop• 10 months ago

I have a feeling that if you apply No True Scotsman like this, you’ll find that all the leadership roles are filled with managers.

Some of them are more leader-y than others but all of them act like those bad managers some of the time.

danaris2• 10 months ago

It seems clear to me from the way the article is presented that this isn't describing "what people in these roles do"; it's describing "what people with these mindsets do".

A "leader" isn't someone in the C-suite; it's someone who does these things. They have a leadership mindset, and should be put into leadership roles, but very rarely are.

A "manager" isn't someone with "manager" in their title; it's someone who does those things. They have a toxic "corporate management" mindset, whether they are actually in a managerial role or not.

0xfffafaCrash• 10 months ago

Might be a cultural thing

I’ve both been rewarded for dissent from leadership throughout my career and had greater respect for and advocated more strongly for those willing to stick out their necks and disagree earnestly and productively when in leadership positions.

Dissent isn’t the same thing as sabotage. There’s healthy conflict and open disagreement which helps illuminate risks and gaps and uncover opportunities in productive ways and then there’s just stirring the pot or trying to tear things down without bringing alternative proposals to the conversation — being unwilling to contribute in positive ways if you don’t always get your way.

The latter kills the ability for the team to work well while the former is key to allowing colleagues bring insights and value to the team

Seattle3503• 10 months ago

There is an art to dissent, and this article doesn't touch on it. If dissent is just a wall of "no, we can't do this", it will not be met well. If dissent is framed as a takedown of a person or their work, it will not be met well. Dissent needs to be delivered in a diplomatic way that makes clear everyone is pulling in the same direction, and there is a better way to pull.

Some folks (eg younger me) are not interested in learning this art, and just want to say things and have everyone immediately see their genius. When I think about the times folks have done that to me, I didn't take it well.

wrs2• 10 months ago

What’s not mentioned here is the challenge quite a few aspiring leaders will face: how to act like a leader when your manager is a manager.

jama2117• 10 months ago

True

godelski11• 10 months ago

#5?

Without adversity, what is there to defy?

hleszek• 10 months ago

You have to learn to manage up as much as down. In other words convince your boss that what you're doing is the right thing to do. Might not work in all situations of course but if they respect you and you had time to show your value, they might surprise you by going your way.

9x39• 10 months ago

Detach from reacting to them, invert the situation and give them what they’re looking for but not asking for.

Generalizing heavily, but I have turned relationships around to somewhat functional levels like this with weak leaders who leaned entirely into playing their supposed manager role.

Example: micromanager. Nagging you for updates. Inverted: insecure and craving information. I’ll flood you with information. Maybe you’ll back off and trust me if you’re not pathologically like this.

Information hoarding. Inverted: politically vulnerable, unsure of who to trust (maybe? If not a psychopath). Share information - not gossip - give them the credit, make them feel like they have allies and backup. See if you can’t go through something together and build trust.

Avoiding hard convos (coward). Inversion: insecure about people skills, probably bad history of making things worse. Start the hard convos for them by setting them up and handing them off. Take the risk and make the icebreaker moves, scheduling or calling or introducing. Play a support role if it’s them vs externals, detach and be supportive and nonreactive or limit it to positive reinforcement only and active listening if 1 on 1.

Typically I see immediate improvement with these if behavior stems from insecurity, but psychopaths and narcissists can and will take advantage.

I think nonreactivity and some pity for the cowardly go a long way to stabilizing things if they’re trying but failing. Cut them off and leave if it’s hopeless.

wrs2• 10 months ago

To clarify my comment: the challenge is how to make room to follow this advice as a manager, when your own manager doesn’t share these values. In particular, when visibly bending rules, or spending any time coaching “nonperforming” subordinates, or “showing weakness” by tolerating dissent, is going to look like “bad management” to your manager.

After all, if most managers valued the things in this post, we wouldn’t need the post.

rib3ye• 10 months ago

It’s kind of a dumb premise. Anyone can get the leadership or the management treatment as described here - if just depends if the leader/manager likes what you’re doing.

I have stuck my neck out of underperforming employees and was quickly disincentivized.

FinnLobsien3• 10 months ago

It’s important to remember the source here: A motivational speaker’s online course/consulting company.

They’re extremely incentivized to have a simple, takeaway that makes you feel good for 2 minutes

jama2117• 10 months ago

There’s nothing dumb about saying how leaders should act. It’s not stating how things are, but how they should be.

non_aligned2• 10 months ago

No, but these are slogans that seldom survive contact with reality.

"Managers Hoard Information. Leaders Overshare." - sure, until they don't. Because as companies grow, the probability that there is a hostile or careless employee in the audience approaches 1. That employee may tell a friend working at a competitor, may talk to a journalist, and so on. Most tech companies are funded on the principle of radical transparency, but then start compartmentalizing information because oversharing doesn't scale.

"Managers Weaponize Policy. Leaders Bend Rules for People." - likewise, this works up to a point. Past that point, if every "leader" within the company is bending the rules, you end up in an unmanageable mess, and outcomes that are unfair and legally perilous ("how come the company made an exception for Jill but not Joe?").

"Managers Fire Fast. Leaders Coach, Then Help People Land Softly." / "Managers Avoid Hard Conversations. Leaders Run Toward Them." - wait, so which one is it? Firing someone is a hard conversation, and in my experience, line managers often avoid it, letting performance problems fester for too long. Then, it's the "leaders" (the top brass - founders, etc) who decide that things have gone too far and we need to make brutal 10% cuts across the board.

"Managers Reward Compliance. Leaders Reward Dissent." - this varies, but the tolerance for dissent is usually higher among line managers than top leadership, simply because dissent is guaranteed once you hit a certain scale and your company can't be run as a perpetual discussion club. At some point, you need to get behind the plan or look for another job. I'd wager that Steve Jobs wasn't all that keen on dissent from random employees. Similarly, if you work at Palantir and tell them that they should sever ties with the Dept Homeland Security, I'm sure they will be happy to show you the door.

0xbadcafebee• 10 months ago

5 ways to pretend the world is black and white, according to that ted talk business coach guy

etothepii2• 10 months ago

Does it go with his book, "knowing why you do something can be extremely helpful?"

csomar• 10 months ago

The question is: does an inspirational speaker that has no hands-on experience (beyond speaking) fall in the Leader or Manager category?

jama2117• 10 months ago

Well said

pclmulqdq2• 10 months ago

It's very easy for Simon Sinek to write and speak about leadership when he has never actually done it. Divorced from the messiness of reality, you can write a lot of nice-sounding platitudes.

ugh123• 10 months ago

100%.

aeternum• 10 months ago

Exactly right. Each of these is just obviously wrong.

Leaders Overshare? Simon shares material non-public information on linkedin. Now he and the company are in trouble.

Leaders bend the rules? Simon bent the rules for some of his team but not others, now multiple past employees are bringing discrimination lawsuits.

Leaders coach and help people land softly? Simon kept too many low performers on his team and now the company's product is buggy, behind competitors and forced to downsize so his entire team is being cut.

otherme123• 10 months ago

Leaders Overshare? Simon shares material non-public information on linkedin. Now he and the company are in trouble.

I think this is within the team. Maybe you never worked for someone who doesn't share, who keep secrets, within the team. I did. It is frustrating. It makes you doubt every word they say, even a simple "everything is going fine" sows doubt in you, making you wonder if they are hidding bad news. It makes you doubt what you are doing is useful, because some time ago they hide a change of focus for weeks.

Then the secrets are revealed, they are stupid and pointless (not industrial secrets like you imply), they kept it secret just in case.

hackable_sand• 10 months ago

Woah what bizarro world do you come from?

squigz• 10 months ago

I like the complete lack of nuance in this and other responses. Like yeah, obviously what they meant was oversharing internal information publicly.

FinnLobsien3• 10 months ago

Its funny that the motivational speakers, coaches etc are rarely the people who’ve actually done the thing they preach for a living.

The best coaches, “mentors” etc I’ve had would never issue blanket advice like that because they know it’d be wrong for most people.

ccppurcell2• 10 months ago

A nugget of advice distilled from Bill Hader: when people tell you what you're doing isn't working, they're right. When they tell you what you should do instead, they're wrong.

scott_w• 10 months ago

100% this. I bought his book, got through maybe 5 pages and realised it was self-aggrandising bullshit. I’ve never picked it back up.

His rant about avocado on toast only cemented my view that he never starts with why he’s wrong every time he opens his mouth.

fullstackwife• 10 months ago

Argumentum ad hominem - seriously, team! we can do better than that!

bee_rider• 10 months ago

If someone is giving life-coach type advice, an ad hominem actually might be relevant, right? The blog post doesn’t really make any arguments, it is just advice based on his observations. Which is fine, but it hinges on his expertise.

pclmulqdq2• 10 months ago

An ad hominem isn't always a fallacy. If you put yourself out as someone with credibility or expertise in a field and use that to back up your ideas, you have put your credibility on the table to attack.

sour-taste• 10 months ago

Is this corporate Goofus and Gallant?

maxbond12• 10 months ago

Goofus yells and gets upset when things slip. He demands that someone fall on their sword.

Gallant gets curious about what systems were in place to prevent this and why they weren't sufficient. He understands that nobody is perfect and that we succeed by cooperating.

jmward01• 10 months ago

The thing articles and project management philosophies both miss is this: What is the fundamental math constraint that shapes a project? I personally believe it is NP growth and when you really understand it you see why things fail and what algorithms can help you succeed. You have a problem and resources to solve that problem. By trying all combinations of the resources you can decide what is the optimal solution. But it is NP growth so you can't actually search that space because the heat death of the universe is often waiting for you. The only time you should search the whole space is if the number of parameters is small enough that you can fit it all in one head and solve it. If it is too big for that then the only thing you can, and should, do is divide and conquer and keep doing that until you hit a leaf node small enough to put the problem completely in your head. People intuitively get this, but then they screw it up in predictable ways. After dividing they then accidentally recombine parts by sharing too much communication between parts. NP strikes again because there are too many parts to find an optimal solution now. Or, after they divide and find a local optimum, they 20/20 it and say 'had we combined we could have found a better solution' so they combine teams and fail the next project. Technically the combined team could have done it better, but NP time would have stopped you and you wouldn't have found that solution that the smaller, isolated, teams found. They think 'lets put things into a backlog and figure out what to attack one at a time' except it is an NP problem to order that backlog (and by the time you knock a few things off the top the things at the bottom are unrecognizable anyway) so NP strikes again. They divide and micro-manage from above which means they never actually divided and there are, again, too many pieces to search so NP strikes again. The solution is always this: 'Is this too much to fit in one head? Yes - divide / No - exhaustively search and implement. This gets to a core point here. The pyramid that divide and conquer creates must include communication restrictions between teams and resources carve-outs between teams or else you have failed to divide. However, -inside- a team you need to communicate and share resources in whatever is the most efficient way based on the problem you have carved out. So, it is possible to communicate too much, when you cross divisions. It is the right answer to hoard information in some cases, if the communication was designed to be limited to enforce a division.

meander_water• 10 months ago

Hey ChatGPT, write me a blog post in a listicle format based on my video:

Same crisis. Same pressure. Completely different responses.
Managers love the ‘hire slow, fire fast’ mantra,” Simon says. “But leaders know that letting someone go isn’t about making an example—it’s about dignity
A manager might say, “You’re not meeting expectations. Today’s your last day.” A leader takes a different approach:
Managers love yes-men and yes-women—people who nod along and follow orders without question. Leaders actively seek out the people who will challenge them.

ionwake2• 10 months ago

One of my worst managers, funnily enough, was just another autistic programmer, who to this day literally has no idea how badly he affected me. It actually makes me laugh, sometimes I see him on the street, and he has literally no idea, just a slight face of disdain when he sees me, almost as if I am some vague recollection of a memory of a poor performer who couldn't VIM fast enough.

I worked almost 12 hour days for him and I never complained about this behaviour, even after I quit. I gave him the full extent of my work and loyalty and he somehow never even understood that. To this day I am sure he has no idea of how much I put myself out for him.

Almost as if he thinks that work life and personal life are two completely separate non linked spheres of reality. His ignorance to this day is almost a point of sheer bafoonery and hilarity which brings me a bit of joy now when I remember him / see him.

EDIT > I wasn't going to read the article but when I saw comments of managers offended by some random article, I knew it would be good.

oblio2• 10 months ago

Why wouldn't you say anything? Are those bridges that important?

ionwake2• 10 months ago

Its a good question and I am unsure why I would get a downvote a it delves into realms of philosophy. Ah I just realised its the offended manager. Anyway to answer the question, I think at a core level I just always felt that I should be loyal to my manager, and if I saw that after my sacrifice, that I was unappreciated, then I would leave, as my work was not for payment but to help people who needed it.

Once decided to leave, I felt as a final mark of respect I would both leave quietly, and more importantly I did not owe them the feedback, which would ofcourse help.

It sort of should make sense. I am often confused why people who decide to quit a company that has wronged them, would voluntarily provide feedback. I feel they only do it to vent, but control of ones emotions is an act of discipline one should not shirk in professional settings.

godelski11• 10 months ago

I'm disappointed in so many of the comments here.

The writing is aspirational, yes, but why are so many quick to nitpick? It looks like you're reaching for reasons not listen. If you choose to not stick your neck out, so be it, but don't knock those who do. You'll only enable the thing you're afraid of.

The utility of Utopian writing is not to serve as a set of instructions to achieve Utopia. It is to inspire those to push for it. A Utopia is unobtainable, but it serves as a direction to pursue. The world changes, and so too must our actions, but the direction appears to hold constant for millennia. We're the only ones who can create a utopia, but we're also the ones who prevent us from reaching it. The choice is about which side you want to be on. Do you want to work towards that utopia? Will you sit silent watching others build? Will you justify your inaction? Or will you enable those who only want that future for themselves?

I really do want you all to ask yourselves: why are you so quick to dismiss those who want to inspire you to do great things?

leakycap21• 10 months ago

I'm not inspired by this list.

The choice is about which side you want to be on. Do you want to work towards that utopia?

No, this utopia is something you're only imagining and isn't a real shared goal any of us can work toward.

maxbond12• 10 months ago

All goals are imaginary.

godelski11• 10 months ago

  > utopia is something you're only imagining

Yes. And? Do you not have dreams? Desires? Goals?

I assume you aren't just some emotionless automate, so I'm pretty sure you do have dreams. In the words of Shia Laboef, just do it, make your dreams come true

  > isn't a real shared goal any of us can work toward.

Why don't you tell me your utopia and let's see if that's true or not

ChiMan• 10 months ago

Of course, everyone in the room has already read the same leadership tips, likely earning you plenty of eye rolls and detracting from the straightforward, honest cooperation and on-task communication that are the backbone of all successful teams and companies.

ccppurcell2• 10 months ago

I get a really bad vibe from this guy. I first came across him from a viral video where he was making claims about millennials in the workplace. In my opinion they were a mixture of obvious and wrong. And it was framed like he was some expert. But it later became obvious that it was basically an ad for a book he had out, and really he has no expertise or real world experience whatsoever. He's a grifter imo.

achow• 10 months ago

Here's something not directly related that doesn't get mentioned enough, if at all:

Lack of empathy for managers from their teams and the organization.

Good managers are often caught between a rock and a hard place, trying to balance competing interests and navigate difficult situations, since they also have managers and business priorities. Depending on the team size, this pressure is almost on a logarithmic scale. I have seen people choose the IC path because they consider a manager's job too stressful, and they can be paid the same (or sometimes even more than their managers).

I agree with the general sentiment here in the comments section — the article sounds good at first glance, but it's missing the nuances that get in the way of a manager acting like a leader.

throwaway836wg• 10 months ago

My experience has been quite different. Most places I have worked at have been good at selecting people who are very empathetic, and definitely an high degree of empathy for managers and understanding that their job involves balancing interesting, often conflicting ones.

The “common” experience is that managers are not very good and empathetic. Maybe the problem is indeed with the managers and how our systems make them so to begin with.

number6• 10 months ago

All fun and games until you have to settle something in court

hbarka• 10 months ago

A corollary to this is “People leave managers, not companies.”

[] Marcus Buckingham, First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently

What’s a good metric to tell which companies have toxic managers?

ram_rar• 10 months ago

I bought into the “leader vs. manager” Kool-Aid for years—until I actually had to manage. Spoiler: the dichotomy is a myth. Once you’re in the seat, it’s all gray area. You’re not just “inspiring people,” you’re stuck between upper leadership and your team, juggling chaos while trying to keep the ship afloat.

Any manager who’s been in the trenches knows the real game is shielding your team while still getting things done. Be as much of a “leader” as you want, but without authority and accountability, you’re just cosplaying. The rah-rah leadership Kool-Aid is mostly there to keep people inspired while the actual decisions happen in rooms you’ll never be invited to.

dasil003• 10 months ago

Simon Sinek is far from the worst of the genre, but these aphorisms are much easier to say than they are to exemplify in practice. I’ve worked with more than one LinkedIn influencer with millions of followers, and their primary talent turned out to be saying inspiring things. They had enough experience and the sheen of big tech credibility to be taken seriously by aspirational juniors, but when you actually had hard stuff to solve they are not who you’d want to be in the trenches with.

D13Fd• 10 months ago

This is very wrong. The distinction is pretty simple: leaders choose what the goals are, managers direct subordinates to achieve the goals. Both are needed and people can both at the same time.

Things managers do that leaders never would

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