I was watching a clip a few days ago (Friday, August 16, 2024) about a person running for Congress in North Carolina, Pat Harrigan, while speaking at a political event in Pennsylvania. Now, I don’t want to interject politics into this article because it misses the point.
I’m going to paraphrase what he mentioned in his speech about being called into his commander’s office one day. Harrigan said he saw a picture on the commander’s desk pointed towards the commander’s seat of an image of a Sergeant under his command. It had a title on top, “This man pays for my mistakes.”
This really resonated to me about leadership. As a software developer, there are many leaders in the software development process. If people above me make wrong decisions, I have to “pay” for it by either having to work harder to correct the issue(s) or adapt to the inconsistent procedures. When those same people in leadership fail to recognize their mistakes, whether it could be issues with bad software requirements, vague requirements, bad Agile processes, or inconsistent leadership, it affects the rest of the team. It ends up affecting the end product. I’ve seen many examples over the past several years.
It takes maturity, wisdom, experience and the willingness to set aside one’s own ego, to be a better leader, and better the team. Emotional intelligence seems to be a forgotten term in leadership. I notice more people in recent years getting promoted based on nepotism, bias, solely on technical skills, or just “knowing the business.” I’m a firm believer in meritocracy and emotional intelligence to lead is a large part of being a successful leader in technology today. While technical skills and knowing the business is important, the “soft skills” or people skills are just as important in having a successful team and outcomes.
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