Leadership, Translated

Tried something with Claude today. To do a whole post with satirical takes on the various leadership styles. It started with me wanting to make a joke about “situational leadership” with friends—where the leader's behavior changes based on the situation they find themselves to be in, in front of their bosses, when there is a customer escalation, etc. Then I thought we should do a full list with various leadership/management philosophies.

So, I did some quick exercise of brainstorming with Claude. And slightly edited by me so I feel better about my human self. Without further ado, here is the list.

(a) Management by Exception: The manager manages by being the exception to every process, every protocol, and every deadline the team is held to. While the rules apply to the team, the exceptions apply to the manager.

(b) Situational Leadership (where I started with): The leader’s style shifts based on the situation. Specifically, whose situation it is. When the manager’s boss and their peers are watching, it’s empowerment and vision. In front of a group of their own peers, it’s command and control. The team’s or team member’s situation? Come on.

(c) Management by Walking Around: Why only Walk Around? This is Walk Into. Into your screen, into your conversations, into your decisions, even into your emails before you’ve sent them. Maybe into even your WhatsApp conversations. This is ultimate management, at a very close range.

(d) Transformational Leadership The leader is transformed regularly by every keynote, every airport business book, and every offsite retreat. The team remains unchanged, mostly because they’ve stopped keeping up with which version of the manager they’re currently reporting to.

(e) Servant Leadership: There are servants. There is a leader. Isn’t that clear?.

(f) Transactional Leadership: Transactions are well established here. The team takes the work, and the manager takes credit. A clean exchange, repeated every sprint. There shall be no confusion.

ChatGPT gave the image!

(g) Laissez-Faire Leadership: This is French for “let do.” The laissez is generous for the manager, and the faire is abundant for the team.

(h) Autocratic Leadership: What is Auto? It means self. The manager governs themselves: their own priorities, their own career, their own upward visibility. The product operates on autopilot and is likely to fall off a cliff because everyone in the team is practicing the same autocratic leadership too.

(i) Democratic Leadership: The team votes. The votes are counted too. But the votes don’t count. The manager listens carefully, thanks everyone for their input, and then does what they were always going to do. The way a company survey is democracy: anonymous, encouraged, and filed somewhere nobody checks.

(j) Coaching Leadership: The manager is being coached. By a certified executive coach, on company time, at company expense. The learnings are so profound and personal that they will not be shared, even in terms of altered behavior.

(k) Pacesetting Leadership: The pace being set is the manager’s own, toward the next promotion, the next high-visibility project, and the next mention in the all-hands. The team is welcome to set its own pace, as long as it doesn’t interfere with the manager’s. (Related: Autocratic leadership explained earlier)

(l) Affiliative Leadership: Everyone is affiliated with the manager’s preferred narrative, the manager’s version of events, and the manager’s interpretation of last quarter’s numbers. The affiliation is warm and inclusive but never negotiable.

(m) Visionary Leadership: The vision is real and vivid and deeply held. It lives exclusively in the manager’s head, visits occasionally in all-hands presentations, and has never once been seen in a project plan.

(n) Agile Leadership: The leader is agile, quick to pivot away from accountability, nimble in reassigning blame, and remarkably fast at disappearing when the retrospective begins. (Related: Situational Leadership, explained above).

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