Leader Ship

Surprisingly, the topic of leadership seems to have avoided this WikiCommunity's focus throughout its six-year existence. This is surprising because leadership has a dramatic effect on the success of projects and organizations (TomDeMarco says in PeopleWare that it is TheNameOfTheGame). Leadership is different from management. Good leadership is less common than bad leadership. Yet there is sizable literature on the subject, from which the characteristics of each can be learned. This one page is a RoadMap to this wiki's web on leadership.

The Nature of Leadership

Leadership Literature

Leadership and Corporate Culture

ItsAllInTheExecution

Some of the LouGerstner (a TurnAroundManagement specialist) sayings

Last thing (IBM) needs is a vision...
The hardest part...It was changing the culture
Execution - getting the task done, making it happen- is the most unappreciated skill of an effective business leader

In my opinion, I don't think 'leadership' has been absent from WIKI attention: I consider that a lot of the debate about Architects, Software Architects, Function of Architects etc has been strongly about the role, character and usefulness of leaders. -- MartinNoutch

I agree. But before I started these pages, a full search on "leadership" did not find the word in any page title. So my point was that there were not yet any wiki pages that were explicitly focused on the meaning and attributes of leadership - and I'm talking specifically about the leadership of people. Architects are concerned with technical or design leadership. AdeleGoldberg and KennyRubin? assert in SucceedingWithObjects (p.278) that "there are three distinct managerial roles: technical, people, and administrative. The technical leader ... is sometimes called the chief architect. The people manager role is responsible for motivating team members and attending to their day-to-day needs. ... The administrative manager role is responsible for planning and controlling the execution of team tasks." I contend that the first two of these roles are indeed leadership roles, while the third is merely a management role (viz. LeadershipIsDifferentFromManagement). DeMarco's long-held and oft-repeated view is that, as an industry, we tend to neglect issues associated with the leadership of people, and my experience is consistent with that view. -- RandyStafford

Maybe we prefer "leading by example" of a colleague - maybe even one in an anointed "manager" role - over "leading by dictatorship". -- PCP

See book: TheServant

A good leader doesn't like to use the L word. -- DanielEarwicker.

Resources

Wharton Leadership newsletter http://leadership.wharton.upenn.edu/digest/02-05.shtml

Teamleaders need SocialIntelligence at http://www.infoage.idg.com.au/pp.php?id=1864575233&fp=4&fpid=1197920176

CategoryManagement