It's telling that bad leaders I've worked with exhibit opposite traits from OP's list. Off the cuff, they've had tendencies to:
- stubbornly devote majority of their time to coding, despite negative feedback of their leadership
- be consistently unaware of their calendar, to the point of developing a reputation for forgetting commitments
- insisting on being involved in every meeting, or being noticeably insecure when they weren't
- lack ability to execute on medium or long-term goals or visions
- being noticeably insecure when they were no longer the most experienced on the team
There's a time frame of forgiveness for some of that, but ultimately some degree of transition must occur for a leader to become effective. Their role, priority, and especially leverage, all change, and require corresponding changes in mindset and execution.
Good leaders I've worked for didn't just understand that, they embraced it. They also had enough supporting experience, intuition, and team respect to execute well on it. They showed not just acceptance, but perhaps later even a level of mastery, in their new role.
Which is all to say, one adapts and grows into an effective leader. And their leadership, in turn, grows into a distinguishing signal for team effectiveness, maybe even team happiness too. B/c of the teams I've worked for, I stuck w/good ones for longer than I would have expected largely due to positive environments fostered by the leaders at the time. I also left bad leaders earlier than I would have liked, despite having good relations w/teammates in general.
One reason these “bad leaders” may hit all your bullets is: the team members “call them out” for trying to operate a level above and a click longer term than the day-to-day fire fighting and grind.
The most common team expression of this is “You’re not close enough to it.” Or, “You don’t understand what it’s like.” As if “it” became different after stepping into leadership and the new leader underwent a mind wipe.
They didn’t forget what it’s like. They had derived intrinsic motivation from individual contribution, they understood it, they were great at it, and it still feels more valuable to them than the once removed levers of monkeying with ‘management’. This ‘bad leader’ who was part of the team, genuinely wants to be part of the team, but the team is rejecting their new role. So they stay operating in the trenches, at too low a level to influence the battle or the war.
On the contrary, unless the nature of tech engineering undergoes a shift, a “good leader” should not have to “be close to” the details of today’s particular glitch to remember what such glitches are like in general, and work to fix or remove that class of glitches now and for the team’s future.
Putting this in a metaphor that marries your bullets and this idea:
- Trust your team to roll the daily dice and advance their pieces around the Monopoly board
- Remain connected to whether the game is the same, mentor and advise strategies for wins, talk through whether they’re well set up to own the Orange monopolies…
- But instead of telling them how to play or — worse — grabbing the dice, work to rewrite the rules inside the Monopoly box lid to let their game be more effective and enable better outcomes
Leaders or Liaisons? If they don't have the teams respect in a technical way, are they really leaders, or are they just liaising with other teams on the unnamed true team leader's position?
I find a lot of teams have this sort of set up. It gets abused.
I don't think effective leadership requires that you be highly respected for your technical skills. Leadership requires that you're at least competent in technical understanding, but also competent across multiple domains too.
They don't have to be the most technical, but have enough chops to smell BS when it's being sold.
A good comparison would be how a good military captain or general doesn't have to be the best marksman, medic, or radioman, but they should know enough to coordinate those roles and understand how they should work.
There's truth to what you're saying, but good leadership means different things in different contexts/teams.
The teams I oversee have a comfort aspect to knowing that I can drop onto any situation and set the proper direction both from a political and technical standpoint. I don't think I'd feel comfortable with my role if I didn't have the technical knowledge to get __very__ specific on what direction to take. I try to be clear when I'm discussing a general best direction versus my personal preference, the latter arising usually when we're discussing subject matters I'm not as familiar with. When I am more confident in the way I think is ideal to handle something and have a specific desired outcome, I present more direct instruction. When we're exploring new territory for the team, then I try to share how I would approach this new territory so my team can have a place to start, and this seems to bring a lot of comfort to my newer team members.
A lot of people in management (general "management") treat the role like a position that tells people general guidelines on what to do, and that's when there are issues; "fix the problem" is of course a clear enough outcome, but it's still vague on how to get there or what the fix looks like. More specific instructions or guidance on different ways to get there and suggestions as to how to understand the problem scope that are digestible for your team is far more important than stating the obvious of "we need to get X resolved by Y date."
The example of a military hierarchy I get, and there is a value to it, but for me, leadership is about setting your team up to let them shine and helping to shield them from the elements that just drag them down or dull their senses.
What you call “a comfort aspect” is something experienced ICs think of “micromanagement.” It does not bring me comfort when a lead decides to “get __very__ specific on what direction to take.” On the contrary, it makes me feel like they do not trust my judgment, which is an uncomfortable feeling indeed.
It is hard not to notice that the entirety of this response is about YOUR personal comfort level and YOUR perceptions as lead, with an afterthought noting that your newest team members seem to find comfort in it. You must recognize that your working relationship with them involves a marked power differential. Your junior employees are unlikely to voice any disagreement with your management style, but that does not imply it is a good style of leadership.
There is no mention of how you manage your more seasoned team members. Is that because there aren’t any left? This style of management often leads to retention problems as employees mature and realize there are more satisfying ways for them to work.
I don't think that applies to just the military. If you actively disobey your boss' direction and do something completely opposite, I'm sure you'd be dismissed or punished for that too.
I've found this to be a trend across agile workplaces in general, they seem to have some hatred of outlook email/calendaring and decide to just post meetings in a slack or teams channel when they start, its infuriating.
I strongly agree with the title sentimment. Strongly!
But, I'll add this - work at a company first, full time, for as long as you find it rewarding. Maybe several years at least? ... the longer the better. Bonus for each promotion you receive, primarily b/c of different levels of responsibility and leadership that places you in.
I think that's key to getting the most out of independent consulting, for 2 reasons:
First, b/c fresh out of college or early in your career, you still don't know what you don't know. That makes learning w/out benefit of teammates, mentors, interactions with other teams (Customer Success, Sales, Marketing, etc.), quite dangerous. Without that wide array of awareness and guidance on a regular basis, it's easy to form bad habits. And bad habits attained during one's formative years can be long-term or hard to break.
And second, b/c every engineer needs to experience what it's like to maintain and improve a product for years on end. E.g. while I didn't recognize it at the time, I believe time I spent with a product for 3 of its generations proved to be one of the best learning environments I've had as a software engineer. That kind of timeline provides first-hand experience to the long-tail of product decision making. It provides long experiential lessons in best practices like automated testing, a structured dev process, engaging in customer feedback, team culture & cohesiveness, etc. And b/c I was with the same cohort of employees for so long, and saw how leadership could fluctuate, I also found it helped develop my intuition for effective leaders.
All said, I wouldn't have gotten as much out of consulting if I wasn't backed w/prior experience. From an engineering standpoint, I was able to hit the ground running since I already had years of experience developing software. Soft-skills gained during that same time translated directly and immediately to client relationships. I also felt fortunate and well prepared to handle longer-term needs and concerns from bigger clients (Fortune 100/500), some of which I still maintain relationships with.
I was always under the impression that consultants were some of the best in their field (that can be hired, at least), and therefore going into it fresh out of college just isn't feasible, let alone a bad idea. Though it sounds like I might be wrong.
Edit: It's pretty funny how me and the article takes this differently
"I always found this to be a stressful and not particularly honest arrangement. I’m not an expert, I’m just a guy who reads the docs. I didn’t like having to project an air of competence that I didn’t always feel."
I've always taken a situation feeling stressful and dishonest as I sign I shouldn't be there, but if this is just how it is, maybe its not as bad as I thought
I’ve been a consultant for about 15 years of my career. I like to make the distinction between “product developers” and “project developers”. It’s just a different mindset. For product developers, there is a benefit in spending more time to make sure your code is correct and optimized — mistakes cost more when you have a large user base (or are trying to attract one).
By contrast, project developers have no such incentives. Their goal is to finish development within a time box and meeting certain acceptance criteria. Often they’re building tools that are high value but low user counts, so mistakes / bugs are more tolerable and users can be trained on workarounds.
In my opinion, it’s largely a personality difference. I personally get bored working on the same thing for too long, so consulting works great for me. Some people hate the context switching of moving to a new project every few months or are just meticulous and slow developers, and they make great product developers. That’s not to say you shouldn’t try both sides of the fence, but you’ll usually land on the side that best fits your personality and working style.
Im pretty far up the food chain at a large consulting firm and i too get bored easily. Consulting fits my personality type because each project has a deadline ( rarely exceeding a year ) and then you either sell an extension or go look for something else to do.
There's also a lot of adrenaline involved in consulting too, some of my coworkers have left to go run a program somewhere in industry only to come back in a year or two because they were bored out of their minds and wanted back in the game.
Same; I’m at the point in my career where I’m not really involved in project delivery anymore so it’s more about sales and coaching new leaders. Your technical skills do eventually atrophy (at least mine have) but that just means you lean on your experts for that knowledge. But it’s probably a more natural growth path than most technical roles in industry — promotions at consulting companies are far easier to achieve if you put in the work.
This is probably also down to your character. When I was working as a consultant for a big SaaS company I felt like the occupation really attracts a certain type of overly confident people who also like the attention. I'm 100% sure that everybody there had these blank spots in their knowledge which would potentially result in feeling stressed or dishonest when talking to the customer. Some people are just better selling their blank spots.
Yeh, could well be it. I'd like the be a consultant of course but I don't think Im the kind of person to be able to sell other people on my abilities before I sell myself on them. Credit where credits due to those who can though
I don't know about needing to be the "best", or an "expert", but I do believe a consultant should have a certain skill level, or set of skills, that provides some value to a team.
That's to say some consultants are very strong engineers, in the general sense; very capable in various roles. While others might possess a sufficient narrow skill set. E.g. maybe a front-end React dev, or data engineer assisting with integrating parts of a data pipeline, or a SQL consultant helping trouble shoot database performance issues. Other times, a team covers both bases (high degree of skill breadth, and depth), but lacks time to devote to all pressing issues.
So consultant relationships are formed for any number of reasons; they need not be an expert, necessarily.
Typically you'd have a team of actual hotshots who start the project, sell the consulting company as competent, they draw up initial plans for whatever they are consulting on, and then you replace them with your usual kind of developers/BAs/whatever.
For example if your initial team had an architect with 15 years of experience, including 10 years in your specific domain, they get replaced someone with 5 years of experience, with 2 years in the domain.
It's a bit too broad of a concept to be general about it. If you go into consulting straight out of uni then imho either:
a) Use a consulting company that heavily invests in it's people through internal learning and mentoring and support. I don't know any us companies like this but there has to be some I guess? In Europe Swedish Netlight operates like this, I had experience when I joined them a few years back but they employ people straight out of uni too.
b) Do it yourself if you for some reason have a real niche super strength
Local tax structure matters too. Here in Sweden it's very beneficial to start your own consulting firm instead of being tax'ed to death, to the tune of earning twice what you would in a similar role if you're employed so it's a road many including myself take for that reason alone.
Different people mean different things by it, but often/increasingly/safest assumption is that someone just means 'temporary contract work'. Which you can absolutely do as a new graduate, since 'need some fixed term/scope work' doesn't necessarily mean 'need some senior expertise' - it just means cash-strapped, or sudden need to scale out that isn't expected (or known) to last.
I knew a few friends at college whose first jobs were at consulting firms. It seemed a bit of a misnomer since they had no practical experience.
I think sometimes people don't want to hire pragmatist consultants who will rock the boat too much and challenge sacred cows - even if they get things done, instead, they might prefer someone who organises meetings, Gantt charts and committees in order to make their hirers look good.
i've work for Avanade, many moons ago. i have couple years of coding experiences when i join. they put me into a project that basically doing phone support for one of Fortune 500.
they just hire as many people with CS degree or working background in tech then send them out to do "tech stuff" regardless if it fit their employee's background.
This is very important. Experts in the field I look up to only became experts because they learned from the consequences of their choices. Sometimes these consequences don't materialise until 5, 10, 20 years later.
To add some history - AMD's semi-custom segment dates back prior to Su's CEO seat. It was initiated in 2012-2013 under CEO Rory Read [1], although Su was heavily involved in it back then too (as SVP, and eventually as COO, before taking over as CEO in 2014). It ended up primarily targeting game consoles, though it claimed residual wins in other markets too.
It turned out to be an excellent move at the time, as it proved to be a bit of a lifeline during AMD's rough years. And modern-day AMD continues executing on it well.
I also agree w/your general point - given AMD's history doing this kind of thing, it's tough to see what Intel could do in this segment that AMD couldn't do better.
I was looking for a way to screen for unusual option volume (Volume noticeably above Open Interest), but didn't see a way to do that directly. I do see the filters for Volume and Open Interest, and I can play with those in various combinations to see what I want, but I think something like a single filter that allowed viewing all contracts where Volume > Open Interest would address this in a more direct way.
p.s. I know the level of commitment required to launch an MVP, and to grow and support thereafter. I had a job at the time, and it was a lot to juggle. I don't think I could have done it if I also had a family. I wish you the best of luck moving this forward!
I'm curious that you mention project management courses from university. How much benefit have you found them to provide in practice?
Asking b/c I've taken two courses in dev process or project management in my academic career, and neither provided substantial value or benefit to how I've lead projects professionally.
In the early stages of my career, or in startup life? Absolutely not. Very little relevance; XP/SCRUM were both covered together in a single 50 minute lecture, the rest of the PM aspects were tackling paperwork-generation methodologies like the "Rational Unified Process" and "Dynamic Systems Development Model", both of which I feel like would be _hell_ if I actually had to work within.
However, there were techniques (like critical path analysis) that as I've got more senior, started working at larger companies, and started stepping down the senior leadership path, I've started to see some applicability to. Not direct applications - they still need taking with a massive pinch of salt, and modifying for modern learnings in industry, but they do start to provide some value, even if it's just learning what the grey-hairs in the exec are used to seeing :)
Fully agree. There are huge nuggets of wisdom in old-school engineering. For example PERT is something that most people don't know about. But it's simple to apply in the real world. Get three estimates - optimistic, pessimistic and realistic. double the realistic, add the optimistic and pessimistic and divide by four. It's basically a centerweighted estimate - but it forces you to think about the the corner-cases and what could go wrong.
Lots of other old school stuff that we "just turning grey" people need to translate for the new kids.
To speak specifically to this: "I have a questionable habit of working into the evening, and sometimes on weekends. ... I worry that I may be going down the wrong path ... Am I working too hard?"
Working late, or on weekends, can be perfectly ok, at least to a point. Something I consider a dividing line, or sign of caution, is one sentiment - resentment.
Speaking from experience, I've gone through periods of months, even years, where I was intensely motivated and satisfied to work long weeks, into evenings, sometimes on weekends, etc. As long as I found the work rewarding, challenging, and had great relationships with co-workers, I was all in and felt perfectly fine. Some of my very best memories involve risky, challenging work, long late nights, and teammates I wanted to be beside and support. So taken alone, I don't think long hours or committing to work more often than peers, leads to burnout.
I think burnout starts creeping in when those same long hours become expected, mandated, directed at work that's not as stimulating, or requires challenging teammates. In short, resenting work, or conditions of it, builds a potential path to burnout.
Which is why you sound ok to me. You work hard, but you enjoy what you do. It sounds like you're in a healthy work environment and have positive reinforcements (positive teammates, exercise habits, your partner, etc.).
But do continue keeping tabs on your work habits; not just how often you commit to them, but how they make you feel. If work stops feeling positive or worthwhile, know that that's perfectly ok! ... we all experience that at some point. The healthy thing to do in that case, is slow down and start asking questions about why you feel the way you do, what might need to change, etc.
> One thing I've never really recovered is the passion I had for side projects
I know how this feels. After a few bouts of burnout over my ~20 year career, I'm not convinced we fully recover from all of it. I think each bout leaves some permanent damage, along with increased risk of subsequent bouts. I made a similar comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22164678
The best general advice I can give is don't push anything. If you're not feeling motivated to engage in a side project, no problem, don't pursue one right now. Give things time and see how you feel after 2-6 months. Other general advice - reduce work hours if you can, exercise regularly, and relax. Morning/evening walks combine the latter two well.
Learning something new can also help combat burnout fogginess. I've found courses in something of interest work well (search Coursera, Udacity, Udemy, etc.). What I like about these is they're smaller in scale and more self contained than an open-ended side project. They allow you to commit time and energy in small chunks and at your own pace, but still leave you with something valuable in the end. E.g. over the years I've taken courses in Vue, Svelte, TypeScript, and a couple math refreshers. All enjoyable and worth while IMO.
Software development is my only expertise and it doesn’t interest me at all. I am very good at it but not excellent. I don’t even think about it beyond the usual 9-5 or so. I don’t want to, I don’t feel like it. I think the effort you need to put or that minimum amount of passion/liking you’ve to put into it, for being very good —> excellent, is just missing from my life (or rather missing from my “work”).
I am in mid 30s now (single; kinda by choice; with no financial liability) and it feels like it’s some kind of fake life I’m living at work even though I know that people one forth of my skill have lived it through and make it through 55 and all.
I considered switching caterers like studying public policy etc or sometimes just doing a one year MBA from somewhere but even the thought scares the shit out of me (thought of MBA I mean). I like history, literature. I often fantasise about working in film making (industry) (not something to do with computers though). I had done woodworking and I had really liked it. Then I dropped.
I am slowly trying to make peace with it. Trying to get into some nice MNC for 6-7 years and kinda stick around and then a stock of things after that.
Why I’m not exploring other fields is because one thing I don’t want in my life at this stage is not earning a living - bills and saving for emergency (in this country you gotta do that; there’s no healthcare).
I think I’m not alone like this. There are many people like me. Or that’s the hope. Maybe I’ll make it somehow.
I think I should meet some kickass career counsellor or make a long post on some subreddit. I had tried here once. In fact that’s how I had created this account.
I think coming to an understanding of what you want out of life in general is a big undertaking in itself, and a lot of people coast along with the defaults presented to them and then wake up at 50 and despair that the options are now closed to them once they start thinking about it.
I’d suggest a good therapist to try to understand what you really want out of this one life - I am in the same boat right now, thinking about what I want to do next whether in work or in life. I tend to prioritize lifestyles over specific work/career related goals, but I often get sucked into spending all my energy at work. This gets me paid, and well, but I tend also to burn out after a time when I don’t feel like I can focus on other things.
I for one hope there’s something out there that really calls to me more than programming jobs, but if not or I can’t find it then hopefully I’ll be able to find a life I find worth living regardless.
It's been difficult, yes. Especially when managers expect you to put in more hours and say it directly or indirectly. And being in a country where expectation of a healthy work-life balance is often made to look like you are slacker is sad.
Shitty work life balance in the software field is one of the reasons I lack passion in the field. People say "try US/EU companies". That's bollocks. Those companies actually propagate it. They have these offshore centres so that they will get cheap talent and they can expect them work their own time zone hours and then match US TZ if nothing then daily for a nightly "sync".
Anyway, I have tried finding a career counsellor and have failed so far. I guess I will keep trying to find it out.
> I think each bout leaves some permanent damage, along with increased risk of subsequent bouts.
Negative experiences tend to produce learned behaviors and reactions that we’re not aware of. These can be overcome, but it takes effort to identify them and implement deliberate changes in our behavior. There are various ways of doing this from self-guided books to professional therapy. It’s not exactly “damage” in the sense that it’s permanent or unaddressable, though. Viewing it as such can hamper recovery.
Thanks for this. All good to know, and I wouldn't want to hamper anyone's recovery. I probably should have said "...each bout leaves a successive weakening...". Difference being to your point - I'm uncertain of serious irreversible damage imposed by burnout, in the literal sense.
What I meant to convey, is that w/each bout I felt successively weaker and more sensitive to toxic patterns or conditions recognized from prior bouts. When experienced, I found they took me to bad places more easily (mentally, emotionally, etc.), and for longer durations. I felt less resilient.
And not just compared to who I was before each bout, but also when I inquired, or compared myself, to teammates next to me going through the same conditions. They often didn't feel as affected or concerned. Is that b/c they never experienced burnout? Is it b/c I have, and am more sensitive to it or have lingering effects? I don't know.
But that's what I meant - I feel each bout with burnout takes more out of you, in a way that makes you less resilient to subsequent bouts.
I don't want to diminish what people having PTSD have to endure, but physical changes in the brain don't mean much without quantification. Regular learning alone also leaves physical and lasting changes in the brain.
I mention this because pointing to the physicality of psychological conditions often induces a sense of fatalism that often isn't warranted per se, and can become some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.
Again, this does not mean people should just pull themselves up. It does suggest that people could in principle learn coping mechanisms (through therapy etc.) to a degree that allows for leading a fulfilling life, even with PTSD manifesting physically in the brain.
The brain can be reshaped again following trauma. The Body Keeps The Score is a book that talks through the effectiveness of different approaches to healing and how they impact brain changes.
Yeah - I was recommended this shortly after I crashed out - good read, interesting insights, and I did find therapy helpful with the more conscious aspects of my collapse.
The bits that won’t go away are the dread, the insomnia, the constant anxious waiting for the sky to fall. I think I’ve pared off the behavioural bits over the years and have largely addressed them - but my mind continues to wrestle with intangible beasts.
My cousin has just qualified as a psychedelic therapist, so later this summer he’s visiting and we’re going to try breaking the cycle.
Trauma informed therapies can be really helpful though psychedelics look to be the most promising short term therapeutics, if they truly pan out. Things like EMDR and IFS can manage to really hit at the core of those intangibles beasts, and start to untangle the web.
But not all burn outs are the same. PTSD level burn outs do, but you also have other types that aren’t at that level. As always the answer is “it depends” and get professional help.
Perhaps we should have different words for “I am maybe feeling a bit tired of doing the same thing every day” and “my brain is physically damaged from years of relentless 24/7 stress to the extent that basic functions like sleep elude me”.
The military uses color codes, green, yellow, orange, red. Red is PTSD territory, a true brain break. But yellow, orange are bad as well, lots of people are in that zone without knowing until it is too late.
I do not think it's scientific to claim the "brain is physically damaged from not-very-physiological-thing". We do have evidence for brain development that must occur before it is too late (e.g. critical window for language).
Sustained and elevated stress causes damage to the whole body, not just the brain. If understanding what you experienced as brain damage helps you accept how things happened and how things are, then all the more power to you.
But if there is something in your thought patterns that you want to change, but feel hopeless that your brain is damaged, I recommend trying to find another framing aside from "damage".
This makes me a little sad. I owe some of the fun and great learning experiences I had in my earlier days to Fry's.
Here are some memories I have from their Austin location that started around the early 2000s - a time when I was transitioning away from being a music major and just starting to dabble in programming and pc hardware:
- I had a basic Dell desktop that helped me through college. Back then, base models came with around 512 MB of RAM. It got awfully slow, and Fry's helped upgrade it to 2 GB of RAM! I was amazed at the difference that made.
- I always had fun browsing their isles. During one of my first trips, I came across Linux distros they sold via CD; those introduced me to Linux nearly two decades ago. I eventually became a full-time Linux user, and have been ever since.
- I bought my first mechanical keyboard from Fry's after feeling what it felt to type on display samples available on shelves.
- Back when I had a DVD collection, 25%-50% of it was likely from Fry's.
- I still have a PHP 4 book I bought from Fry's. It introduced me to my first PHP and Apache install. I remember the fun I had working through that book.
- Eventually, the vast hardware they used to keep in stock got the better of me. An old friend made the trip with me to help me buy parts I'd need to custom-build a pc. And over pizza and beer, we built my first desktop together. It replaced my old Dell mentioned above. I've built every one of my desktops since then, some of which used hardware from Fry's.
- And for a time, anytime I convinced myself I needed additional storage or a faster CPU, I immediately looked forward to going to Fry's.
Those may not sound spectacular, but I think others in this thread will relate to some of them. Personally, what I valued the most, in hindsight, was having a place I could go to and physically experience or navigate paths of my growing curiosity in programming and pc hardware.
The Fry's in Austin is still open, and I'm aware of it's barron nature, but even so, I might make one last trip.
I went there in September 2019 to get an SSD and DDR3 to upgrade a friend's laptop, and they had neither - ended up getting both at Altex. Judging by the state of that store, I'm surprised it's taken this long for them to be going out of business.
Last time I went was probably around 2019 as well. They price matched a Ryzen CPU. When I went to pick it up, the shelves and empty stock throughout the store indicated a business that was no longer its former self. I remember feeling a little sad for them back then too.
I borrowed one a year ago and geez, it was nice! I had used Cherry blues, browns, and less common Kailh Box whites [1] prior to that. I enjoyed them, but the noise reduction silent reds brought was refreshing.
And apart from switches, that board introduced me to Leopold, who I think sets the standard for mass-produced mechanical keyboards. No odd shape or cheap-looking shiny plastic (DAS!), the keycaps are top-notch, and they come with lubed stabilizers. Heck, even the cable can be routed multiple directions to your liking.
Overall, Leopold's build quality is something I've not experienced with a handful of other mass-produced mechanical keyboards I own. I'm convinced I'll need to go custom if I want something better.
Good leaders I've worked for didn't just understand that, they embraced it. They also had enough supporting experience, intuition, and team respect to execute well on it. They showed not just acceptance, but perhaps later even a level of mastery, in their new role.
Which is all to say, one adapts and grows into an effective leader. And their leadership, in turn, grows into a distinguishing signal for team effectiveness, maybe even team happiness too. B/c of the teams I've worked for, I stuck w/good ones for longer than I would have expected largely due to positive environments fostered by the leaders at the time. I also left bad leaders earlier than I would have liked, despite having good relations w/teammates in general.