Leadership

Thinking about leadership and what it takes yet again:

I think a leader who knows the subject that her team works with, inside out is walking an easy path. Because she knows what her team is going through, what their problems are, what their weaknesses are, when they are cheating, when they are working really hard, when they are going the extra mile, et al. It makes it easy for the team as well to explain things to the leader, know that she will know what they are into, respect her as she knows what they know or maybe more than that. But it is not always that a technically sound person also makes a great leader. It is a rare and deadly combination. So, a technically sound/knowledgeable person might still mess up the relationship with her team due to lack of people-skills.

On the other hand, a leader with good people-skills and just superficial technical knowledge needs to know exactly where to draw the line. It will be a tight-rope walk. She needs to know how to motivate and inspire and trust her team to make it happen. She needs to be humble enough to admit that her team knows better than her when it comes to some things. She needs to trust them enough to not ask them to do the impossible; enough to give them credit for the difficult; enough to not praise them for the easy. She needs to still get the respect that is due by letting her team understand in what way she adds value to the team's output. (Transparency does help). She needs to give her team the bigger picture and where she comes in. She needs to give them credit and take less of it herself. Like Zig Ziglair puts it "To be a leader, you need to learn to obey".

I am looking to meet some leaders who are good at balancing both leadership and technical matters. I am also looking to meet leaders who are good at just one of these but still make things happen!