Wednesday, April 19, 2017

Leadership lessons

Normally use this blog for longer form discussions about public news in the "cyber" field, but since I don't have another blogging forum I'm going to post this writeup here.

Getting tweens/teens to do chores can provide some lessons on leadership. I've assembled ten of them below for your enjoyment. 😀

1) Questions are OK. Sure, they're doing it to try to delay/distract/disrupt your objective as long as humanly possible. But it's OK to want to know what the objective and buy into the overall mission.
2) Be specific. If you don't know where you're going it's unlikely you'll get there. Describe what you're looking for and there's a small (OK, tiny) possibility it will happen the first time around.
3) Explain what triggers task completion and try to avoid time based metrics. If it's time, the human response is to conserve energy (see: USSR as an example of how well that works out). But if it's goal based, people will often choose to work harder to accomplish the objective quickly and do other things they value more. Like watch Netflix.
4) Positive and negative outcomes are useful and must be tailored to the individual. Some people love chocolate, others don't. Some would consider reading a punishment, others a pleasure. Personally I find beatings are consistently unpopular but you might find something else works well. 😏
5) Music and humor are great ways to make tasks more enjoyable and lighten the mood. Unless you're listening to NF's rap song about Mom dying and leaving him, in which case you want to start crying and console each other.
6) Yelling doesn't produce anything positive IMHO. Except fear/anger. Which, if you're trying to train a Sith could be useful I suppose.
7) Showing/training is important for things more complicated than "carry this from here to there". Although sometimes even that requires instructions.
8) Have reasonable expectations and don't accept poor work. The DMV is a great reminder that even adult humans are perfectly willing to work in a way that yields a terrible product/experience. Don't be United Airlines and accept that just because it's the way things are or you might end up with kicking, screaming and blood everywhere.
9) Positive feedback provided promptly to people doing great work or with a great attitude is helpful. Kind of like participation trophies, but actually earned. 🏆
10) Lead by example. Returning to my Sith Lord example, Darth Vader doesn't make his troops do all the enemy soldier killing, he's at the front of the line doing it himself (even at a distance). Showing everyone you're willing to work just as hard slaughtering enemy troops means they have someone that they can and should follow. Or get force choked.