tl:dr: Parenting and leadership is similar. Teach a man to fish, etc.
I spent a couple of years managing a team, and I entered that role – like many – without knowing anything about how to do it. I tried to figure out how to be a good manager, and doing so I ended up reading a lot about servant leadership. It never quite sat right with me, though. Servant leadership seems to me a lot like curling parenting: the leader/parent anticipate problems and sweep the way for their direct reports/children.
To be clear, this probably feels very good (initially, anyway) for the direct reports/children. But the servant leader/curling parent quickly becomes an overworked single point of failure, and once they leave there is nobody else who knows how to handle the obstacles the leader moved out of the way for everyone. In the worst cases, they leave behind a group of people who have been completely isolated from the rest of the organisation, and has no idea what their purpose is and how to fit in with the rest of the world.
I would like to invent my own buzzword: transparent leadership. In my book, a good leader
- coaches people,
- connects people,
- teaches people methodical problem solving,
- explains values and principles embraced by the organisation to aid them in making aligned decisions on their own,
- creates direct links between supply and demand (instead of deliberately making themselves a middle man),
- allows their direct reports career growth by gradually taking over leadership responsibilities,
- continuously trains their replacement, and
- generally makes themselves redundant.
The middle manager that doesn’t perform any useful work is a fun stereotype, but I also think it’s a good target to aim for. The difference lies in what to do once one has rendered oneself redundant. A common response is to invent new work, ask for status reports, and add bureaucracy.
A better response is to go back to working on technical problems. This keeps the manager’s skills fresh and gets them more respect from their reports. The manager should turn into a high-powered spare worker, rather than a paper-shuffler.