I and We
aaronkharris.com
aaronkharris.com
I found that an unnamed founder (to protect his ego) had a great statement on this topic:
> And the other thing worth mentioning is, on the first ten people on the culture and team topic, I think everyone doesn't realize until they go through it themselves, how important it is because in life and media people focus too much on founders. Here we are and we are reinforcing the structural narrative that Stripe is about John and Patrick and Pinterest is about Ben. When the vast majority of what our companies do, 99.9% are done by people that are not us, right? It's obvious when you say it but it's very much not the macro narrative. These are abstracts and you associate them with certain people. For companies like Apple and others, Steve Jobs was a tiny, tiny part at the end.
> Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8Dl8rZ6qwE&feature=youtu.be...
If I were looking to join a company, these are the kind of statements that would make me want to work for that founder.
> A tip for future leaders: leadership means absorbing blame while deflecting success. All too often, I see leaders that do the opposite.
> When your team succeeds, make sure people know that it was a team effort. The team succeeded. Likewise, when your team fails, you should take full responsibility for it. It's not so-and-so's fault that s/he made a mistake, it's your fault for giving them the space to do it. I messed up.
> Onward and upward!
> (PS: Obviously this assumes a good environment, where leaders have close to full control over what they and the teams are doing. If that's not the case, then obviously you have issues that are more important than who gets the blame.)
Well, at times, they also use the word 'I'. This is in the other scenario - losing! 'I clipped the kerb' etc. But you don't get the losers in the driver's conference, hence 'we' is the term used. F1 is very much about individuals wanting to win, team mates are perhaps the most terrifying rivals as they have an identical car - they have to be beaten before the rest of the field can be beaten. Yet it is always 'we' and 'the team', even though there is nobody else in the team doing the driving for them. Sure there are things like good calls for pitstops that comes from the guys in the garage, but it isn't a team sport like cricket/rugby/football is.
Personally I think that 'we' is an important word to use in the workplace as it sends out a quite powerful signal that someone is part of a team, even if 'we' can be used nefariously, e.g. to not acknowledge blame for having broken something.
http://thecodelesscode.com/case/106
A certain monk was known throughout the Temple for his humility. When discussing flaws in his clan’s software he always took personal responsibility, yet when receiving praise for marvelous features crafted by him alone, he always gave credit to the entire team. Eventually word of the monk came to old Jinyu, Abbess Over All Clans And Concerns.
“So,” she said to her chief abbot, “this monk says 'I failed' after the defeats of others, and 'we triumphed' after his own victories?”
“So it is said throughout the Temple,” said the abbot.
“Bring him to me,” commanded Jinyu.
When this was done, Jinyu surprised all in attendance by striking the monk with her cane and sentencing him to thirty days’ hard labor in the data mines. After the stunned monk had been taken away the abbot nervously approached Jinyu to inquire the reason.
Jinyu struck the abbot. “Fool! Consider the monk’s algorithm. When he says 'I failed', what is most probably the truth?”
“That others have failed,” said the abbot, flinching.
Jinyu struck him again. “And when the monk says 'we triumphed', what does he most likely mean?”
“That victory was his alone,” said the abbot, wincing in pain.
The ancient priestess twirled her cane overhead, so fast that the very air whined in anguish, until with a thunderclap she brought it down hard on the floor in front of the terrified abbot. “The only thing praiseworthy about this boastful monk is that he has mastered the art of one-to-one mapping. Meanwhile, what am I to do with the rest of you idiots? You were deceived by a simple substitution cipher that your brains had already decoded.”
You have people who are all inclusive and people who just want everything to be centered around them. Such attitude is simply toxic for the simple reason that these people are far more interested in how the world perceive them, then the advancement of the works.
Great passage from this post on leadership and mentoring: http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/12/02/whose-life-are...
You looked after me when I got there and treated me like a friend, not an employee. You refused to say “he works for me” you always said, “he works with me.”