Comment by artellectual | Hacker News Reader

Comment by artellectual | Hacker News Reader

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From my experience you have to exhibit signs of leadership yourself before leadership position finds you. If you are already working in a company and when there is a problem, offer solutions, speak up, communicate your ideas. If your manager doesn’t listen because they think they have a better solution and you disagree speak up, challenge their idea. Being a leader isn’t easy it means sticking your neck out in the name of finding the best solution for the team.

It also means when you offer solutions and it’s accepted you will become the go to guy / girl for everyone, that’s how people around you will see you as a leader. You took that risk to stick your neck out for them.

You will also then have to learn to work with people learn how to motivate people because now they are coming to you. You can’t just shun them away you have to offer a solution to their problem. If you don’t have an answer empower your people to find a solution.

Leadership is an art form in itself, it can be learned, like any other skill. It takes a shift in mindset from being a worker to a leader.

Another key thing to remember you don’t have to have the “label” before you become a leader. If you act like one the label will come on its own.

I suggest you read / watch “Great Leaders Eat Last” by Simon Sinek. Was an eye opener for me.

> If your manager doesn’t listen because they think they have a better solution and you disagree speak up, challenge their idea

What do you do if they then steal your idea?

Change jobs, probably? A toxic environment like this will not make you happy, and you can't easily fire your boss. The good news is that if you're working in IT, you probably have the luxury of being able to go somewhere else with relative ease.

On that topic, I'm a huge believer in a degree of financial independence, a rainy-day fund [1]. When you don't have to worry about having money for next month's rent, it really changes your outlook on things and makes it easier to make decisions that are just or right for you, without stressing over every possible misstep. And it's pretty easy to build such a fund [2].

[1] https://www.thebillfold.com/2016/01/a-story-of-a-fuck-off-fu...

[2] http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/prep/#3.1

Obsessing over ideas is a workerbee mindset. Spouting lots of ideas gets someone labeled as The Good Idea Fairy.

Execution is the hard part. Demonstrating a knack for it is a good path to leadership.

Hope they actually steal it and implement it properly rather than completely butcher it so badly that you wouldn't want anyone to hear that this was supposedly your idea.

> What do you do if they then steal your idea?

You pat yourself on the back for a job well done! Your idea got implemented, congratulations.

Erm, no. Speaking as someone who was raised on ideas like this.

This is convenient for others, but not for you. They will take advantage of you if you think like that and you not be seen as leadership material.

Either challenge it, leave or find a way to prevent that next time. If you truly have no choice but to put up, then you have no choice. But don't be naive doormat.

It depends on your professional goals. If your goal is to be esteemed by your peers then you are correct.

If your goal is to see how much good stuff you can coerce into existence for the company then it doesn’t matter who does the work, who takes credit, or even whether anyone realizes anything happened. All that matters for you to hit that goal is the stuff getting done.

Tolerating ideas stealing (and other sorts of toxicity) is not good for company either through. Because what will happen is that people who steal ideas will go up and others will grow resentful or will stop sharing ideas. Not reacting to things like that enables it and makes it more frequent. If you want to be leader, you have to be conscious of shaping culture and this is part of it.

Also, leader needs to be able to protect team or company from under-the-belt attempts of customers, suppliers, competitors and such. Some of them will try that for sure and it is leaders job to deal with it.

Who would downvote this and why? Do you think that tolerating ideas stealing is good for company? Or that it does not matter for culture?

Or that leaders are not responsible for shaping culture?

Or that leaders are not responsible for protecting/ensuring that company looks capable, creative etc to outside?

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