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Comment by JSR_FDED | Hacker News Reader

It’s just amazing we keep using the word “leaders” when they’re clearly not.

Around 2015, my boss got permission from corporate to take me and a few of my coworkers to a leadership conference for a day. It was setup at a church and had religious theming around it, and a lot of "leadership values" were communicated. It was the usual fare of responsibility, accountability, truth and trust you'd expect, mixed with the religious overtones you'd also expect. But what I didn't expect is how trite this fictional narrative would prove to be.

I think about that a lot now, and how my religious upbringing was bombarded with this messaging (in a good way). And how much of the same world that previously claimed espouse it has complete turned their backs on it in such a short time.

Is it dead or did it ever exist at all? At least we don't seem to pretend to have higher values anymore. If we even have leaders at all, they are not measured by the yardsticks we used to make.

Since they hire, command work and fire, they kinda are.

Those are "executives"

there’s space for both perspectives.

they are not “leaders” in the purest sense - they don’t demonstrate characteristics of leading, but rather characteristics of people who strive for power and influence.

yet i also get that, in spite of the deficit of true leadership skills, they still guide the group into a specific direction for better or worse.

No, they are managers; management and leadership are different things. Being a manager is a set of things that a person is authorized to do on behalf on their employer, "hire, command work and fire" as you said being examples. Leaders nurture their staff so that they work together effectively as a team to achieve goals. Very few managers are good leaders.

> Very few managers are good leaders.

I saw (a black & white hand-drawn version of) this image [0] a while back and found it a really effective visual to easily explain the difference between a boss and a leader. (Here's an article that expounds on the topic and has some variants of the preceding image. [1]) I've worked with/for both types and the first type (boss) simply does not inspire loyalty or any interest in "going above and beyond" the bare minimum of absolutely required work from their employees.

The genuine leader type on the other hand often didn't even have to ask employees to put in any extra effort toward their job. Folks just generally went out of their way to try very hard to do their very best work (or damned close to it) for the true leader-type because it wasn't uncommon to see the "leader" right there "in the trenches" with them "getting his hands dirty doin' the work" right alongside them, and it just didn't feel right to not put forth at least the same effort he was.

I think (at least to my mind) the difference (in employee attitudes) is one of respect (leader) vs fear (boss).

[0]: https://kurtuhlir.com/wp-content/uploads/boss-vs-leader-tell...

[1]: https://itdworld.com/blog/leadership/leader-vs-boss/

Bosses are those who hire and fire. Leaders are those who other people willingly follow.

Leading in my book is more than having authority to command. It's setting good examples, seeing the big picture, being able to connect pieces of an organizational puzzle.

Reading Business Insider and chatting with ChatGPT about an article, jumping on the AI bandwagon and avoiding personal responsibility by laying others off for your mistakes isn't leading. It's just authority doing whatever they seem fit.

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