Iain McDonald - What's the secret to being a good leader?

Posted: Aug 03, 2004 at 7:13 PM

By: The Channel 9 Team

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3 Comments

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"Being frickin honest," Iain tells us is one of the secrets to being a good leader.

What does Iain know about leadership? He led the Windows XP War Room. Just a small little product you might have heard about. Wink

What are your secrets to leadership? What do you admire in bosses or executives or coaches?

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CRPietschmann Chris Pietschmann

Aug 04, 2004 at 2:40 PM

It's terrible when your team leader isn't honest. I really hate it when they just say "oh, yeah I knew that" or "yeah I forgot about that" when they have no idea. Why would you or should you be afraid to say you don't know something? Maybe they are just afraid to learn something new. I also hate it when they reject new ideas just because they aren't familiar with that piece of technology.

I know someone in a team leader position that just throws around alot of buzz words, so to the not techies, it sounds like he knows alot. But, since I actually know what those buzz words are and their technologies, I can totally tell what he knows and doesn't know. It so frustrating since his boss doesn't know that he is probably hurting the entire dev team. I'm sure there's alot of you whom know or work for someone like this.
Chris_Uffda UFFDA

Aug 05, 2004 at 8:57 AM

I think the honesty issue transcends just "not lying" but also admitting when you're wrong, out of line, or just don't know. These are some points that Iain started to touch on that really hit home with me.

When I first started as team leader I always wanted to tell my team what I thought they wanted to hear, and then I busted my butt to try to make it happen. Unfortunately there were times when I over-extended myself and had to go back on my word. The situation would have been a heck of a lot better had I just said either "don't know" or "can't".

Cheers...
rasx Emperor of String.Empty

Aug 05, 2004 at 2:09 PM

This post has been up for days and not many of my fellow employees across America are writing in, venting their frustration. Hmm... Is everybody on Channel9 working IT in the enterainment business?

Please don't teach me a lesson folks, I already learned about "my place" a long time ago: I can only dream of working with people like Iain McDonald---especially here in the States.

For more "negative" details please see An IT Fundamentalist Speaks.

Fade out this post to a tune sung by the Hooray for Everything Singers, a remake of Pat Boone's remake of "Smoke over Water."