领导力的简单测试

高效的领导力，是团队成功的关键因素之一。开发者需要尽可能好的工作环境和氛围，在高效地领导之下能够最大限度地发挥创造力；但同时我们往往忽视对于领导者领导能力的客观评判。

Keith Fuller是一个有着多年开发者经历的领导力咨询资深从业者，以他多年的经验提出了几个可以用于评价组织/团队的领导力的简单问题。回答这些问题，便能够了解一个组织/团队的领导力状况。

当然，通过几个简单的问题，不可能全面评估一个组织/团队的领导力状况，但是这几个问题戳中要害，的确值得决策者、领导者甚至每一位成员去思考。

（渣翻译开始，原文在下方）
领导力测试的五个问题：
1. 成为领导是否是默认的职业路线？
2. 每个成员与其领导是否有例行的一对一会谈（至少一月一次）？
3. 员工多久能收到一次业绩评估？
4. 对待持续改进的态度如何？
5. 领导者是否接受过有关领导技能的专门培训？

其他值得思考的问题：
- 是否每个人都有来自组织内部的导师？
- 对于领导者的职责是否有清楚的描述？
- 成员在背后如何评价领导者？
- 领导者是否会询问他的团队“我如何帮助你的职业发展？”
- 每个成员都能快速而清楚的回答“谁是你的领导？”
- 领导力是否已经退化成基于恐惧的控制？

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原文链接

A Simple Test of Leadership

by Keith Fuller

In the 13 years I spent as a developer I worked at two studios, and since I started doing leadership consulting I’ve become familiar with dozens more.

As a result I’ve found I can now quickly reach a fairly accurate assessment of the quality of leadership at companies of various sizes. To be sure, the more time you have to spend learning about an organization, the more precise you can be.

By obtaining answers to the following questions, though, I can get a pretty clear image in just a few hours. I bet you can, too.

I mention this here because I believe game developers deserve the best possible leadership, but at the same time we typically fall woefully short of properly scrutinizing the leaders we already have.

For more than a decade I just threw my hands up along with so many others. “It is what it is.”

That’s not a solution. That’s the problem.

Consider whether these questions (and the answers they elicit) are important to you, then consider what to do about it at your company.

1.Is leadership the default career path? As Buckingham and Coffman (and 25 years of research) indicate in First Break All the Rules, one of the most certain ways to riddle your company with deficient leaders is to promote subject matter experts to leadership simply because they’re excellent contributors.

The typical thinking is, “You’re such a good programmer, we’re promoting you to lead programmer,” when the two skill sets in question don’t necessarily have even the smallest of intersection. You may as well say, “You’re such a good programmer, we’re promoting you to concept artist.”

2.Does everyone get regular one-on-one meetings with their lead (preferably at least once per month)? Forging a personal connection with the people you lead is possibly the most important task in front of you as a leader. The number one reason people leave a company is because of a crummy supervisor. Developing a rapport with your team increases their engagement and decreases turnover. Doing the opposite yields the opposite.

If you’re the lead, don’t wait for someone else to create a company policy or tell you what to do. YOU schedule time with your people. It shows them you care and makes you more effective at your job.

3.How often do employees receive performance reviews? In the past few months I’ve told multiple clients: if you’re only doing performance reviews once a year, just stop doing reviews. You’ll save yourself a ton of time and energy and you’ll no longer be fooling yourself with the false belief that you’re helping your people and your company.

We humans do a horrible job of remembering positive events and we’re much too quick to let them be overshadowed by negative ones. That’s not a business thing, that’s simple psychology. How useful, then, is eleven-month old information about a team member? For a better approach, read Blanchard’s The One Minute Manager. Or do what my friend Josh Nilson does. He’s now CEO of East Side Games in Vancouver, but as COO he implemented the practice of having every employee get a review every two weeks. Every. Two. Weeks. And the results were wonderful.

4.What’s the attitude about continuous improvement? This isn’t just a cool buzzword, it’s a leadership principle. At the 2010 IGDA Leadership Forum, Riot Games president Marc Merrill said, “We never assume we’re as optimal at ANYTHING as we can be.” I’d have to say using Riot as an example for successful business practices is probably an OK move.

As a counter example, I once visited a company where a studio leader pointed out a disgruntled artist and told me they’d been unhappy with their role in the company. How long? TWO YEARS. If your company’s leadership is OK with letting relationships deteriorate for that long, I’d challenge their dedication to continuous improvement at any level.

5.Does anyone receive specific training in leadership skills? It is frighteningly common to see a studio where leaders have arrived in their current roles without ever having been told how to be a lead. That’s how I received my first “promotion” to leadership years ago and it’s still a widespread problem.

Many companies seem to assume that because someone has been around long enough, or shipped enough games, or is the studio head’s buddy, they’re going to make an acceptable lead. Even if you’re surrounded by the best examples of leadership our industry has to offer, it’s exceedingly difficult to learn on the fly and effectively switch gears from contributor to leader without explicit training. And how often does anyone find themselves surrounded by exceptional leaders, anyway? If osmosis from similarly untrained leaders is the preferred teaching method for leadership, you’re inflicting a dark spiral of inbred deficiency on your employees.

There are many additional questions you could ask, but even just these five will start to paint the picture. While I’m definitely advising you to ask these questions, I’m not recommending open revolt or mass departures if you find the answers wanting. Instead, engage your studio leaders in a discussion of these issues. It may well be that existing senior leadership values nepotism over training, or prizes keeping veterans happy over filling roles based on emotional intelligence. That’s their prerogative. Once you achieve clarity on your values and those of the studio, though, you should be prepared to act on them. Otherwise, “it is what it is” is all it will ever be.

Addenda

The five questions above aren’t the only ones worth asking. By all means, add your own leadership questions in the comments. Here are a few more to get you started:

Does everyone have a mentor?

Are the expectations of leadership positions explicitly stated?

How do team members speak about leaders when they aren’t present?

Do leaders ask their team members, “How can I help you develop professionally?”

Can every employee answer clearly and immediately when asked, “Who’s your lead?”

Does senior leadership boil down to controlling through fear?