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Re:Soft Skills in Engineering Leadership by alexpotato on Wednesday February 17, 2021 @12:59PM (#26169363)
Lou Holtz [0] has a very pithy mental model for how to evaluate leadership:

Everyone asks three questions of people leading them:

1. Can I trust you?

2. Do you care about me?

3. Are you committed to excellence? (aka do you have high standards).

Think about someone you admire. Odds are the answer to the above for them is "yes" to all three.

Now think of someone you have had a lot of problems with. Odds are the answers to the above are "no".

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lou_Holtz

Re:Soft Skills in Engineering Leadership by username90 on Wednesday February 17, 2021 @01:33PM (#26169797)
Here is a fourth:

4. Do you delegate high visibility tasks?

Managers who don't do this work hard to hog all the glory, spend all their time in meetings with other managers or presenting to higher level people etc. It isn't good for them nor their reports, by not growing the reports skills they have a hard time getting to the next level as a manager. Also they create a situation where they are the bus factor 1, which is problematic in itself.

Re:Soft Skills in Engineering Leadership by jdgiese on Wednesday February 17, 2021 @02:10PM (#26170217)
4 seems like it is a particular instance of 2
Re:Soft Skills in Engineering Leadership by rmwaite on Wednesday February 17, 2021 @04:07PM (#26171791)
I’d say in many cases it could also be 1.
Re:Soft Skills in Engineering Leadership by DarkByte on Wednesday February 17, 2021 @07:17PM (#26173740)
I agree. I consider delegation of high value or visibility tasks as a combination of 1 and 2. Regardless I recognize it as being very important overall.
Re:Soft Skills in Engineering Leadership by seekitabroad on Wednesday February 17, 2021 @03:57PM (#26171670)
A lot of times, the trouble is that it's challenging to say no or delegate in the first place. We found that this works for us internally for helping to drive delegation: https://darja-bunch.medium.com/an-engineers-guide-to-saying-...
Re:Soft Skills in Engineering Leadership by hyko on Wednesday February 17, 2021 @02:27PM (#26170407)
This seems very close to the stereotype content model, which asserts that every interpersonal impression is formed along two dimensions: warmth and competence.

Feeling someone cares fits the warmth dimension; commitment to excellence is a hallmark of competence. I would say the word trust can encompass both.

[0] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype_content_model

Re:Soft Skills in Engineering Leadership by groby_b on Wednesday February 17, 2021 @09:28PM (#26174740)
Trust is neither warmth nor competence - trust is the assumption that our mental model of the person we trust somewhat reliably predicts how they actually act, combined with somewhat aligned values.
Re:Soft Skills in Engineering Leadership by hyko on Thursday February 18, 2021 @12:59PM (#26183197)
I mean that when you trust someone, that can mean you either trust them not to screw up or trust them not to screw you over.
Re:Soft Skills in Engineering Leadership by groby_b on Thursday February 18, 2021 @06:53PM (#26187549)
Yep - the first one means they're predictable, the second one means they're predictable and your values align.

(Unless you value getting screwed over, I guess ;)

Re:Soft Skills in Engineering Leadership by jimkleiber on Wednesday February 17, 2021 @03:03PM (#26170942)
I've often played with these concepts in my head, completely oblivious that someone had coined them and developed them. Thank you for linking this!
Re:Soft Skills in Engineering Leadership by wsinks on Wednesday February 17, 2021 @01:09PM (#26169512)
I love this! And had no idea about it. Really really stellar way of looking at it.

And for a leader, you can scale these by caring about roles and what info those roles get to show trust.

Really cool framework as a fundamental baseline.

Re:Soft Skills in Engineering Leadership by mathattack on Wednesday February 17, 2021 @05:30PM (#26172684)
Very good! A correlary to point 2 is “Will they give me time?”
Re:Soft Skills in Engineering Leadership by 29athrowaway on Wednesday February 17, 2021 @02:18PM (#26170301)
Do you share credit? Can your reports eat what they kill?