I have been a huge fan of Kelley Eskridge for awhile now, and have written about her here before and I quote her Good Boss, Bad Boss. I am always especially struck by the power of her writing. Just yesterday, she wrote a comment in response to my post on authenticity versus the challenge a boss faces of convincing people that he or she is in charge. Check out a snippet from Kelley's comment:
"Controlling a team is like driving a car. The whole machine can work
wonderfully well, but if no one's at the wheel… Who's driving is
either an agreement, or it's a car crash.
Whenever I work in a situation where someone else is in the lead, I want
that person to assume control. I agree to trust them to have a notion
of where we're going. I do not want to have to backseat drive all the
damn time."
I think that is lovely and emotionally compelling. It also is consistent with a lot of research on the differences between competent and crummy bosses.
P.S. I am not entirely sure what Kelley is up to these days; I know she was running Humans at Work and also writing fiction, and has significant management experience. But her blog suggests she is really focusing on writing fiction these days — clearly, that woman can write!