askchapo

So I've tried to look into what books I've been shown for learning some leadership skills but unfortunately it's been too long since I've been taught that I've lost complete track of what they were and how to access them. So to make up for that I'll try to, proverbially, orally retell the parts I've learned that are the most generic and useful.

Firstly, a decent leader is a knowledgeable and capable leader. When a leader is inserted into a new position, one of the first things aught to be done is to continue the status quo left by the previous leader temporarily while spending time learning every aspect of your new position in addition to learning as much as possible about the work your subordinates do in order to gain a thorough understanding of your area of operation from the ground level to the big picture so as to be able to make necessary adjustments to the status quo without fucking shit up like a mad moose in a tourist shop. It also helps with interpersonal relationships because you're not wrecking habits people may have set up with sudden changes and are showing an interest and respect in their work skills.

Generally speaking what I've learned is that there's three leadership styles that boil down to how much direct interference you wish to or have to have in the workplace interpersonal dynamics that you have to flexibly be able to change between depending on the situation encountered. Those being, quite bluntly, autocratic, democratic, and autonomous leadership styles.

Autocratic, as the name infers, is to directly command those under you to operate in accordance towards whatever desired objective you desire to see accomplished. Usually its best used for high priority or high stakes situations where the person in charge is knowledgeable on the whole thoroughput process so as to ensure every person and every step in the process can be directed to follow the correct desired steps to achieve the desired objective. Generally speaking I've usually seen this style more so for positions such as cinema directors or military officers and usually has very little use for leaders beyond dabbling in it to help new people learn how to do their job until they have enough experience to be left alone. Usually autocratic leadership should be avoided but is usually the most common kind seen among many a two-bit dipshit given a position of authority who immediately turns around and starts swinging it around as if they've been given a god-granted right to be an asshole.

Democratic, alongside autonomous leadership, allows for more worker participation and input into the directive part of the work process with regards to accomplishing a desired objective. When you're not as knowledgeable on the work process itself but you are granted command over those who do, hosting a collective planning process to receive input from the workers can assist in accomplishing the objective. Funny enough, democratic leadership usually doesn't have to be fully democratic in the political sense, as the leader isn't truly decentralizing their power to the work body but is allowing for a democratic discussion of ideas before choosing what best course of action to pursue. Usually I've seen this style used for more smaller or more specialized areas where a leader, who is tasked with accomplishing a specific goal over a set timeframe, is assigned specialized or skilled workers whos depths of knowledge are deeper than the assigned leader. I haven't really seen this style used that much in the workplace myself since I don't really run in the circles where such situations would warrant such style. At most this style can be used once in a while, depending on scheduling, to have team meetings to get input on what's work events are positive and what work events that need adjusting.

Autonomous leadership is probably the least intensive style that you'll probably see most commonly in the world. It's more or less when you set out general work directives and position assignments for a pool of workers and simply sit back or occasionally and let the workers accomplish the desired objective as they see fit within the parameters of the directives and assignments. Generally speaking when utilizing this style, the leader must ensure there's a general level of trained skill and confidence among your subordinates to allow for subordinates experiencing such significant levels of autonominity to smoothly blend in with one-another and flow with the workflow. (which is where a bit of the autocratic style can come in if your workplace doesn't have corporate bullshit training in place to help teach newbies the ropes)

thats it for now off the top of my head, if you got questions do ask because you might rattle some more knowledge out of me like a magic 8 ball

You doing people management? I'd really recommend a podcast called Manager Tools - it helped me out in a few things when I got promoted some years ago. It's a bit "corporate America", but there's such a back catalogue that they've covered most situations you'll come up against in one way or another!

Not about leadership per-se but The Seven Habits of Highly Sucessful People has a lot of good stuff that would help someone in a leadership role, just make sure you find an older copy thats just by Stephen Covey because his weirdo son has shitted up the more recent editions (in my opinion).

Zen Lessons: The Art of Leadership is mostly quotations and short essays so it can be read in bits and peices here and there. Its more of a philisophical thing and doesn't give concrete instructions or anything.

Not a book recommendation but a generaln rule I was taught a long time ago was "praise in public, chastise in private", with "chastise in private" being the more important part. People generally appreciate it when they've been spared from public humiliation, and they'll be more open to criticism in a more private setting.

Thinking, Fast & Slow (if you have the time for it). "Even professional statisticians are not good intuitive statisticians."

"the officers handbook the soviet view" maybe?

if it doesn't help this is still a bump ig

I can lend some info that I've learned over the decades but I'm currently a bit discombobulated. I'll try to refocus before saying anything to make sure it'd actual helpful stuft.