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Home Architecture, security and coding Leadership style: behavior versus result
Leadership style: behavior versus result
Written by Division by Zero   
Friday, 09 April 2010 11:35

Part of the architect role is leadership. The main duty for an architect, I think, is leading by example and providing guidelines. Sometimes it is actual leading in the development process. Recently I had a discussion with our project leaders on the emphasis should be on behavior or on result.

Behavior

If you emphasize behavior you're basically telling people what to do and how to do it. For example how much time is spend on writing a technical specification and how much time their able to spend drinking coffee.

Result

If you emphasize result you don't care what someone does and how she or he spend her or his time, as long as they live up to the expectation and the mutual agreement on the result.

Behavior versus result

Which one is better? Emphasizing behavior makes sure people do what's expected of them, but also takes responsibility from them. The latter tend to make people unhappy, at least with most people (depending on the type of work). On the other hand emphasizing result gives people much responsibility on their tasks, but give you little control. It tends to make people more happy in their work, but probably causes friction between colleagues if they do thing their own way and it can be more expensive overall, because there are different ways things get done and the different ways may not be all as efficient.

The truth probably lays in the middle. You have to do both, especially in large teams. A good balance between the two will give you the control and efficiency you want, but gives your team the responsibility they need. This hopefully leads to a happier you and happier colleagues. I'm still wondering where the balance might be, but, then again, I'm not a manager.

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