The Fine Line Between Being a Great Leader and Being Annoying

Welcome to my newsletter! I'm Dave Anderson, an ex-Amazon Tech Director and GM. I write this newsletter I've called Scarlet Ink, which is a weekly newsletter on tech industry careers and tactical leadership advice.

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A large part of my work philosophy is about being an active leader. What do I mean by active?

Some of my past co-workers seemed to prioritize not sticking their necks out. This is passive leadership. Don't speak up in big meetings. Don't object to proposals by senior leaders. When you're asked to do something, don't question it. Follow the processes.

I broke all those rules, and I hope you do as well. However, being an active leader is more risky (in the short term) than being a passive leader. There's a reason we call it "sticking your neck out." That neck can easily be chopped if you make a mistake.

How do you avoid getting your head chopped off?

I think the meat behind this is your trust tank. What's a trust tank? Let me go on a rambling tangent to explain.

In relationships (particularly intimate partners), there's a concept of a love tank. Everyone has a love tank. You fill your partner's love tank (generally) by doing nice things, saying nice things, and improving their life. Making them popcorn without being asked, taking care of the kids, and complimenting them. You drain the love tank by leaving your dirty clothes on the floor, saying rude things, or ignoring them.

There are whole relationship books about this. You can be driven to divorce because you let that tank run dry, or you can build a solid relationship by ensuring that you're constantly putting more into that tank.

The reason it's a clever analogy (that I'm going to steal) is that you inevitably withdraw from the tank occasionally. You might be a great partner, but you'll still get grumpy and say something you regret. Or you might forget an important date or not load the dishwasher the way your spouse prefers. Whatever it is, a healthy relationship requires that you don't drain that tank too quickly, and you regularly and purposefully fill it up.

To conclude this tangent, work relationships have a similar tank. They have trust tanks. When we start in a new role, that tank is empty. As your manager or peer, I don't know you, and I don't trust you. It's not like I distrust you. It's just that you have no credibility to lean on.

Over time, with every successful project, every clear email, every compliment from a peer - you build trust with your manager and with your co-workers.

In a big project launch preparation meeting.

QA engineer: "I know we have our feature launch in 3 days, but I just discovered this issue with registration where some customer accounts aren't set up properly. <Details details details>."

Manager: "Ok, thanks for the info. Let's get the launch done, and we can fix that customer issue right after launch. It shouldn't cause too many issues before we have a chance to fix it"

Software engineer: "We really shouldn't do that. We would cause problems for customers and our customer service team. It's too close to our launch date. We should delay our launch until we get this fixed and re-tested."

How does the manager respond? Well, I've obviously set that up as a trick question. You don't know the background of the relationship between that software engineer and the manager. All things being equal, that relationship makes all the difference.

If that engineer was hired 3 days earlier? The manager might tell them in private that they don't know how important the launch date is, don't understand the impact of the issue, and should probably learn a bit more before speaking up.

If that engineer has 10 years of high performance, the manager is likely to say that they have a good point, and the launch should be delayed.

Going back to the headline question of this section, how do you avoid getting your head chopped off? Step one is to fill up your trust tank. You can't do anything without trust.

Let's talk through examples of the fine line between awesome and annoying.