A good leader emphasized the workers under him, making sure to know that everyone was doing well physically and mentally. Sometimes, he would call people into meetings and tell them to take a break or vacation. At the same time, he knew how to get people to work at maximum productivity when necessary, ensuring that crunch periods were over quickly and with satisfactory results. During those times, he would engage in work with us, keeping track of the progress of work and directing people where they were necessary. At the same time, he did not get in people’s way, letting them take the initiative and work as they saw fit. These leaders had friendly relationships with their subordinates, including myself, and we would sometimes talk about matters not related to work. He knew how to focus on the task in front of us, but he was also capable of relaxing and listening to the team. I felt as though I could go to him with my problems, and he would listen and help however he was able to do so. However, I also recognized and accepted the fact that he acted in the interest of the company, which create a sense of comfortable and respectful distance between us. In that capacity, he explained the company’s decisions to us and helped us understand why what we were doing was necessary. He also knew each of our capabilities and helped plan our professional development as we continued working at the company. Overall, I was happy working with him and wished him the best when he was transferred to another department away from our team.
The bad leader was much less involved with the team, spending a lot of his time in his office where we could not see what he was doing. This office was decorated with a lot of rewards he got from the company and elsewhere, which many of us thought he got at our expense. When he spoke to us, it would usually be about our progress on a specific piece of work, with him urging us to stop wasting time if we were behind where he thought we should have been. He performed these checks very often, which we considered micromanaging and did not appreciate. Another problem with his checks was that he was strongly opposed to innovation, demanding that everything be done using standard and reliable methods. As such, it took considerable patience and perseverance to convince him that a change a worker had decided to make was worth keeping, and many of my coworkers simply concealed such activities from him. When his subordinates would approach him about a vacation, he would sometimes complain about them picking the worst time to do so and argue about the specific dates. During crunch periods, this leader would put pressure on us to work harder and take on overtime, which would often not be logged properly, in my opinion. He would spend all day talking to other management and telling us that we were underperforming and needed to work harder. When actual failures occurred, he would get angry and blame us, trying to find a specific subordinate to pin the blame onto. Overall, when he was promoted, and one of our team members took his position as leader, we were all very happy.