One of the best project managers I know was faced with a similar scenario, and succeeded wildly by doing mostly #2, but with very specific questions: what do you need to work effectively, what is preventing you from getting this.

In most cases, the answers were dedicated time and interruptions.

He trusted the team to know their jobs and worked to insulate them from the chaos around them. They came to trust him when they experienced what they craved, dedicated time, no interruptions.

What I dislike about the original post is that he seems to think his job is to lead and have them follow.

It isn't. His job is to support, to do the things, manage the interactions, that are preventing the team from working effectively.

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cybadger 2 days ago | parent [-]

> What I dislike about the original post is that he seems to think his job is to lead and have them follow.

Can you help me understand what in the original post came across that way?

Sure, managers do have a responsibility to lead their team, and they're held responsible for the results their organization team produces. That's the job. It'll look different company by company, of course. But I definitely didn't have some kind of command-and-control management approach in mind.

> It isn't. His job is to support, to do the things, manage the interactions, that are preventing the team from working effectively.

I agree! Like I wrote toward the end of the post, "The real secret of managing an expert team when you can’t do their jobs is to give up the illusion that you have to be superpowered and all-knowing. Instead, you can be the manager, supporting and directing your team, making sure you deliver results through your team."

That sounds—to me, and I might be missing something—pretty similar to what you're advocating.

	▲	PeterWhittaker 15 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The overall tone is one of "father knows best" with plenty of adversarial over and undertones. My favourite example, and perhaps the clearest, is "For example, if you just asked them to change the text on the “Login” button, and they’re talking about new libraries and rewriting the credential store, there’s a good chance your team didn’t understand what you told them." There is an equal or better chance that you don't understand or are completely ignorant of dependencies with which they are intimately familiar, perhaps tangled copypasta created ad nauseam in response to overbearing leaders who could not be bothered to understand. I've seen that more than once. In that specific instance, it would be more helpful to dive into the why while expressing the surprise you actually feel. It might even be better to go straight to "is there something in there that shouldn't be?" If your team has history you lack, one of your first jobs is learning the pain points and gaining enough of their trust that they will show you the scars and explain how they were earned.