It is a fake latent variable cardiologists (who were being paid by tobacco companies) came up with to distinguish between people who had heart attacks and those who didn’t to mask the effect of smoking.
It’s not surprising that this vocabulary persists - it’s a nice shorthand to casually describe personality. But the idea that it represents anything objective, measurable or scientific needs to be stamped out.
Our mind is more complex than simple dichotomies like this assume. We all behave like "introverts" in some situations and like "extroverts" in some situations. We constantly adapt to our environment and our responses to external stimuli are not stable in time. They also depend on our internal state like hunger, tiredness, etc. much more than these sort of classification schemes would have you believe.
> We constantly adapt to our environment and our responses to external stimuli are not stable in time
This is true, but it's also true that peoples' average preferred amounts of stimulation are very different to other people's. And those averages often are quite stable.
Seems a very popular thing to put labels on people's personalities. "He's a leader", "she's an introvert", "they are artsy". Feels very similar to astrology - "he's a Lion", "she's a Taurus". Or the "alpha male" and "beta male" nonsense.
Or "Type A" or "Type B". Sometimes I think a large part of HN readers think everything about human nature and personality can be classified, as if ready to be replaced with software in the future. Our understanding of the human mind is nowhere near that place now, and may never be.
It's important to keep in mind that all of these things, not just personality traits, but even concepts such as "human" are artifacts of our modelling of the world.
The things in themselves do not know of these distinctions, and you can draw them fairly arbitrarily in ways that may or may not be helpful in making sense of the world.
Saying that there are some things that are alive, an others that are inert; and that some alive things are animalia, and others are not, and that some animalia are humans and others are not, and that some humans are Type A, and others are not.
Really, none of those distinctions are more justified than the other. It's even hard to motivate that there are things as separate. We have matter constantly moving through us, the air we breathe and the water we drink and the food we eat. We aren't strictly speaking entirely made of the same stuff we were yesterday.
It's like a wave across the water, the wave persists but the pieces of water it's made of changes over time. A bit in the same way our hands are features of our bodies, we are features on the universe. You can make the delineation to say we are separate, but only as a mental model.
The main problem with astrology is associating personality traits with someone's birth date. Which is pretty ridiculous. Simply describing someone's personality traits seems entirely reasonable.
That's a very type B thing to say. As a type A, I know that categorizing is a necessary shorthand to streamline decision making and to produce maximally effective results. This is why the "myth" persists, despite being "disproven." It may not have a scientific basis, but it has real-world value.
So I guess what you're saying is that ignoring reality maximizes your own perceived happiness. Would explain a thing or two about our "leaders" and the state of the world.
Scott Adams (who I'm not particularly fond of) has a habit of saying that people pick mental models that 1) make sense of reality (sometimes in a misperceived way) and 2) make them happy. That does seem to explain a lot about human behavior, but I don't necessarily think people are deliberately ignoring reality, just making sense of it in an illogical way sometimes.
I'm a lead that's an introvert as well. I've figured out what really drains me are any meetings that I'm not in charge of (or haven't initiated the meeting). It probably has something to do with self-confidence and I will speak rarely or if I'm called upon.
Also for me it's hard to be energetic at the start of the day when meetings slowly appear on the daily agenda. The more I speak, the more confidence I get. But this is only in the case with a meet with many participants. I have no problems with 1:1 meetings.
Question for you - are meetings others initiate/are in charge of, but which nevertheless serve a clear point that necessitates your presence as draining?
Because that's the differentiator for me. If I have a goal I'm trying to achieve there, and the meeting is focused on that goal, it doesn't matter if I'm just a participant or not. If their isn't a clear goal, or I'm expected to be there despite not being involved in that goal (if it's an informational meeting I don't care about the information; if it's a decisional meeting I don't care or can't influence the decision; if it's a brainstorming meeting it's about something that doesn't affect me or a problem I'm not responsible to solve), it's massively draining.
Can I mention that I found that the most horrible book I have read in years?
The first 50 pages were doable when scrolling through. But soon it dived into how introvert people can be successful, while that success is measured in extravert ways. Like the introvert guy giving presentations about how to be successful. For me everything was "feet on top", "upsidedown". And all very much about looking successful and making an impression. It didn't do any justice to what I would want from my life, more like the opposite. I don't want to be like Bill Gates.
The only thing I took from that book was the description of three personality traits; shyness, introversion and HSP. They seem the same to other people but are very different. Shyness is about fear something might happen in response to what you do. Introversion is that you mostly gain energy in quietness, less in social situations. And HSP means that someone is sensitive and everything comes in quite hard.
Humans are social creatures, just because we were predisposed in a certain way does not mean that there are not great skills to learn from the other side, which can improve our health and social status - COVID and remote work is an example.
I dislike the phrase servant leadership. I have a mental link between that and curling parenting, where parents anticipate any problem and sweep the way for their children.
The drawback of servant leadership in the workplace (and curling parenting in childrearing) is that the servant leader quickly becomes (in my experience) an overworked single point of failure, and once they leave there is nobody else who knows how to handle the obstacles they've moved out of the way for everyone.
In the worst cases, they leave behind a group of people who have been completely isolated from the rest of the organisation, and has no idea what their purpose is and how to fit in with the rest of the world, once the leader leaves.
I would like to invent my own buzzword: transparent leadership. In my book, a good leader
- coaches people,
- connects people,
- teaches people methodical problem solving,
- explains values, principles, and other fuzzy values to aid people in making aligned decisions on their own,
- creates direct links between supply and demand (instead of deliberately making themselves a middle man),
- allows their direct reports career growth by gradually taking over leadership responsibilities,
- continuously trains their replacement (related to the above), and
- generally makes themselves redundant.
Ideally, transparent leadership has a side effect: it gives the leader more time to work on technical problems, keeping their skills fresh, which gets them more respect in the eyes of their direct reports too.
Note that servant leadership/curling parenting feels really good for the direct report/child... until it doesn't.
TL;DR: Parenting and leadership is very similar. Teach a man to fish etc.
The VP of engineering I work for is very much a servant leader. He is always around to support the team, unblock people, and makes sure things are moving along smoothly. As opposed to previous leaders I've had who were aloof/absent and typically not available after 4 pm.
As an aside, I am deeply suspicious of people who assign letters to their personality or pronouns to themselves. We are all humans first and foremost.
I think of "Servant Leadership" as a buzzword. Useful for "nice" managers who conceal their authority behind a veneer of IC empowerment.
I've worked with two self-described "servant leaders" who claimed to give their engineers independence and then later smashed the same engineers at the first sign of defiance. I've also worked for a manager who embodied the supposed ideal of a "servant leader", who mentored me, watched out for me, and sacrificed for me. Yet he never even for a moment called himself a "servant leader", nor did anyone else call him a "servant leader" or use a lazy, feel-good on him.
I think the buzzword persists because we all want managers who cannot hurt us, belittle us, or fire us. But a positive illusion is a poor substitute for knowledge about power dynamics.
A true “servant leader” would cringe at calling themselves leader in the first place. I also have one of those self-proclaimed “servant leaders” on my team, he’s the only manager who has a 10-page README on himself. Also the only manager who I regularly have to argue with before he “serves” me.
I turned into a type A/introvert to a type B/extrovert-ish and lead people in both situations; give me the latter any time. I didn't like my former self much and I apologised to many of my 'minions' (as I called them back then) on how I treated them. Type B/introvert works better, but I'm still trying to get more extrovert as it opens a lot of doors with people.
> Imagine I have 100 Energy Points that keep me going. I might start the day with 100 points and as I go about my day, I’ll start to feel pretty drained and unproductive once I’m below 50. To make matters more challenging, if I haven’t slept well or if I’m stressed out about other things, I might not even start the workday at 100 Energy Points!
This and the paragraphs thereafter are the most succinct description of how I feel on a daily basis that I’ve ever read.
I’m really good at being fun and high energy, so many are normally very surprised to learn that I need as much alone time as I can possibly gather to recoup.
This is why me being a traveling consultant was amazing. I could pair and present all day and recharge with a dinner by myself and some progress on side projects. That went out the window after COVID and has caused problems.
tldr is that it's not about aggression but rather motivation, ability to operate without someone else forging a path + initiative in strange situations
"The only people who I saw running “successful” companies (a word which, I now realize, is very open to interpretation) were stern, if not iron-fisted, managers. They made the rules and set the goals with confidence. They weren’t afraid to yell to get their point across, "
The above is not an example of a good leader. People only obey this type of leader because they are paid to obey. A true leader is someone people obey because they believe in him.
The previous sentences describe leadership in an idealistic way. In reality most leaders are sort of hybrids. Yes you work for you boss because of the pay, but if that's the only reason why you work for your boss, than your boss is an not a good leader.
I have seen both. Management that yells and bosses around attracts a workforce which is okay with that for a given compensation in that phase of their lives.
Actual leaders attract people who want to grow both professionally and as persons, and who would do things because they want to support the company, their collegues or their superiors.
In reality it is usually some mix of both, sure, but it is known for quite a while that positive consequences are a better motivator than punishment.
I think it depends heavily on the CEO, company, product, rest of the team, and rest the management.
An accidentally popular product with its own momentum can survive for awhile with even atrocious leadership and often other levels of management can make up for or mask the abilities of a CEO
Sure, but that is not a statement about the quality of leadership. Let's face the truth: a lot of things in the real world are just a matter of luck and/or factors which are beyond the control of individual actors.
If my project fails I like it rather to fail with me being a good leader than ot failing with me being a bad leader. My experience tells me that projects with good leaders fail less often than those with bad leaders or bosses — all while being 1000% more pleasant to spend your time with.
Being a good leader is not something you do purely for the money, ot is something you do, because it fulfils you and allows you to look back and not feel like you wasted time and energy on a pile of burning garbage.that was a bad idea to begin with.
I mean I'm not going to work for zero pay right? No leader can gain followers without some kind of bribe (aka salary) as well. The bribe gives the leader flexibility to overrule the employee. But if certain lines are crossed it becomes a problem.
When I worked at amex, I cringed at the fact that anyone who managed people were by default called “leaders.” People management does not equal leader by default and whenever I quipped about this, people looked at me as if I was talking out of my ass and playing semantics. Corporate culture can engrain whatever vocabulary in the companies interest, and I find that pretty depressing.
I think they refer to the meaning of the word "leading" as opposed to meanings like "commanding" or "bossing around".
While agreeably there might be no "true" leader to be found on this world, the words mentioned above still differ in meaning and definition. Someone who leads does something else than someone who commands or bosses around. This discussion here is about that difference.
Of course you can also reach goals by just yelling and punishing people, but that would hardly qualify as leadership.
No but, let me put it this way. If you're yelling at me, than I hate you. I have no loyalty to you.. and the next time I see an opening, I'm fucking you over first thing. Everyone who follows you, is pretending to do so. No one is on your team. They may even secretly be fucking you over while pretending to bend over backwards for you.
You've reached your goal yes. But you've made enemies. and your overarching goals are at risk.
Could it be that your idea of a boss is how you'd think the world should work, but necessarily not how it does. Kind of like when women say they want men with a sensitive side, in touch with emotions, but in reality most women want a strong man who doesn't show any emotions.
> Kind of like when women say they want men with a sensitive side, in touch with emotions, but in reality most women want a strong man who doesn't show any emotions.
Frankly, almost no grown adult wants an emotionally stunted partner who got that way because they never came to grips with their emotions; few people want to deal with childish coping mechanisms from a grown adult.
>Kind of like when women say they want men with a sensitive side, in touch with emotions, but in reality most women want a strong man who doesn't show any emotions.
First off I want to emphasize I agree with this statement. I don't look at the world in an idealistic way. So let's make sure we're on the same page about this. Women are less empathetic and understanding about men than men are about women and this is a generality that is very very true. This entire narrative of the man as a bumbling buffoon trying to understand this mysterious creature called a woman is a false narrative. Women are by far significantly MORE ignorant about how men think, but women in general just don't care as much; hence why you see men coming up with deep behavioral theories about women like "friendzoning" and the like while women dismiss men as muscular simpletons with penises as brains all the while forgetting the fact that men are responsible for the majority of civilization and technology. Either way, I don't have any ire against the behavioral dichotomy between sexes, it's just nature.
>Could it be that your idea of a boss is how you'd think the world should work, but necessarily not how it does.
I don't think I'm biased. I've worked with leaders who I like and want to succeed. So from experience I've seen it happen. That already literally proves that the world can work this way.
Logically as well, employees do their best work when they love their work, if I hate my work and I hate my boss... well I'm only going to do the minimal work to keep him happy. Any other shit that happens I'm sweeping under the rug.
Typical example: If I code review an ass holes code and I notice a fatal bug, I'm going to approve it to fuck that ass hole over. Then I'll claim it's my fault for not noticing it during review and the ass hole will get blamed for sloppy code either way.
I'm not sure what makes you think the world works that way. From my experience... it doesn't at all. Bosses who do this in my experience literally have to be paying their employees pure gold. In the majority of the software world, however, developers can easily leave and find a job with a better boss.
I'm thinking either you're a manager who's paying people 600k salaries or you're an employee receiving that salary. If the salary isn't that high and if you're a manager, you'll note the attrition rate for your team is astronomical. Probably 3x other teams.... unless the entire company has this shitty culture then the attrition rate for the company is huge. If you're an employee and not getting 500k, well... leave now is my advice.
I've also seen bosses who are assholes while managing to pay their employees low salaries. This only happens when most of the employees are junior, in the sense that this is their first or second job and don't know any better. Guys who've been around much longer know the difference.
It is a fake latent variable cardiologists (who were being paid by tobacco companies) came up with to distinguish between people who had heart attacks and those who didn’t to mask the effect of smoking.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3477961/
It’s not surprising that this vocabulary persists - it’s a nice shorthand to casually describe personality. But the idea that it represents anything objective, measurable or scientific needs to be stamped out.