Kieran Snyder with an excellent twitter thread on leadership. Here’s part of it:
The best leaders lead from the front when things are tough. They are visible, accountable, and own the challenge + their own failings. Sometimes the only way to guide or coach things to improvement is to live in the difficulty yourself.
The best leaders lead from the back when things are going great. When things are going great, that’s a sign that the organization knows what it’s doing, and you’d be foolish to mess with the day-to-day. Your job in that case is giving credit + setting up the next challenge.
Ineffective leaders often make the choice backwards: they stay in the background when things are difficult, hoping someone else will figure it out. They get in front when things are going well, hoping to take credit. No one wants to follow these leaders for long.
(Via Sean Sperte.)