The "karaoke host's rule"

The destructive power of pride

I grew up playing the Ultima series of games and those of you reading who remember these will know where I’m going. Humility is one of the eight virtues in that game, and it is described as the opposite of pride.

Of course, pride is not always a bad thing. Taking pride in your work can ensure you feel positive about your job and produce higher quality work. And, as a trans person, I know all about Pride with a capital P, as all those of us who stand up against erosion of our rights do.

But pride in the workplace can also be destructive.

As a teenager, like many others, I worked at McDonald’s. One time I was having trouble assembling Big Macs at the breakneck pace that was expected of us. My manager stormed over, pushed me aside and said “let me show you how it’s done”. He then proceeded to assemble one Big Mac extremely quickly before returning to his command post.

The effect of this act of bravado on my young mind was not to leave me feeling better about my job, or more motivated to work harder. It just left me thinking “great, my manager can make these burgers faster than me; so why doesn’t he do it?”

Managers exhibiting pride by “showing off how good they are” at their team’s jobs can have the following destructive effects on your team:

• It might play into a team member’s impostor syndrome (something I’d love to do a whole post on in the future) by leaving them feeling “not good enough” at their job, which will eat into morale.
• It also will make them less likely to question your decisions or take initiative or offer alternatives to your ideas.
• And a team who believes their boss is just a “better” or faster version of them will expect that boss to take the reins when things get hard, rather than rallying together as a team.

Being a good karaoke host

As one of my many side quests, I host karaoke events. Karaoke is an interesting culture, because people who’ve never been to an event typically have a very fixed idea of how it will go down. Most people will inevitably say something like “I wouldn’t be brave enough to sing in front of strangers!”

As a karaoke host and longtime karaoke fan, I can sing. And, indeed, to warm the crowd up as well as at times during the evening, I will sing. But there are good songs to sing and bad songs to sing as a host.

Two of the categories of song that I like to sing as the host are:

1. Songs that everyone can join in with. In the photo above, I’m singing Dancing On My Own with full audience participation.
2. Songs that are too hard for me. That bridge of the Kate Bush song is a great example - the song is really high to begin with but the first note of “Cathy” is so high I have never once been able to hit it.

Why do I do this? Because it shows people that the space is for them. Just because I’m the host and I have a lot of experience doesn’t mean I can sing every song perfectly. I make mistakes and I want people to see me make them, so they know it’s normal - and OK - for them to make mistakes too.

And when people have that implicit permission to make mistakes, they join in.

Being humble in the workplace

Being a good karaoke host works in the workplace too. If your team can see you showing weakness and vulnerability, it can have the following desirable effects:

• People realise you are only human. They are more likely to be understanding when things go wrong in the future.
• They are also more likely to realise that your role is one they could potentially do in the future, and show interest in growing to more senior levels of responsibility.
• Your team is more likely to rally round you and support you with suggestions, questions and alternatives that you can use in your decision-making. It empowers them to support their leader with their expertise.
• And everyone is more likely to feel they are on the same side - pulling together towards a common goal.

Here are two phrases every manager should have ready to go whenever they are needed:

And when not to be humble

Humility at work is a powerful tool - it can help in all the ways above and more - but it’s important to remember that as a leader there are also times when humility is not the right approach. Here are some that I’ve helped to coach people with:

• Don’t over-apologise: some people don’t have a problem saying “I’m sorry” at all. In fact, they say it in response to everything. Turned up 30 seconds late to a video call? “I’m sorry!” Had an idea and want to share it with the group? “I’m sorry!” Over-apologising like this dilutes the meaning of the word and makes it harder for people to see your real apologies as genuine and contrite.
• Be good at the things you are good at: ultimately you are paid to do a job, and humility is not an excuse to turn everything into a mistake or an apology. Your team will look to you as an example, so getting this balance right is important.
• Take burdens away from people and shield them from shit: leaders are meant to create psychological safety by taking on burdens on behalf of team members. This isn’t humble, but it allows your team members space to breathe.
• Provide reassurance and confidence when people are scared: if your team are scared - maybe there’s a big spending review coming up or they’re about to do a major release with potential real-world ramifications - then it’s important that you provide the reassurance that you are all in it together and anything that goes wrong will affect the whole team, not that individual.
• Try not to drop the ball - it’s not humble to just not do things you’ve promised to do because you have the option to apologise. Doing your best to honour commitments and not overcommit yourself is essential to keeping your team’s trust, but remember that if you do drop the ball occasionally, you can apologise then!

Servant leadership

I occasionally hear the term “servant leadership” being used. I don’t really like the term but I like what it stands for.

The way I like to think of leaders is that they don’t know more than their teams. This is very true in tech, because the longer you lead, the more the industry changes beneath you, and the more your team will know that will surprise you.

I remember once pairing with a mid-level engineer on a debugging task for a web application. Debugging a multithreaded web server is hard, so I was prepared to invest some time building some scaffolds to hook a debugger into. My colleague said “I’ll just put binding.pry right here”. I thought “that’s not remotely possible”, but I watched her do it and - lo and behold - in the time since I’d last tried to do something like this, the Rails framework had added code that automatically inserted the appropriate scaffolds in that situation. It was a timely reminder that we often don’t know more than our team members with “less” experience.

Servant leadership is the philosophy that a leader’s job is to work for their team, not the other way around.

Being humble, recognising that your role is different than it once was, and trusting your team to get things right is, in my mind, the first step to properly serving your team.

PS. Get me in your inbox

If you haven’t yet subscribed to the newsletter, what have you been doing? You missed a great one this week! (You can read it in the archive.)

Get subscribed and I’ll drop you great tech & leadership content right into your email inbox no more than once a month.