Last week a new team leader and 2IC started (2nd in charge). She's in my room, and I'm far from impressed. She's basically useless, and I'm doing even more than I was before, except now I don't have any time to do it in and I have to fix all of her mistakes. So yeah, not impressed.
But I think the thing that really annoyed me was one of her statements on Thursday. "We're all on one level - even me. I treat everyone like they're all on one level." She then went on about how all the different relief staff loved her because she treated them nicely.
Now, it's important to trea relief staff like they are human, and I've seen plenty of people doing otherwise. But we are NOT all on one level. And incidentally, the other useless teamleader said (and probably still says) the same thing.
At work we are NOT all on one level, and we SHOULDN'T be. When I was acting as Team Leader I was straight up front about this. "I'm the boss. I'll be leting you know what to do, run things by me, and DON'T PUT ON KIDS MUSIC." The others all loved this. They knew what they needed to do, because I'd let them know if anything wasn't being done. I wasn't mean (though I still limited kids music), and both Maryam and Ilanit have told me how much they preferred it when I was, as Maryam termed it, "The Boss."
Being a leader of anything is not about the position. I know a lot of people make it about the position. (And incidentally, both these "equallity minded" team leaders are happy to use their position to do what they want to do.) Being a leader is about taking the responsibility. The buck stops with you. You may delegate, even a lot, but when things go wrong it's your fault, and you fix it, even when it isn't your actual fault. As a result, you do the most work.
These two team-leaders want the position without the responsibility. As a result, there are big problems now, which are only going to get bigger as time goes on.
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