Of Builders, Leaders and Bosses

I was recently reading a post by Umair Haque on the Harvard Business Review website and to be honest it struck a chord with me.

For the last few years of my career I have been actively working to:

1) Better myself by introspecting on what I am good at as well as listening carefully to the feed back that people and managers I have had are providing to me
2) Change/Effect Change in the places that I work.  It is my attempt to make the places I work better for my having worked for them (a workers boy scout rule if you like)

The post stood out to me because, in my own twisted little mind, it put to words exactly what I attempt to be and do when I work for a company.  I am not the boss, someone who inspires and instills fear into the people that work for her.  I am not the leader, someone who specifically works to inspire.  I am the builder, someone who IS inspired to change the world I live and work in, for the better, in whatever way I can.

My desire is clearly present in my relentless effort to get companies to realize that software development is first about the USERS of the tools being built and after that is about HOW the software gets built.  I seek to get the places I work for to realize that internal quality is not a compromise that should be made or even can be made in order to get faster.  I work relentlessly to get managers to understand that they can dictate or indicate the WHAT of software development but that they should never attempt to control, in the strict sense, the HOW of the software development process.  I work to get teams to understand that they can and SHOULD work to change the how of their work each and every day - nothing will get better when the teams just sit idle by and let others tell them how the world should be.

I am a builder - inspired by changing the world (in my own small ways), showing people WHY each and every day - What are you, a boss, a leader or a builder?