By Yiler Huang

Leadership is the key to success. A good leader should be able to delegate workflow as well as communicate with their team. They should also show humility for missteps during their work as well as take responsibility for the people under them. Good leaders can also be seen as politicians, company CEOs, religious leaders and so on. All of these positions require good leadership skills from these individuals or they’re doomed to fail. Around a couple years ago, I had an experience with a bad leader who made me feel disorganization was the cause of our loss.

We were getting ready for a debate competition on whether people should be buying lottery tickets or not. The teacher separated us into groups and the leader asserted her position without approval from the group. She led the team by giving us orders instead of communicating with us. Without listening to our opinions she designated work and created a situation where we could not get the big picture. To make things worse, she was arrogant and refused to admit that she was wrong. At the end, before we were fully set to debate, she threw another curveball in the form of bad planning. Forcing us to talk about the debate point that our teammate prepared, not our own, points that we were not familiar with. Which eventually led to our loss in the debate. The quality she exhibited was that of our poor leader.

When working on a project with a team, communication is one of the most important aspects of a good leader. This leader’s lack of communication and unwillingness to admit their mistakes reminded of a contrasting situation within my favorite industry, the gaming industry. The previous CEO of Nintendo Satoru Iwata once took a paycut of fifty present due to his failures of making the Wii U a successful product for the company. He did this in order to preserve the jobs of his employees. To top it all off, he apologized and took responsibility. “According to Nikkei, Iwata is having his pay cut in half due to Nintendo's poor performance. Other company directors will get pay cuts between 20 and 30 percent.” This shows Nintendo management’s willingness to admit their mistakes and benevolence in the attempt to preserve the jobs of their employees.

A recent development involving the gaming industry involves Activision Blizzard who has lost support from their fans. The company philosophy was their primary culprit for years, this company has thought of themselves as rock stars which created an extremely toxic company culture. “Activision is also facing regulatory probes into its culture and its handling of it’s harassment allegations from the Security and Exchange Commision…” In order to improve working conditions, I feel having leaders who are humble and able to admit their failures is one the the most important aspects of good proper leadership. A leader should be a foundation for the team to build on, not just giving orders. They need to work with their teams instead of placing themselves on a throne. One extremely good example of good company culture of management working with its workers would be Valve. While Gabe Newell would be considered the CEO, Valve was actually run as a boss-free company with the workers to pursue things they find interest in. “We're a flat organisation [sic], so I don't report to anybody and people don't report to me,” explains DJ Powers.” This type of Laissez-faire attitude should be pushed and encouraged to other existing companies to promote a healthy competitive environment.

If more leaders research and understand the success of Valve, they would see how to lay the foundation of being a good leader. My experience with the bad group leader of my debate project had placed me in a situation where I felt some form of freedom to team members would allow for more effective and organized presentation. When you do not have a satisfied team, it further leads to more disorganization. Leaders should delegate not order, they should put their trust in their team and provide guidance and proper communication when needed. A tyrant running a team will always cause problems, even though they may be successful for a short time, their arrogance will eventually lead to their downfall.

領導力是成功的關鍵。一個好的領導者應該能夠委派工作流程並與他們的團隊溝通。他們還應該對工作中的失誤表現出謙虛，並為他們的下屬承擔責任。好的領導者也可以被視為政治家、公司CEO、宗教領袖等等。所有這些職位都需要這些人具備良好的領導能力，否則他們注定會失敗。大約幾年前，我有過一位糟糕的領導，他讓我覺得組織混亂是我們失敗的原因。

我們正在準備一場關於人們是否應該要購買彩券的辯論比賽。那時老師把我們分成小組，組長未經小組同意就宣布了她的立場。她通過給我們命令而不是與我們溝通來領導團隊。在沒有聽取我們意見的情況下，她指定了工作並造成了我們無法了解全局的情況。更糟糕的是，她傲慢自大，拒絕承認自己錯了。最後，在我們完全準備好辯論之前，她又以糟糕的計劃形式改變計劃，迫使我們談論我們的隊友準備的辯論點，而不是熟悉的點，最終導致我們在辯論中失利。

與團隊一起開展項目時，溝通是優秀領導者最重要的方面之一。這位領導者缺乏溝通和不願承認自己的錯誤，這讓我想起了我最喜歡的行業——遊戲行業中的對比。任天堂前任 CEO 岩田聰曾因未能讓 Wii U 成為公司的成功產品而減薪 50％。他這樣做是為了保住員工的工作。最重要的是，他道歉並承擔了責任。 「據日經新聞報導，由於任天堂表現不佳，岩田聰的薪水減半。其他公司董事將獲得 20％ 至 30％ 的減薪。」(Brian,2014)這表明任天堂管理層願意承認他們的錯誤，試圖保住員工的工作。

同樣是遊戲業，另一個反例是失去粉絲支持的動視暴雪。多年來，公司理念是他們的主要罪魁禍首，這家公司認為自己是搖滾明星，這創造了一種極具毒性的公司文化。 「Activision 還面臨來自安全和交易委員會的騷擾指控的監管調查……」(Kristen,2022)

為了改善工作條件，我覺得擁有謙虛並能夠承認自己失敗的領導者是最良好的適當領導的重要方面。領導者應該是團隊賴以發展的基礎，而不僅僅是發號施令。他們需要與他們的團隊合作，而不是把自己置於王位之上。與員工合作的良好公司管理文化的一個極好的例子就是 Valve。雖然 Gabe Newell 會被視為 CEO，但 Valve 實際上是作為一家沒有老闆的公司運營的，員工們追求他們感興趣的事情。「我們是一個扁平的組織 [原文如此]，所以我不向任何人報告人們不向我報告，」DJ Powers 解釋道。”這種放任自流的態度應該向其他現有公司推廣和鼓勵，以促進健康的競爭環境。如果更多的領導者研究並了解 Valve 的成功，他們就會看到如何為成為一名優秀的領導者奠定基礎。我在辯論項目中遇到糟糕的小組組長的經歷使我處於這樣一種情況，即我覺得團隊成員的某種形式的自由可以讓我進行更有效和更有條理的演示。當你沒有一個滿意的團隊時，它會進一步導致更多的混亂。領導者應該委派而不是命令，他們應該信任他們的團隊，並在需要時提供指導和適當的溝通。一個暴君管理一個團隊總是會出問題，即使他們可能在短時間內成功，但他們的傲慢最終會導致他們的垮台。(Leo,2013)

Brian, A. (2014, January 29). Nintendo Boss Is Taking a Huge Pay Cut (Because of the Wii U). Kotaku. https://kotaku.com/nintendo-boss-is-taking-a-huge-pay-cut-because-of-the-1511382834

Kirsten, G. (2022, January 17). Activision Blizzard Pushes Out Dozens of Employees Over Workplace Misconduct—WSJ. https://www.wsj.com/articles/activision-blizzard-pushes-out-dozens-of-employees-over-workplace-misconduct-11642428001

Leo, K. (2013, September 23). Valve: How going boss-free empowered the games-maker. BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-24205497