The Manager’s README: A Practice in Radical Honesty and Leadership Evolution

The Document as Mirror

The Manager’s README, sometimes called a personal user manual or leadership charter, has gained popularity as a transparency tool. But its true power lies not in the words themselves but in the accountability framework they create. When you articulate who you are as a leader, your preferences, and your values, you’re informing your team… and you’re lso creating a reference point against which your actions will inevitably be measured.

This isn’t documentation for documentation’s sake; it’s the creation of a mirror you cannot hide from.

Consider what happens when you write, “I welcome new ideas and constructive challenges to my thinking.” This statement, seemingly positive and progressive, carries significant risk. You’ve now established a standard by which your team will evaluate your reactions. Each time you interrupt a challenging perspective or dismiss an unexpected proposal, you create a dissonance between your stated values and your observable actions.

This dissonance of the README process is precisely its purpose.

The Data of Dissonance

Most leadership discourse frames feedback as something managers give rather than receive. The Manager’s README inverts this dynamic, creating a structured invitation for your team to reflect your behaviors back to you.

When a team member musters the courage to say, “You wrote that you value creativity, but I’ve noticed you tend to focus on potential problems whenever new ideas are shared,” they’re providing invaluable data about the gap between your self-perception and your impact.

This moment represents a critical juncture. Will you defend your intentions (“That’s not what I meant” or “You’re misinterpreting my questions”) or will you engage with the reality of your impact? Your response in this moment speaks volumes about your capacity for growth—far more than any carefully crafted value statement.

The discomfort of this feedback is a feature (not a bug). The Manager’s README creates a structured space for precisely this type of productive tension.

Visible Evolution as Trust Currency

Trust is built on demonstrations. When your team observes a disconnect between your README and your actions, they don’t immediately lose faith, but they’ll be watching what happens next.

Do you acknowledge the gap? Do you make visible adjustments? Do you follow up to check whether your changes are addressing the concern?

Trust is built on visible evolution. When your team witnesses you actively working to align your actions with your stated intentions, they experience something rare in organizational life: a leader whose growth happens in plain sight rather than behind closed doors.

Consider the manager who, upon receiving feedback about interrupting team members, acknowledges the behavior and also institutes a new practice in meetings: “I’ve been told I sometimes cut people off. If you notice me doing this, please say ‘I’d like to finish my thought.’ This will help me be more aware.” This visible commitment to change, and the vulnerability of making it public, creates far more trust than any aspirational statement about valuing all voices.

The Authenticity of Imperfection

Perfection is not a leadership goal. A leader who never makes mistakes, never has off days, and never shows frustration comes across as performative rather than real.

The Manager’s README shouldn’t aim to portray an idealized version of yourself, but rather to create a framework for understanding your real patterns—including your limitations. The document might include acknowledgments like “I tend to become more directive under tight deadlines” or “I sometimes need processing time before responding to unexpected proposals.”

These statements are context that helps your team interpret your actions more accurately while also holding you accountable to manage your tendencies.

The paradox is that acknowledging your imperfections makes your strengths more credible. When you admit to struggling with certain aspects of leadership, your team is more likely to trust your competence in other areas. Selective vulnerability creates space for authentic strength.

Intrapersonal Competency: The Meta-Skill

Leadership development typically focuses on interpersonal skills: communication, influence, delegation. The Manager’s README process highlights a more fundamental capability: intrapersonal competency. Your ability to evolve yourself intentionally.

This meta-skill encompasses:

Self-awareness: Recognizing your patterns, triggers, and impact
Feedback receptivity: Taking in potentially uncomfortable information without defensiveness
Intentional adaptation: Making targeted changes to align actions with intentions
Progress monitoring: Checking whether changes are having the desired effect

The Manager’s README documents who you are and it also creates conditions to develop who you’re becoming. The gap between your written intentions and your lived behaviors is the productive tension that drives growth.

The Practice, Not the Product

The value of the Manager’s README is in how it evolves. A document created once and left untouched becomes a monument to aspirations never realized. The README should itself evolve as you do—updated not just with new preferences but with new awareness gained through feedback.

Some managers track how their README evolves, noting shifts based on feedback. It shows a commitment to growth.

The Invitation

The Manager’s README represents an invitation to a different kind of leadership, one defined not by certainty but by curiosity. It challenges the notion that leaders should have it all figured out, offering instead a model where figuring it out happens collaboratively and continually.

This practice won’t eliminate the gap between who you aspire to be and how you actually show up, but it will make that gap visible, discussable, and addressable. And perhaps this is the most powerful leadership stance of all: not “I know the way” but “I’m on the way, and I welcome your help in getting there.”

Your README says who you think you are. Their annotations say who you really are. Which version is more accurate?

Embracing Chaos: A Leadership Evolution

In my previous articles, I explored management as craft—an artisan’s practice requiring a deep understanding of human nature, a sharp eye for patterns, and the development of one’s own voice. I then turned to the poetic dimensions of leadership, contrasting the mechanical precision of management with leadership’s fluid adaptability.

Now, I find myself drawn to something even more fundamental: if management is craft and leadership is poetry, then the reality we navigate is not fixed or orderly. Perhaps, at its core, it is chaotic. But what if chaos is not an external force to resist, but something intrinsic to leadership itself? What if the challenge is not to impose order, but to learn how to live—and lead—within uncertainty? In this essay, I explore how embracing, rather than resisting, chaos might transform our approach to leadership.

Those moments when our familiar approaches fall short—when neither the structured steps of management nor the fluid movements of leadership seem quite enough—reveal something fundamental about our relationship with uncertainty. We often view chaos as something to avoid, control, and eradicate. In our management and leadership frameworks, chaos is seen as an external threat—something disruptive, a force we must master to maintain stability and order.

What if, instead of an external force to subdue, chaos is intrinsic to our very nature? In this light, leadership is not simply about managing external chaos, it is also about grappling with our internal chaos—the uncertainties, contradictions, and complexities that define the human experience.

There’s an ancient insight that suggests the order we crave might be nothing more than an illusion—a construct we impose to make sense of a world that is, at its core, deeply chaotic. This is where the concept of the “wild God” can be useful.

In some traditions, the wild God represents the uncontrollable forces of nature as well as the raw, untamed parts of ourselves—those elements that break free from our control and remind us that we are not as neat and orderly as we would like to believe.

If we allow ourselves to see chaos as an essential part of life, our understanding of leadership shifts. We begin to see that the chaos we fear in the world is not so different from the chaos within us. It is not something “out there” to be mastered; it is a reflection of our own internal unpredictability, vulnerability, and potential for disruption.

This realization reframes leadership. Rather than a constant battle to impose order on the world, leadership becomes about acknowledging the chaos—within and without—and learning how to live with it. To embrace chaos is to acknowledge the inherent messiness of life and leadership. In this, we find strength—the strength to navigate uncertainty, the resilience to thrive within disorder, and the clarity that emerges when we stop trying to force everything into a predetermined pattern.

When we recognize that chaos is not a flaw to be fixed but a fundamental reality to be embraced, we see management and leadership as a dynamic dance of awareness and adaptation. The order we seek may always be elusive, but in its place, we find something more profound: a deeper understanding of ourselves and the systems we lead. Perhaps this understanding begins with seeing people not as pieces to be moved, but as sources of energy to be understood.

Go HERE for more Essays.

Managing in Prose, Leading in Poetry: A Shift in Perspective

Even in our most pragmatic moments, something elusive tugs at the edges of management. We create schedules, set metrics, establish procedures—all necessary elements of organizational life. Yet in the spaces between these structured elements, we sense something more fluid, less containable.

This tension shows up in our language: we speak of management as something mechanical—an engine pushing forward in a predetermined direction, fueled by clear objectives, hard facts, and deadlines. The manager, like the operator of an engine, exerts control over the process, ensuring that things run efficiently and according to plan. In this view, managing is often described in prose—straightforward, functional, and to the point.

But what if we reframed this? What if we began to see leadership as something more poetic—a sail catching the wind, letting the currents of the moment shape our path rather than forcing an outcome through sheer willpower? Leadership, in this sense, becomes more about flow and responsiveness than control and direction. Instead of controlling, we guide. Instead of dictating, we harness.

Imagine, for a moment, seeing the people in your organization as the wind. They bring energy, motion, and power—but they are not entirely predictable. You cannot control the wind, but you can learn to harness it. This raises an essential question: How do we discern when to push forward with steady effort and when to let the current carry us? What happens when the winds of a team’s energy blow in unexpected directions?

The metaphor is simple: An engine pushes forward, controlled by its operator; a sail catches the wind, responding to forces outside of our control. Managing fuels the engine with resources and intentions, pushing it forward with determination and precision. But leadership, like a sail, requires a different kind of wisdom: a willingness to surrender a bit of control, to work with the unpredictable elements of human nature, to read the shifting winds and adjust our course as necessary.

In this model, management doesn’t lose its value—it simply evolves. The prose of management, with its structure, deadlines, and frameworks, remains essential. It ensures stability and creates the conditions for progress. But leadership, like poetry, calls us to think beyond the mechanical. It invites us into the realm of possibility, emotion, and instinct. It asks us to listen deeply to the voices within our teams, to feel into the currents that are already there, and to find ways to move with them rather than against them.

To manage in poetry is not to abandon logic or structure—it is to invite something more fluid into our practice. It is to learn the art of collaboration with the unpredictable forces of human potential, to steer not by brute force but by understanding, respect, and adaptability.

And yet, there are moments when even this dance feels insufficient—when the currents shift in ways we never anticipated, or when the wind dies altogether. What then? Perhaps this is the true invitation of leadership: to accept that there will be times of stillness, turbulence, or storms. The challenge lies not in controlling these forces but in navigating them with curiosity, humility, and a willingness to learn as we go.

Go HERE for more Essays.

Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash

Those Who Are Quiet

You sit in meetings. While others talk, you listen. When you speak, what you say cuts through distraction and confusion. You notice things: voices that waver, hands that tighten, and eyes that glance away.

In discussions, you sit back and observe. You let understanding settle while others rush to speak.

When trouble comes, you don’t act until you know what’s needed. Under pressure, you stay with each moment until it becomes clear.

Your leadership gives others space to think for themselves. In your meetings, silence isn’t empty—it allows clarity to surface. You see strength in careful thought and sharp observation.

When you lead projects, patience becomes part of the process. Your teams learn the value of thoughtful pauses. You guide them gently, letting solutions emerge naturally.

When panic fills a room, you stay steady. While urgency demands quick fixes, you focus on understanding what’s wrong. Your calm steadies others when they falter.

When you speak—and you do—people listen. Your words carry weight because they’re thoughtful. You say what matters without wasting words.

Your strength is quiet, but it inspires. You help others find their clarity and confidence.

In a world where noise drowns out thought, your patience reveals what’s important. You show how waiting uncovers truth.

In hard times, people turn to you for your steadiness. You bring a quiet strength to a loud world.

I see you. I celebrate you. I honor what you bring.

Go HERE for more Essays.

Can we manage without managers?

In response to an article in The Economist about the need for middle managers, Michele Zanini writes:

Just because the ladder has fewer rungs doesn’t mean leadership opportunities are scarce-quite the opposite. By giving people the ability to gain influence (and compensation) based on accomplishment as opposed to advancement, an organization ends up with more, not fewer leaders. And these leaders don’t have to devote their talents and energy to politicking or sabotaging each other in zero-sum promotion battles.

The accomplishment-advancement distinction is worth exploring, but I don’t share Michele’s conclusion: the organization will likely end up with more spirit of initiative, not necessarily more “leaders”.

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Highlighting content from my September 2021 newsletter.

Reading notes (2021, week 23): On pluralities of people, mindsets of a leader, and why it pays to notice emotions in the workplace

Pluralities of people come in three kinds

I read this on Alan Jacobs’ blog:

One of the most fundamental ideas that Auden held in the 1950s — the period of his career that I’m working on right now — was that “pluralities” of people come in three kinds. From an essay called “Nature, History, and Poetry” (published in Thought in 1950), with bold type added by me:

“A crowd consists of n members where n > 1, whose sole characteristic in common is togetherness. A crowd loves neither itself nor anything other than itself. It can only be counted; its existence is chimerical.”
“A society consists of x members, i.e. a certain finite number, united in a specific manner into a whole with a characteristic mode of behavior which is different from the behavior of its several members in isolation (e.g. a molecule of water or a string quartet). A society has a definite size, a specific structure and an actual existence.”
“A community consists of n members, all of them rational beings united by a common love for something other than themselves.”

The tragedy of social media is this: Each given social-media platform consists of a crowd pretending to be either a society or a community.

To which I add – The tragedy of the modern corporation is this: Each given company consists of a society pretending to be a community (“here at ABC Inc., we’re a family“).

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source: Alan Jacobs, pluralities (accessed 210601)

Six mindsets of a leader

Transcender: Seeks benefits for the whole ecosystem
Builder: Zeroes in on building the organization
Dynamo: Focuses on clear strategy or set of goals
Chameleon: Adapts to surroundings and will serve anyone
Egoist: Tries to maximize benefit to himself or herself
Sociopath: Serves no one and believes the rules don’t apply

Questions: Which one are you? Which one is your manager?

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source: Modesto A. Maidique and Nathan J. Hiller, “The Mindsets of a Leader” in MIT Sloan Management Review (accessed 210601)

Why it pays to notice emotions in the workplace

Emotional acknowledgment is the simple act of noticing a nonverbal emotional cue — like a frown or grin — and mentioning it. This mention can be a question or a statement such as “You look upset,” or “You seem excited.” (…) this small act can have a powerful effect because it is read as a sign of genuine intentions.

in a work environment, a supervisor who shows concern for others’ emotional state is signaling a willingness to get involved in a potentially messy situation. “A leader could very easily see someone in distress and choose to ignore it,” Yu says. “But only a leader who truly is benevolent and cares about employees would risk getting involved by voluntarily acknowledging the distressed employee. Thus, employees might take this as a signal that this leader is someone who can be trusted with their well-being.”

in research across six studies, (…) participants reported higher levels of trust in people who engaged in emotional acknowledgment than those who did not.

This result aligned with the theory

Asking someone who seems unhappy about their emotional state engenders higher levels of trust because it is riskier and involves a greater investment of attention, time, and effort than asking someone who seems happy.

There was, in addition, an unexpected finding:

acknowledging an employee’s emotional state is more powerful than only acknowledging the situation that produced the emotions. “It turns out that saying something like, ‘You looked upset after that meeting. How are you feeling about it?’ lands better than saying something like, ‘It looked like the meeting went poorly. How are you thinking about it?’ Yu explains.
“People trust the person who acknowledges the emotion directly more than the person who acknowledges the situation. There’s just something special and unique about emotions — they are really core to a person’s inner experience and sense of self. So when we acknowledge emotions, we humanize and validate the person being acknowledged.”

And another unexpected finding: you don’t even have to get it right

the trust-building effect of emotional acknowledgment is not always dependent on correctly interpreting emotions, particularly when positive feelings are misread.

But emotional support is not part of my formal job expectations as a manager!

If leaders want to signal care and build trust, they need to meet people where they are. The worst thing leaders can do when employees are feeling badly is to do nothing. Our research suggests one way to do that is by proactively engaging in emotional acknowledgment because it grants employees the space and license to share their emotions.

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The paper: Alisa Yu, Justin M. Berg, Julian J. Zlatev, “Emotional acknowledgment: How verbalizing others’ emotions fosters interpersonal trust”, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Volume 164, 2021, Pages 116-135. The report: Theodore Kinni, “All the Feels: Why It Pays to Notice Emotions in the Workplace”, Insights, Stanford Business, May 13, 2021.

One more time: How do I lead by example?

You don’t. You never do.

Leading by example is based on a faulty assumption: that people will see only the behavior you want them to see and follow only the behavior you want them to follow.

News flash: the people who work with you see everything.

They see not only what you want them to see but they also see what you don’t want them to see.

They see not only what you do but they also see what you don’t do and what you choose not to do.

They see what you choose to do or not to do and to whom.

They see what you choose to do or not to do and for whom.

As a matter of fact, the more time they spend with you, the more clearly you reveal yourself to them. The longer they observe you, the less what you say matters. What matters more are your actions – and specifically how consistent they are over time.

They see when and how often you tell them what to do.

They see when and how often you ask for their opinion.

They see when and how often you admit not knowing something.

They see when and how often you admit you made a mistake.

They see when and how often you apologize… and when and how often you apologize in public when you offended in public.

They see when, how often, and how well you listen.

They see when and how often you praise in public. And how specific your praise is: not the anemic “good job!” but rather a vigorous acknowledgment of what exactly a team member does well and how that contributes to the good of the team.

In addition to being based on a faulty assumption, “leading by example” might also be caused by attribution bias (you believe that your behavior has caused theirs, that your “leading” has caused their “following”) or by buying into the narrative of the “heroic manager” (what I call the “Gandhi complex”). But that will have to wait for another post.

These are thoughts on the book I am writing. They were first delivered to readers of my free, monthly newsletter. It’s easy to subscribe… and unsubscribe.

[Update 2026: I followed this observation to its logical conclusion—and it led somewhere unexpected. See Abandon All Hope of Mattering.]

A genius is the one most like himself: Thelonious Monk’s tips for musicians

I’m a jazz fan, always have been. And I’m a Monk fan.

Monk created this list when a musician joined his band for a multiple-week gig.

I encourage the managers I work with to have a readme document for themselves and to have a structured, personal way of welcoming new members to their team. It also goes a long way for that welcoming to include peers.

In any case, here’s Monk’s list. What does yours look like?

Just because you’re not a drummer, doesn’t mean you don’t have to keep time.
Pat your foot & sing the melody in your head, when you play.
Stop playing all that bullshit, those weird notes, play the melody!
Make the drummer sound good.
Discrimination is important.
You’ve got to dig it to dig it, you dig?
All reet!
Always know… (monk [backwards])
It must be always night, otherwise they wouldn’t need the lights.
Let’s lift the band stand!!
I want to avoid the hecklers.
Don’t play the piano part, I’m playing that. Don’t listen to me. I’m supposed to be accompanying you!
The inside of the tune (the bridge) is the part that makes the outside sound good.
Don’t play everything (or every time); let some things go by. Some music just imagined.
What you don’t play can be more important than what you do.
Always leave them wanting more.
A note can be small as a pin or as big as the world, it depends on your imagination.
Stay in shape! Sometimes a musician waits for a gig, & when it comes, he’s out of shape & can’t make it.
When you’re swinging, swing some more!
(What should we wear tonight?) Sharp as possible!
Don’t sound anybody for a gig, just be on the scene.
These pieces were written so as to have something to play, & to get cats interested enough to come to rehearsal.
You’ve got it! If you don’t want to play, tell a joke or dance, but in any case, you got it! (to a drummer who didn’t want to solo).
Whatever you think can’t be done, somebody will come along & do it. A genius is the one most like himself.
They tried to get me to hate white people, but someone would always come along & spoil it.

Source: Open culture

On the difference between management and leadership

Managing is getting something done, stabilizing existing processes, controlling and correcting deviations to ensure quality and reliability.

Leadership is about doing something new or better, whether a simple process improvement or a transformation. It is more about reframing for improvement. It likely calls upon people to learn new skills and shift beliefs.

Our tendency to ascribe leadership to individuals that hold a formal entitlement as head of a team, group, or function is unhelpful when distinguishing management from leadership as activities with different purposes.

Leadership is not the property of a formal position, but rather an activity that occurs anywhere in the company. A person responsible for such a change is therefore in a leadership role irrespective of title.

source: “Culture shift with Ed and Peter Schein” in Dialogue. Also a Twitter thread.

Nicholas Winton – the power of good

Sir Nicholas George Winton is a British humanitarian who organised the rescue of 669 mostly Jewish children from German-occupied Czechoslovakia on the eve of the Second World War. Winton found homes for them and arranged for their safe passage to Britain.

Winton kept his humanitarian exploits under wraps for many years until his wife Grete found a detailed scrapbook in the attic in 1988. The scrapbook contained lists of the children, including their parents’ names, and the names and addresses of the families that took them in.

After sending letters to these addresses, 80 of “Winton’s children” were found in Britain. The world found out about Winton’s work in 1988 during an episode of the BBC television programme That’s Life! when Winton was invited to be an audience member.

You can read the whole story here.