I think the university analogy is distracting from the real point. He's advocating a form of servant leadership, which is where the CEO/President/etc is perceived more like a steward than an autocrat.
If you've ever worked for someone who had a broad array of responsibility, was universally respected, displays humility, and available to help resolve problems, that's what Joel is talking about. A great professor tends to adopt this role -- which is probably where the university analogy came from.
The "catch" to this style is that you actually need to be respected, empathetic and humble. (Know-it-alls need not apply.) That usually comes with lots of experience.
I think this one of the cleverest things Spolsky has ever written, actually.
All the great managers I have had acted this way. None of the bad ones did.
In a healthy organization, you can get respect by avoiding the Dunning-Kreuger problem, giving people credit in public, and discussing problems in private. I don't know if you can learn empathy, but you can learn to pause before making decisions and thinking about what everyone wants out of a given situation.
Humility probably isn't necessary, but hubris has been a killer since before Golden Age Greece.
It was a great post, but I noticed that many folks here weren't getting it. It sounds cliche, but I knew alot about everything when I was an obnoxious 21 year old. Now as a grizzled 33 year old, I have a much better appreciation of what I don't know -- which I find empowering.
Perhaps humility (or the perception of it) is a "symptom" of being more secure in other areas.
Knowing what you don't know is empowering, for a while. And then you realize that you're mortal after all, and will never even know enough about all the things you're deeply interested in, let alone those many things that sounded interesting, but that you never explored.
It teaches you a lot of humility, but it doesn't feel that empowering. At least to me.
If you've ever worked for someone who had a broad array of responsibility, was universally respected, displays humility, and available to help resolve problems, that's what Joel is talking about. A great professor tends to adopt this role -- which is probably where the university analogy came from.
The "catch" to this style is that you actually need to be respected, empathetic and humble. (Know-it-alls need not apply.) That usually comes with lots of experience.