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General

Open Source Software: A Path to Building Leadership Skills

In traditional top-down employment structures, if a manager asks an employee to do something, there is an expectation that they will do what was asked. In the manager / employee relationship, the manager has quite a bit of power over their employees. The really great managers collaborate with their employees and lead with empathy, while less experienced and less competent managers rely on power dynamics to get employees to complete their work. In contrast, leadership in open source requires influence without power, which can help build skills in leading through collaboration, influence, and empathy to help people become truly great managers and leaders. I’ve been managing people within companies for 20+ years, and I’ve learned so much about how to be a better leader and manager through my work in open source.

A common pattern in open source is that a community member finds something to contribute and then contributes it, regardless of whether they are doing this as an individual or on behalf of a company. Those contributions are often followed by an interactive feedback process. A maintainer might review the contribution and request some changes, and the contributor will usually need to make some modifications before the contribution is accepted. In this case, the maintainer needs to be able to clearly communicate the request for modifications and use their influence (not power) to convince the contributor to keep working on the contribution until it can be completed. The contributor needs to collaborate with the maintainer and maybe even negotiate a solution that works for both of them. They both need to collaborate and use influence and collaboration, rather than power to find the best solution.

Another common pattern in open source is that there are activities that need to be accomplished, but the people involved in that part of the project don’t have the time or the skills to complete those activities, or they want to use those activities as a way to encourage newer contributors to get more involved. In this case, the people who want the work done will need to reach out to the community or to individuals and encourage others to contribute. This usually means convincing potential contributors of the value of these activities and using influence and negotiation skills to help people complete this work. Again, these are valuable managerial and leadership skills that can be learned and practiced by participating in open source projects. 

These skills can be developed even if you aren’t in a formal leadership position within a project. If you are a regular contributor, there is probably something you’re working on where you could use help from others. By getting others to help with this work, you can practice your leadership skills. I also encourage people to volunteer for leadership positions. There might be existing positions that need a leader, but you can also volunteer to lead something even when that leadership position doesn’t currently exist. You can volunteer to lead a user group, facilitate a meeting, start a podcast, manage a project, or anything else you can think of that might need doing. For those of you working within OSPOs, you can encourage your employees to think about using their work in open source projects to help build leadership skills, in addition to just considering open source work as a way for someone to gain new technical skills.

I know that some maintainers don’t like to think of themselves as managers or leaders, but a lot of maintainer responsibilities are more managerial than just writing code, and they require leadership skills. Even if you don’t aspire to become a people manager as a career, the leadership skills learned in open source projects can improve your interactions with other people both personally and professionally.

Additional Resources:

If you want help with your open source strategy, I’m available for consulting engagements.

Photo by Brooke Lark on Unsplash