From Transparent Leadership Beats Servant Leadership, by Chris at Entropic Thoughts:

In my book, a good leader

coaches people,
connects people,
[. . .]
creates direct links between supply and demand (instead of deliberately making themselves a middle man),
[. . .]
generally makes themselves redundant.

I really related with many of the points in this post. Coincidentally, I had just recently come to some similar conclusions at my own workplace, too.

Effective leaders enable people to solve problems and make progress on their own, so the presence of the best leaders will probably be hard to notice.

I am reminded of a quote from Lao-Tzu (or at least one version of its translation) that has stuck in my mind:

A leader is best when people barely know he exists. When his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: We did it ourselves.

I would often place myself as a middle man in communications deliberately, especially when I was invested in the communication and the other parties involved were also busy doing other things at the same time. The intent was that I could steer the conversation to an efficient consensus, by framing the discussions and paraphrasing or summarizing (what I thought to be) the important points.

In reality though, I was often doing more harm than good.

By placing myself in the middle of communications, I make myself a bottleneck. If I was busy doing something else, I might delay responses, and it was often faster to just have the two people talk to each other directly.

And when I put information through my own filter of what I felt was important or not, It’s too easy to get the nuance wrong. Even if things seemed to work out at the time, small differences in understanding can compound over time and turn into a bigger problem in the future. In these cases too, I think now that it’s more effective to just have everyone speak to each other directly.

Of course, not everyone can be talking to everyone else all the time, and determining how much is too much might be an area where my input could help. But in general, I’m trying very hard not to speak for other people, and am trying instead to be someone who can connect people to each other quickly and efficiently.

I use an IQUNIX Magi65 keyboard at home, and absolutely love it. I didn’t get the Pro version, as I don’t really need a dial or media keys, and I preferred the smaller size anyways. The only real criticism I noticed in reviews was that the keyboard is pretty heavy, but this turned out to be a good thing for me. I don’t want to carry the thing around with me, and I love the solidity as I type. The typing experience is fantastic.

I wanted a nice keyboard at work, too, and felt weird about buying 2 of the same keyboard. I figured this was a good opportunity to try something else, so I got the NuPhy Air75 V3 for the office. This was also well-reviewed, and is quite a bit lighter. It seems like people who want low-profile mechanical keyboards also value portability, which makes sense.

I’ve been giving it a fair chance, but I have to admit that I really don’t like it very much. For lack of a better vocabulary, the keys just feel too light. I find myself mistyping a lot for some reason, and I think it has to do with the keys being pressed very easily without a lot of bounce-back. Maybe I just have to learn to be gentler with my typing? I’m not sure, but it’s been a while and I still haven’t gotten used to it.

Then, I came across the Toucan, which is just absolutely gorgeous. I had never really considered a split keyboard, but I fell in love with this one.

I still haven’t bought one. I’m worried about losing so many keys, but this has definitely triggered an interest in split keyboards, and the Corne layout especially. I can’t justify getting this as a daily driver, or spending so much money on a side-toy, but I’m been browsing used markets for a cheap entry model. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll find The One and dive off the deep end.

So what about my work keyboard? I might just get another Magi65, because it is by far my favorite typing experience.