When I was leading product at a prior job, one of the company's leaders gave me the feedback that I was not a good leader because the engineers liked me too much. The leader said that if I was doing my job properly, the engineers should be complaining about the pressure I was putting on them. For a little while, I tried changing my approach. But I soon realized that this was the path to damaging collaboration, breaking trust, and likely losing the innovation we depended on.
