3 Types of Leaders

2 min readApr 1, 2021

1) The Ops type
2) The Craftsman type
3) The Visionary

It is important for you deeply understand these types, as it becomes important to know with whom you are working or whom you want to select into your ORG.

The OPS type:

Excellent at: Growing teams, cross-team alignment, resolving conflict
Key Strength: Good Communicator, PPT type, Stakeholder management
Lacks at: Product insight and tech roadmap
Loves spending time with: Team members, peers & other OPS type leaders
Growth: Gets promoted on potential to manage OPS in big teams

If you’re an OPS type, hire really strong Craftsman & a Visionary or two. It’s okay that you aren’t as great as them at the core product or technology.
Your strength lies elsewhere.

The Craftsman:

Excellent at: Defining products & strategy
Key Strength: Product insight and technology roadmap
Lacks at: Dealing with large orgs culture
Loves spending time with: Team, Customers
Growth: Gets promoted on strenght to improve product

As a Craftsman, you know when it’s time to hand the project/product over to an OPS guy. It’s a success that you were able to help bring the product this far.

The Visionary:

Excellent at: Big picture thinking, inventor
Key Strength: Seeing what others can’t
Lacks at: People issues
Loves spending time with: Other visionaries, Customers
Growth: Can be “hard to manage” type with these pseudo/Fancy designations

If you’re a Visionary, you should be able to gain more Craftsman skills fairly easily and be humble with people. You’ll just need to be more patient with people and further develop your soft skills. Being an OPS type guy will be harder, but you can hire great Ops type guys to complement your skills.

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