The creative world and the software programming world share more traits with each other than maybe either group would like to think (although comparing creatives to geeks will probably upset more creatives than the other way around). One of the things that comes out of this is a lot of "push" influence that can ultimately lead to management challenges.
"Push" influence falls into one of two general categories – assertion and logical argument. Assertion is the straight-forward, tell them what you want them to do; "Get out!" suffices when the building is burning, but relying only assertion can quite quickly lead to resentment amongst those being "influenced".
Logical argument is what most of us are schooled to do from an early age – assert your case with the backing of facts and figures. It's the basis of the education, legal and scientific worlds, and very, very seductive… but as a method to exert influence over another person directly, it's can be fairly ineffectual. In the education, legal and scientific worlds, it is rare to find two people using logical argument to successfully influence each other (usually they are trying to influence a third party – the judge and jury, the body of scientific opinion, and so on), and pointless arguments are extremely common in the management of academia.
In fields where style or aesthetic are so important (the design world, and, to a great extent the software development world) logical argument and assertion dominate where increased responsibility is seen as a crucial part of seniority. Being told what to do by your superior, and trying to logically argue to superiors and peers, when (underlying it all) taste and style are things where logic doesn't apply can lead to resentful juniors and control-obsessed seniors. Underlying all of this is that our perception of whether something has elegance or not depends partly on taste, and partly on whether we believe in the judgement of the person proposing.
mmitII 