Have any of you been put in a leadership role at work?

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For most of my career, I worked alone and was able to focus on my interests (databases, programming, etc.) and always did well. Due to this, I was able to build a very wide skillset that made me a good fit for a leadership role over a larger group. I also tend to be easy to get along with, other people like me, and my supervisor has a lot of confidence in me.

These days I find myself in meetings all the time, and I have lots of various projects thrown at me that I have to organize and assign work to others. I don't get to pursue my interests anymore, I don't get to be alone anymore (people are always in my office), and I feel like I can never get anything done (I have to work on one thing at a time... having a "list" is overwhelming for me).

I think that I have made a big mistake. The money is good but I almost would rather take a paycut and be demoted just so I can go back to being happy. On one hand, it's nice to get to have a bigger role in the group and make higher-level decisions about what we do. I've been able to fix MANY things that I disagreed with or felt were pointless. On the other hand, I miss being able to focus on a single thing at a time and toil away in my office without anyone bothering me.

Have any of you been in this situation? What did you do about it? I don't feel like I can go to my boss and tell him that I am miserable with what I'm doing.... I think he may change his view of me and see me as a quitter. It seems like it would hurt more than it would help. I don't know what to do.

I doubt this will help any,
I am in construction, I MUCH rather work alone,
thats one of the reasons why I am in construction in the first place.
My boss(s) every so often give me a crew of 4-8 people to handle,
much of the time if the workers get lazy or argumentative I give them petty work
and go do the work I at first gave them my self, I do not like arguing with them,
I just want to get the work done and I want quality work.

I have been trained for leadership, and have had many such positions during my working life, however ... once the leadership gets to a political rather than a technical level, forget it.

Politicians (at any level) have a hard decision to make ... whether to be a liar or a hypocrite. As an Aspie I can't do either, and don't fit in any more.

Like Aspergian Mutant, I would much rather be hands on, with limited help, and just do a good job myself.

I am officially retired now and am only taking part-time, fun jobs where I have control over my duties, but in my previous work life I ended up "in charge" way more often than I liked. I am good at organizing tasks, even ok with assigning them out, but am miserable when talking to the employees about their work performance. I explained this over and over to my boss. I wonder about my former boss's approach--he seemed to be pretty aspie-like himself, trying to find people in his group who could take over the aspects of his job that he didn't feel comfortable doing. This was in a very aspie-friendly workplace where I observed that it might be hard to find enough folks with the desire and skills to lead, who had the technical know-how to understand the issues and the sensitivity to know how to deal with their diverse employees (not just aspies, but many foreign scientists/engineers). Technical management is notoriously fraught with pitfalls, and I was constantly amused at the situations that grew out of tiny misunderstandings between people on the job.

Yep.
I'm so diligent (anal) that I got picked for a team lead position, and I don't seem to be able to do the "diplomatic constructive criticism" thing. People really hate me, lol. I blurted out today, when reviewing someone's outbound letter - "hey Taisha, you spelled your name wrong" (she did) and everyone laughed and then I realized I'd basically called her stupid, which isn't what I had intended.

I don't like the responsbility of dealing with "customers" I see every day. Employees under me have actually told me they should "knock" me "upside the head" for things I've said (that one got moved to a different seat, used to sit next to me.)
But, one of the delightful things about any form of management, I've found out is, there's really no turning back, not within the same company. About 6 months ago, I begged for my old job back, and my request was declined. So, I guess someone thinks I'm doing okay.

A few years ago I was promoted to a huge leadership role at my company that I should never have taken. The company I work for does over $100 million of business each year, and I was one of 5 sales managers. I was overwhelmed to say the least, also unable.

I'm glad I had the opportunity, and I did learn A LOT about what exactly our company does, how we do it, and about construction and bidding. Thankfully, I was moved back to my position as a Designer after one long and gruelling year as a Sales Manager. I hated every minute of having that kind of responcibility.

I didn't know what AS was until earlier this month. If I had known that what I had was so seriously imparing to that kind of job (or if I had known that I had anything at all), rather than believing that I just needed to 'step up' and learn how to handle it, I would never have pursued the promotion. A lot of my AS traits are severely problematic to this type of work.

The money was great, but I was soooooo happy to take the pay cut to go back to engineering/designing.

I regularly get dinged on my reviews for "Lacks Diplomacy Skills," yet my bosses assure me that to replace me would require a great deal of time and expense to replace somone so skilled and experienced, and blah blah blah ...

My subordinates keep trying to set me up for an embarrassing failure, but my obsessive record-keeping has foiled their insubordinate activities every time (I still have emails from eight years ago on two external hard drives), due to the fact that I can always find a document that states exactly why I follow certain procedures and not others.

Competitors and vendors have tried to use me as their patsie to gain access to proprietary information, but my cynical nature always leads me to notify the higher-ups of these activities (we've dropped a few vendors as a result).

I hate having to play political games just to keep my job, but having experienced homelessness keeps me in the games for the sake of receiving a regular paycheck.

I guess it's all a matter of setting the right priorities.

I found it easier to talk to the group as a whole than to individuals. When speaking to the group, I could scan from person to person without spending too much time looking at one person.

I am a self confessed NT. I was put into a position of leadership at my company. I think that many people, NT's and AS's alike, being in a position of managing others is very different than doing your own job. For myself, I love working in team member position versus in the manager position. Personally, I had a really hard time dealing with the politics involved. I have found that I have some leadership abilities, but I do much better when I am assisting the one in charge, taking a leadership by example approach rather than being formally in charge. I would much rather train/coach that be the final go-to person, unless it has to do with smaller projects.