The case
Whenever you see the role description for a lead Engineer, you will often find responsibilities such as "implement the best practices", "perform code reviews", "participate in standups"; While I agree that those tasks are part of the daily routine for any Lead Engineer they are far from being responsibilities of a True Leader
Light the spark
The most important task of a Leader is to light the spark within his team to not only follow his orders or assignments but to lead by themselves.
Empower your team to make the big decisions without your direct input in each step, a decentralized team can grow horizontally as any well-architected framework should.
Task Oriented vs Growth Oriented
A good task-completion, project-oriented approach will only get your company so far, that is "Ok" when you don't want to grow. A well-distributed capable team of leaders will make it possible to explore areas you've never thought of, take on impossibles challenges for just one thinking head, and above all your company will be able to take on more projects.
What to do?
To accomplish that you must:
- Push your team to communicate their ideas to you, to the project manager, to his teammates.
- Be always open for debate
- Let them take control of pushing their changes to production
- Help them to develop a system thinking outside of their localhost
- Encourage the team to be critical
- Let them know that you are not always right
- Provide clear, honest, and individual feedback for each.
Not every senior wants to be a leader
The desire to command must come from within, is not something that you could impose as any other Jira item, not every senior wants to be a leader.
Is your role to spot the signs "The proactive", "The new guy's coach" "The go-to", "The one who says I want" is no use trying to push the technical developer who only cares about the Big O to lead, your task is to inspire and provide guidance when required.
Two Pizza
Building leaders is the only way a two pizza team can become a large enterprise.
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