Leadership
I’ve recently heard a very senior technical leader say that leaders are born that way, and it is not something that can be taught or practiced.
I held this belief for many years, and it suppressed my career aspirations, until I seriously started reading about the topic, and realized the opposite is also true.
There are so many topics to learn, practice and improve on, that it’s impossible to be born with all that knowledge and experience.
A partial list includes: ensuring results and retention, hiring, growing others, coaching, giving feedback, generating trust, maintaining KPIs and team health and strategic planning.
On top of the functional knowledge required, e.g. software engineering, a manager would be more effective having knowledge and practice with employee motivation, disagree and commit, meritocracy, speaking last, instilling psychological safety and leading by example.
Here is some heavyweight support of this claim:
Leaders aren’t born. They’re made. — the motto of “Coaching for Leaders” podcast
Leadership is done daily, not in a day — Maxwell
Back to the axiom that some are natural born leaders — some individuals may find certain types of tasks more natural, like public speaking or rallying people, while other types of tasks might be more difficult for them, like developing trust or giving positive and constructive feedback.
There are various ways to get to results, and I will write in the future about DiSC which explains it really well.
Even though many use the terms management and leadership interchangeably, there are differences, as can be seen in this very high level summary:
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t — you’re right” — Henry Ford
If you hesitate to make the transition to a managerial role, and indeed, it is a different profession and not a promotion, then I encourage you to learn about the topic and then try it out.
There is much more openness nowadays in case it doesn’t work out, to go back to an individual contributor role without it being seen as demotion or failure.
I will leave you with one last quote “Lead yourself before you can lead others” and with some great resources:
⚙️ indicates software leadership
Books
- The Manager’s Path ⚙️
- High Output Management
- Management 3.0
- Radical Candor
- Drive
- The One Minute Manager
- Five Dysfunctions of a Team
- The Effective Manager
- The Effective Hiring Manager
- Crucial Conversations
- Become an Effective Software Engineering Manager ⚙️
- Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager ⚙️
- Elastic Leadership ⚙️
- Start with Why
- Turn the Ship Around
- Our Iceberg is Melting
- Team Topologies ⚙️
- The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
- An Elegant Puzzle ⚙️
- Thinking in Systems
- Radical Focus
- The Phoenix Project ⚙️
- The First 90 Days
- Accelerate ⚙️
- The Coaching Habit
- Peopleware
- The Mythical Man Month
