What Arthur Jen, CTO of Magic, Learned from Engineering Leadership Coaching
Over the past few years, Arthur Jen, CTO of Magic has met weekly with his engineering leadership coach, Andy Scheff, for help along his journey of scaling the product and team at Magic. Magic is a high-growth authentication startup on the blockchain, with the vision of becoming the passport of the internet. In each coaching session, Andy blends his experience leading Dropbox’s security team with his own coaching and engineering leadership methodologies to help Arthur grow into a strong leader and create a positive engineering culture at Magic.
Arthur shared how working with Andy has helped him over the past few years through the challenges of building Magic and leading an engineering team.
Arthur shared his top four learnings throughout the past two years of meeting with Andy:
Be 100% present with your team
The first learning Arthur shared, Andy didn’t explicitly teach him. Instead, Arthur learned over time through the feeling of being truly heard and feeling a sense of clarity after every session with Andy.
He learned how important it is for leaders to be 100% present with their team, 100% focused, and concentrated on the problems shared at the moment. When Arthur is completely present, he can see how his team feels like they are being heard, and how this inspires trust and confidence. He believes it’s one of the most effective ways to respect his team.
When I reflect on our sessions, Andy is always 100% percent concentrated on my questions and issues. I always have the same feeling after, I feel like I’m being heard and I feel like there’s always the next step for me to work towards.
Leadership is really about storytelling
Storytelling is a secret weapon for leaders when they want to drive autonomy and alignment across teams.
Arthur’s second most valuable learning from Andy is the importance of storytelling as an engineering leader. During their sessions, they created a visualization of how storytelling as a leader is like drawing on a canvas. Each member of his team is painting on different parts of a canvas and it’s up to him as a leader to connect all of the dots through storytelling. He motivates each member of the team by communicating the vision of finishing the painting. It’s incredibly important to understand what you’re trying to achieve as a company and then work backward to create a story around that, in order to drive autonomy and alignment in your team.
Once you understand what objectives you want to achieve, you can actually work backward. You let your team see how doing by those different things well, we’ll be able to reach our goals.
Arthur is currently hiring for key engineering positions to help meet the soaring demand for Magic. He often hires engineers who are more experienced than he is. Andy helps him think through how to give these individuals autonomy by defining the outcomes and providing them the space for them to be creative to achieve the company’s goals. He shared a quote with me from Steve Jobs: “It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.”
You need to communicate the outcome and what we want to achieve to give people a sense of purpose and create a story around that, and you’ll see the autonomy. By giving people the freedom and the space to actually run with it, they will contribute to the success of the company.
Give positive reinforcement to create a strong team culture
Arthur learned over the years how important it is as an engineering leader to create the company culture, values, and team dynamic you’ve always wanted to have. Something he learned from Andy was that if you see people on your team doing something well, help them recognize and celebrate that it’s really great work. By calling out positive behavior, you slowly create a culture where people will initiate these positive behaviors on their own.
Through teaching and delegating, you help your team grow into leaders
Arthur often feels overwhelmed with many responsibilities, and Andy has helped him work through this stress by thinking through frameworks to prioritize. Together they list out everything that Arthur does in a typical week. They then identify which tasks can be delegated to his team and which can be taught. Arthur initially thought that delegating would add too much onto people’s plates, but he’s learned that through delegating and teaching, he’s empowering his team with new responsibilities to help them grow as leaders.
Arthur shared how Andy is not only his engineering coach but has also become his good friend. Through his time with Andy, he’s built his confidence as an engineering leader and in turn, created a positive engineering culture at Magic.
You are not only getting a coach who helps you on your leadership journey but also a lifelong friend who can help you grow as a person.
If you’re interested in checking out careers at Magic, they are hiring — https://magic.link/careers. And if you’re curious about exploring coaching for yourself, check out https://bestpracticer.com/coaching, or feel free to reach out to us at hello@bestpracticer.com!
