Should You Make the Leap to Engineering Leadership?
Some say that leaders are born, not made. I’ve always believed the opposite; leadership skills are experienced, learned, and honed over a lifetime. Just like engineers develop their programming and technical skills throughout their careers, the same is required for developing the skills to be a leader.
In my early twenties, I experienced what a lot of others do at that time: I struggled to figure out the right direction for my career. I knew that I liked programming, but I didn’t know where that could lead.
Over the years, I worked on engineering teams where my managers trusted me to own responsibilities. From talking with stakeholders to responding to customers, I had a lot of practice communicating difficult concepts and aligning teams to focus on a single objective. These skills, developed over time, helped lead to where I am today at Wave.
If you’re considering a similar path to engineering leadership, read on to learn what you can expect along the way, how to recognize if the path is right for you, and tips to help you get where you want to go.
How an Individual Contributor Role Differs from a Leadership Position
Understanding if engineering leadership is the right move for your career starts by taking a closer look at the differences between individual contributor and leadership roles.
For instance, data from Gartner tells us that 45% of managers don’t feel confident in their ability to help their teams develop the skills they need to be successful. Yet, helping teams grow and achieve objectives within the department is a major part of stepping into a leadership role.
Knowing the expectations that you’ll face and how they’ll differ from previous engineering roles will set you up for success as a leader.
Focusing on the Bigger Picture
One aspect of leading a team that may seem obvious in hindsight is the change in overall responsibility. Individual contributors are responsible for writing and shipping code, pull requests, code reviews, and testing.
As a manager, you wouldn’t be responsible for personal productivity; instead, you would be responsible for your colleagues, making sure they have what they need to perform their tasks. Your work would also extend to making sure that your team’s work is contributing to the larger business goals of the company. New team leads can feel uncomfortable backing away from the day-to-day team tasks and focusing on the bigger picture.
Over the years, I’ve seen team leads struggle to feel productive when they look at how little code they’ve written or how long they’ve spent in meetings during the typical workday. However, as a team lead, that’s no longer the measure of success.
When I took on my first managerial role, I had so many questions about leading my team: What’s the best way for me to conduct 1-on-1 meetings? How do I help team members develop their careers? How do I keep the team motivated? How do I interact with product managers, and how can we work together to make the team more efficient? Discovering and implementing the answers to these questions, over time, became the new measure of success.
Helping Team Members Realize Their Potential
Over my career, I’ve been lucky to work with managers who were also advocates. They saw what I brought to the table and advocated for me to have opportunities to make an impact. They also trusted me with growth opportunities that I was sometimes afraid to take on.
At Wave, I have the opportunity to be an advocate for members of the engineering teams and help them see their potential, giving them opportunities to grow and bringing out the best in them. That’s a big part of the culture at Wave — empowering each other to do our best work. It’s an ability that every manager needs, but one that some struggle to achieve.
As the report from Gartner points out, the managers they surveyed only spent 9% of their time coaching their direct reports. In reality, coaching should make up a much larger part of a leader’s work. At Wave, new engineering managers have access to resources such as a support group as they figure out how to take on this new focus with their work.
Deciding if a Leadership Role is Right for You
If the big picture focus of an engineering leader sounds like a fit for your interests, consider these next steps to get a better idea of how you would perform as a leader.
Raise Your Hand
In my last article on the three pillars of engineering leadership, I mentioned that engineers at Wave have the option to choose if they want to pursue a leadership or mastery track.
If you’re interested in a management opportunity at Wave or another company, the best way to start preparing is to raise your hand when opportunities come your way. Even if a project sounds difficult or complex, trying your hand at it will be a great way to develop project management skills and gain real-world insight into whether management roles are a fit for you.
Another way to raise your hand is to accept opportunities to mentor and coach less experienced team members or interns. This gives you a chance to practice your people development skills and figure out if that aspect of leadership suits you.
Don’t Be Afraid to Change Course
Even though there are two engineering tracks at Wave, I always like to point out that the decision of one track over the other isn’t set in stone. Team members have the opportunity to experiment. If an engineer chooses the leadership track, leads a small team, and decides it’s not a good fit for them, they can always choose the other track. My advice for engineers at Wave and beyond is to take opportunities, see where they lead, and start again from a new direction if it’s not the right fit.
If you decide to try a leadership opportunity in your career, know that it’s OK to make mistakes or even fail. You won’t be perfect the first time you lead a project or a team. In the end, though, you’ll learn something new, and you’ll have a team to support you and give you feedback as you grow.
5 Tips for Succeeding in Your First Leadership Role
If you decide that a leadership opportunity is the best next step for your career, then don’t let anything hold you back. Follow these five tips to thrive in a leadership position.
1. Pick a Company Where You Can Have Ownership
You may think that engineering is the role in the company that enacts the vision of others, but at the right company, that won’t be the case. As a leader in engineering, you should get to help drive innovation and influence decision-making.
When you’re looking for the right company to pursue leadership, find a company that has a track record of supporting the growth of engineering leaders. Look for a role where you can work with cross-functional stakeholders to build a better product, understand user behaviour to solve their problems, and interact with business metrics to find and share insights. Find a company that doesn’t just want order takers, but seeks out true leaders.
2. Continuously Seek out Learning Opportunities
Once you land in a leadership position, keep learning what you can to be a better support system for your team. When I first became a manager, I spent a lot of time reading books about leadership and teamwork so I could learn how to keep people motivated and interested in the work they did. I also sought out coaching programs, workshops, and conferences. The key for me was to always keep learning, and that’s the advice I pass along to new managers as well.
3. Connect with Others
When you land in a leadership position, you might feel pressure to impress others and pretend that everything is running smoothly, even when you struggle. Often, that pressure is self-imposed. Every manager has a manager, and part of your manager’s job will be to support you just as you support your team. Don’t be afraid to let them know when you need help.
There will be other opportunities to connect with folks on and outside of your team as well. At Wave, we have a program called Wavers Unleashed which acts as a company-wide skill-sharing opportunity. We also have a skills-based mentoring group for engineers. If someone wants to learn a specific skill, like one of our mobile engineers wanting to learn Kafka, they can sign up for a mentor who will share their knowledge with them.
Always keep your eyes open for opportunities to connect with, and learn from, those around you.
4. Don’t Micromanage
Micromanaging can be an easy trap for a new manager to fall into, especially when the manager isn’t used to leaving the day-to-day tasks in the hands of other teammates.
There are two keys to avoiding micromanaging. The first is to clearly define the tasks and outcomes you need your team to accomplish and to make sure they have everything they need to complete them. Once you’ve given your team the tools and frameworks they need to complete the work, the second key part is to trust them.
If you notice that your team is routinely missing the mark with certain tasks, micromanagement still isn’t the answer. Instead, you can bring on more specialized teammates to fill the skills gap or provide training to the teammates you have.
5. Manage for Individual Needs
While it’s important to avoid micromanaging, some new managers can hit the opposite spectrum of management which can also hurt the team — being too hands-off.
While this might be the ideal management style for more experienced members of your team, it won’t work for everyone. Junior team members whose confidence and competence doesn’t match more experienced teammates can require more of your attention and more guidance on their projects. Adapt your leadership style to fit the person, and find out what they need from you to be successful.
Choosing the Path to Leadership
The only person who will be able to tell you if an engineering leadership role is right for you is you. Understanding the responsibilities of an engineering leader can help you make the decision, but ultimately, it’s a personal choice that you can take your time figuring out.
If you decide that you want to pursue a leadership role, start by raising your hand and taking opportunities as they come. Don’t be afraid to learn as you go, and take the support of others when it’s offered.
If you want to keep learning about the path to engineering leadership, stay tuned for my next post on balancing leadership skills with technical skills. Also, you can find my post on the three pillars of engineering leadership here on Medium if you missed it.
