#3 - Intentional Technical Leadership

Hola my friend!

How's your week been?

I hope you've been thinking about intentional technical leadership!

I've spent the week considering how I can improve my 1:1s and I found an interesting article on making them better. It's sometimes hard to get your team members to open up so it's good to learn more techniques to help.

Here are my interesting finds for us intentional technical leaders for this week. 👇🏻

🔖 Interesting Reading

Individuals matter

This is long but definitely worth reading. I really hate it when companies refer to people as "resources" and think you can move them around the company without thinking.

People on your team are individuals and shouldn't be treated as machines.

9 Challenges of Engineering Managers

Some thought provoking points are made in this article on the challenges of Engineering Managers. From my own experience, I'm not convinced by the Spotify squad model it mentions in team culture, but building a team culture is definitely something I agree with. There are some useful ideas you can bring into your own teams here.

How to get the most out of your 1:1s

I ❤️ my 1:1s. They are genuinely the best meeting I have each week or fortnight. I love helping my team to grow in their role and to help them to move in the right direction for their careers.

I'm always trying to make my 1:1s better so this can help us all with some strategies for making them great!

I have someone leaving my team next week and I'm definitely going to miss that 1:1. 😭

Setting a vision, mission, and strategy for your team

I'll admit that I don't have much experience of setting explicit visions and missions for my teams but I do wonder whether I could work with them to try to. Here are some great insights from Addy Osmani, an Engineering Manager at Google. He suggests considering that you’re taking your team on a trip and your vision is the final destination.

Do teams need a vision and mission?

What do you do?

I'd love to hear from you if they work for you and your team.

🎧 Great Listening

Are You a Micromanager or a Coach? Why Leaders Should Avoid Giving Advice and What To Do Instead (with Dr. Julia Milner, Leadership Professor at EDHEC Business School)

This is an interesting podcast episode from the Super Managers podcast. Some great advice for listening to your team and some counter-intuitive thoughts on not giving advice to your team members.

📺 Worth Watching

Building Inclusive Workplaces | The Grow Remote Show Episode 3

I really care about building inclusive teams and workplaces and this video shares some thoughts about safe remote working.

I've heard from lots of people about the positive benefits that the flexibility of remote working brings to people who may struggle to regularly get into an office environment.

Watch the video for some interesting discussion.

🌶️ Hot Take

Thread by @seldo

"In my career I have spent about 8 years self-employed, 9 working for other people, and 10 running companies, and from that experience I have concluded that what makes an effective manager is: they have to care about you."

This week's hot take is from Laurie Voss, a Data Analyst @ Netlify (who also co-founded npm).

I 100% agree that an effective manager has to care about their team members. I genuinely care that my each person on my teams are supported in their work, their growth in the company, their out-of-work worries, and their career as a whole. ❤️

Any thoughts? How do you support your team and their career growth? 🤔

I hope you enjoyed this week's selection of intentional technical leadership articles.

Hit reply and let me know what you liked or disliked.

Feel free to send me any interesting articles or podcasts you've found too. I love hearing from you!

Speak to you soon,
Marc

Engineering Manager @ Beacon

P.S. It's my birthday on 23rd April. If you've read this far then email me a birthday greeting! 😉