#35 - Intentional Technical Leadership

Hey my friend!

Happy Saturday! 🎉

Welcome to another issue of the Intentional Technical Leadership newsletter.

It's starting to get cold and wintery here in the UK and I've been wrapping up warm and reflecting on the past few weeks of change at work.

Uncertain times need strong leadership and I've been having some honest conversations with the team about how they're feeling. It's always good to check in with people and make sure they're ok.

I've also been thinking about how to manage up and how to make sure I'm doing the right things for myself, my team, and the business. I've been reading some great articles this week that have helped me think about these things.

🔖 Interesting Reading

3 quick tips for leading through uncertain times

As the tech industry is going through some turbulent times right now, it's important to think about how you can lead your team through the stress of uncertainty. People worry about change and it's important to be able to help them through this.

This article from AbdulFattah Popoola shares some great tips for leading through these uncertain times.

A key thing he mentions is to look after yourself. This is often overlooked when you have to manage a team and it's important to make sure you're ok before you can help others. This is something I often forget!

I'm a big fan of building out a support network for both myself and the team. It's important to have people you can talk to and who can help you through the tough times. Make sure you build out a network of peers and mentors who can help you too.

A framework for doing the right things at the right time

As an engineering manager for a frameworks team, I love a framework! 😄

In my day-to-day work and life, I find it really useful to have a series of steps which help me to achieve my tasks for the day.

This article from Tilo Mitra, an engineering manager at Square, breaks down a strategy to ensure that you and the team are working on the right things at the right time.

He shares his framework for understanding what the team is doing and how to make sure that you increase the amount of high leverage work that you're doing.

I find this framework really useful and it's definitely given me some ideas as to how I can better plan my week. Take notes and let me know what you think.

Manage up without getting (too) salty about it

This article from Lara Hogan is a great reminder that as engineering leaders, we need to be able to manage up and not just manage down. Your role is to ensure that your team is successful but also that you manage expectations with your manager and other stakeholders.

Let me say that my manager is awesome and is incredibly receptive to feedback! I love working with her and I feel like I can be honest about anything. I met her at a previous company and knew I'd learn a lot about leadership from her.

Lara shares some great ideas for determining what you need from your manager before having an honest conversation and sharing your own feedback.

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

Hit reply and let me know what you think.

Feel free to send me any interesting articles or podcasts you've found as I love hearing from my readers.

Have an amazing week and be excellent to each other!

Speak to you soon,
Marc

Senior Engineering Manager @ Netlify

👓 Read more of my technical leadership articles on my website.