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Thursday, October 9, 2014

When Defining Reality, Don't Forget To Deliver Hope

I had a great 1-1 with one of my tech leads today, who came by my office hours and asked me for advice on becoming a better manager. I gave my usual rambling reply to broad inquiries; we talked about making personal connections, reading a lot of blogs and books, experimenting with different ways of asking questions to get people to reveal their true interests to you, so that you can better help to nurture and serve those interests.

But then, at the end, I had a thought. I asked him, how often do you talk to your team about what the future is about? How well do you know what the future of your team should be like? Not the product roadmap, which is in the capable hands of an amazing product lead, but the technical future. How to think about building systems that are future-thinking, becoming a better team, writing better code.

"Not that often" he admitted.

So, I persisted. How often do you spend some time away from your keyboard, away from the internet, away from meetings, and think about what you think the future of your team should be, the areas that you could focus on, the big opportunities for growth?

Again, the answer was "Not that often."

This is not at all surprising, of course. When you work in an industry where you focus on building out technical skills and getting more things done for the first many years of your career, making that shift into management (really a career change) can lead to the temptation to focus on solving today's problems now. Solving today's problems well is probably how you ended up rising into a tech lead role, and we all know that there is never a shortage of problems.

But when you focus on nothing but today's problems, even if you are a great manager who does everything right, you are unlikely to motivate your team to greatness, or inspire the level of loyalty and passion that makes a team gel and prosper. You are missing the one thing that you cannot overcome with great management skills. You're missing leadership.

You can be the greatest manager in the world, but without leadership and vision, your team will not be truly sticky to you.

Fortunately, leadership is not a skill you have to be born with. It just requires that you identify the future and articulate it. "Define reality, give hope." Too often first-time tech managers focus on reality. We're comfortable with reality, reality is our bread and butter. But the future? Painting a vision for the future, even the future 6 months out, is a risk. You may not be able to deliver on that future vision. It may not be the right thing to do when the time comes. Reacting to today is so easy, and trying to predict the future seems really hard

But there's a simple (note: not easy) secret to breaking that habit and creating a vision: practice. Get away from your keyboard. Force yourself to sit in an empty room with a whiteboard or a pen and paper and write some ideas down. Grab a colleague or two to brainstorm with if you need to, but do some of the work by yourself. Then start painting that future to your team. This is the most important thing you can do to become a truly well-rounded manager, and if you aren't doing it, block your calendar tomorrow and start.

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