Transitioning from Development to Lead
I am writing something after a long time, and this is at the behest of an old friend who insisted for the n’th time that I should start writing again. Last ‘n-1’ times I had ignored his suggestions, but this time I couldn’t. It so happened that this friend has recently switching his role from a technical expert to a technical leader. Somehow he thought that I me worthy of providing him an advice about how to do such role-transitions effectively. At the end of our long conversation, he was happy with my suggestions and insisted that I should write down these experiences-cum-conclusions for the larger benefit of fraternity; so I obliged.
My first memory in becoming “Technical Leader” from a “Technical Practitioner” goes to that inevitable trap, where the newly appointed Tech Lead tries to solve everybody’s’ problem using their own technical expertise. After all, it is their expertise which have won them this new promotion to the leadership role. So they work hard, they solve problems, they excel further… and this is where the trap lies!
As a leader, your job is not to solve everybody’s problem in your team, but to enable everyone to solve their own problems! This is something similar to a football team coach, who doesn’t play actually but helps every player to play his game better.
Now what separates a football coach from a Technical leader is the latter’s own past glory as Technology Champion. It is the temptation of I-can-solve-this-in-half-a-time, that keeps coming in the way. For last many years, I have heard seniors in my team saying – instead of putting efforts in teaching others something, they would rather do it themselves. Yes its a short-term win, but a long-term-loss. Because, a couple of years down the line, we see a stereotypical-frustrated team leads blaming their own teams for incompetency and how-can-I-alone-do-everything type rants.
The below picture shows the mechanics of the same
Breaking this vicious cycle and bringing the best in every team mate should be your first and foremost job.
The second important difference between the ‘expert’ and the ‘leader’ is to understand the human angle. As an expert, you may always demand ‘the best’ – but as a leader you need to understand that definition of ‘best’ changes for every individual – and you must be sympathetic to it! To do this truly, you need to have a lot of good understanding with your teammates. You need to become actually like a traditional Indian ‘bahu‘ who after getting married tries her best to get adjusted with everyone in her new family – understanding their likes-dislikes, triggers-and-pain-points, goods-and-bads etc. The tech experts, on the other hand, often behave like a traditional ‘damaad‘, being outspoken, assertive and doing whatever pleases them. Having a right balance of this ‘bahu‘ and ‘damaad‘ attitude is a very key ingredient of technical leadership – where assertiveness and empathy must go hand-in-hand.
The last skill, I feel is understanding the multi-faced aspect of your project (and business) not just from the technical and quality perspective, but also from the market, legal, security and business (at least RoI) perspective as well. A technical leader must sit at the cross road of all these different aspects of the business and more importantly show the relevant picture of his work to the right stakeholder. This is a peerless skill for anyone who wants to become and effective (I am intentionally avoiding the word ‘successful’ here, because success is a function of lot many complex parameters often beyond anybody’s control) technical leader. Call it communication, negotiation, stakeholder-management skill or whatever you like – but this a highly overlooked skill among the tech experts – while they and they only can understand the whole nature and design of their Software. An effective technical leader must be a very good communicator, for he can preempt half the conflicts between various project stakeholders just by presenting the right picture to every party involved and addressing their concerns.
Finally, those of you who think that it is too late for them to take a technical leadership role for they are in their 40-50… please understand that if you see traditional Industries, this is the time when people would become Managers. You need to get thoroughly soaked into your own area of work, before starting to make critical business decisions that affect everyone around you. It is only the modern Industries (like IT), modern Institutions (like Business Schools) and modern thought (like rat-race) that somehow is so much fixated on getting-everything-ready-ahead-of-time. There are of course examples of young and shining leaders that we see – but its glorification has been to the extent, that many are now convinced that late entry in leadership is nothing short of failure.
Leadership is a journey whose destination is the journey itself! I do not recall incident where a leader stepped down or retired because he took his organization to its’ destined peak.(the last I recall is Mahatma Gandhi appealing for dissolving Congress after achieving its goal of Indian Independence, and we know that it didn’t happen!) So leadership is journey, where success and failures do not matter, but what matters is ones own learning, integrity, contributions and legacy!
About the Author
Sandeep Patil God knows why but I have too many interests. So chances are that you and me have something in common. Let’s see… Patanjali? Chanakya? Romans? Vijaynagar? Shivaji? Renaissance? Vivekanand? Agatha Christie? Tagore? Hitchcock? S.D.Burman? Cary Grant? Satyajit Ray? Grace Kelly? Brucia la terra? Suchitra Sen? Roman Holiday? Vasantaro Deshpande? Robert de Niro? Malguena? Kishore Kumar? Osho? Hotel California? Smita Patil? Erich von Daniken? Pu La? GA? Andaz Apna Apna? Asha Bhosale? PVN Rao? … Watch this space, sooner or later you will something on similar topic
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