Half of the time that I start writing I worry that the end result will be too long. The other half of the time that I start writing I fear it will be too short. This week is the latter.
The longer you spend in an engineering leadership role, the more abstract and difficult the problems become. The challenge is that you are so successful in building software that solves concrete problems that you might not be aware of the gradual shift into the more abstract world of suddenly much-less-solvable problems. I know that I missed it for a couple years.
It is an unusual experience to go from closing Jira tickets and regularly submitting repo commits to sitting around in meetings having lengthy conversations about comments added to proposals for processes. The tools that make you successful at the former do not always help you solve the latter. It is easy to come in armed with a preconceived notion and a pre-existing framework for success. It is also easy to get frustrated when that framework suddenly fails to be effective.
I remember the first time I ran into this. It was over fifteen years ago and it made me very frustrated. In due fairness to the worst boss that I ever had, I think he was trying to help me understand this. Unfortunately, he was terrible at his actual job and was such a poor leader that I zeroed out anything that he told me. I doubled down on thinking about problems on my own terms. I will leave off any additional rationalizations and justifications about my conduct at that time. I have come to peace with what happened and even apologized to a number of people who were in the blast radius of the months of that unfortunate failure to communicate.
I find myself on the other side of that conversation more often than not these days. Companies grow, marketplaces change, and people who do amazingly well at one thing suddenly get asked to do something new. I have already written about being mad at the wrong thing. Today we are going to speak a little more on that subject.
I go through a variety of emotions when I find someone who is in the middle of transcending from one role to another. I feel sorrow when I see they were ill prepared for it. I feel awe for people who are self aware of it. I feel excitement when I can see people making breakthroughs in their thinking and starting to realize their world is changing. The response varies pretty widely.
I have said previously that part of this writing exercise is therapeutic for me. I have also said previously that I want to help people make different career mistakes than I have. Today I am going to give a few pieces of advice on how to help make this process go more smoothlier.
Listen
If you have gone through any amount of career transformation so far, this will come as no surprise to you. Listening to feedback is important. I have seen people who have been given direct verbal and written feedback completely ignore it in as little time as five minutes later. In some cases they sought to minimize the lack of willingness to listen by making a joke about it immediately thereafter.
Being able to listen to people around you when you are growing is really important. Whether it is superiors, peers, or subordinates, everyone is going to try to tell you something that will help you. Acknowledge their feedback when you get it. Internalize what they are trying to tell you. Follow up with people who have given you feedback to offer examples of how you have taken their feedback and ask if there is anything else you should be doing differently.
Reflect
Set aside time to reflect on what you are doing and what you should be doing. This can be in the form of a personal “do not book” window on your calendar, or a mentoring session, or an additional 1:1 meeting with someone in leadership. When you are changing roles you should have meta-conversations with yourself and others on a weekly basis, if not more frequently. In addition to taking feedback from others, take a look at your actions over a window of time and ask yourself some questions about how you are spending your day:
“What is important to success in my current role?”
“What is important for me to learn before I am ready for my next role?”
“What could I have done differently?”
“Have I set myself up for success or failure?”
“What behaviors are setting me up for failure?”
“Is there a difference in my own definition of my success and leadership’s definition of my success?”
You would be surprised how many people are thrown into new roles without good guidelines or expectations and set themselves up for failure. It happens quite a bit when you are experiencing drastic career changes and professional growth. Being able to see that and figure out how to course correct for it is really essential to grow professionally.
Just Breathe
The last piece of advice probably sounds the dumbest. It is the most important.
Just Breathe.
This is some pretty universal advice honestly. Professional athletes and military personnel actually do some level of formal training around the importance of breathing.
This is relevant to software development and leadership.
I find a lot of the frustrations for first-time leaders are exacerbated by a need for clarity and closure as fast as possible. It is really easy to get lost in that immediate need and lose the bigger picture.
I think that some of the best advice I have given people who are taking on new roles or working to build new teams is to simply slow down and breathe.
This can literally be taking ten minutes to calm down in the middle of a tense online argument, or waiting a night before hitting send on a controversial email.
The number of times you need to urgently handle something is much less than you think, and even if it is moderately urgent, you can always respond by saying “I need some time to think about this.” If you are wrong then someone will correct you. If you are right, then the added time you have just acquired to reflect and listen will serve you in getting to a more thoughtful outcome.
Even if you are urgently needing to reply to something, taking a few deep measured breaths will help. It does not have to be some kind of Wim Hof thing, or multiple minutes breathing in accordance with beeps on some kind of watch or smartphone.
Just breathe.
In summary, if you are finding yourself in a difficult situation in a new role, ask yourself some questions.
Did I listen to everything that I should be listening to?
Am I reflecting properly on what success is?
Should I take a moment and just breathe?
You would be surprised how many people will go zero for three. You might even be surprised how many people will go one for three.
If you can get proficient with these tools, it will help you grow faster professionally .
Thank you again for reading!
It has been a while since I have explicitly asked you to tweetsnap, bikbook, or linklank my posts, so I am going to send you off with a mental picture of me piteously begging you to help me expand the reach of my rantings and ramblings.
Please promote these articles to people who could benefit from them if you find them interesting. If you do not know anyone interesting who would benefit from these articles then please just tattoo my blog url to your forehead and scream loudly at strangers to get their attention on the off-chance that these random terrified strangers will have an ounce of curiosity after you get escorted away from them by security or law enforcement.
In either case thank you for helping me and I will write some more next week!
