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Most people treat promotions like gifts. They say yes immediately, afraid the offer might disappear. Then six months later they're drowning in a role they never properly understood, working for someone they wouldn't have chosen, wondering what went wrong.
You can read dozens of leadership books and still not know whether your boss is any good. Most frameworks are either too abstract ("be authentic!") or too narrow ("here's how to run a 1:1"). Here is a list of traits I actually look for when evaluating leaders - whether I'm hiring, promoting, or figuring out if the person above me is worth following.
You hire people you think are great performers. Their performance turns out average.
If you've learned to delegate well, asking clearly, giving context, setting reasonable deadlines, but your team is still burning out, the problem probably isn't in how you're asking for work.
Have you ever felt the ineffectiveness of a team whose member you are? Have you struggled that the team’s decisions are not the same as yours and you didn’t understand that? Maybe you felt that all the team members point in different directions.
Have you ever wondered what we do as software development teams or what is our long-term purpose? Having such a perspective on why we do things as a team is extremely powerful but sometimes difficult to define.
Several times in my “leadership career” I heard an opinion that the team I lead is not “my team”.
Every development team that works with the product has a Product Manager. Sometimes it’s a Manager that works on a daily basis with a team, sometimes it’s a guy that catches up with the team once per week. Whatever the relation is this person usually tells the team what to do next and why it matters. Sounds familiar?
Supporting people's growth is probably one of my favorite team leader “duties”. When writing this article I’ve been a leader for more than 2 years and I must say, I’ve been doing it wrong for most of this time…