Why we need to talk about it

Seniority at work comes with opportunities and expectations for leadership – either through working directly with people, leading projects, organizing things necessary for change, or just taking control of your own growth – all this benefits from methodical approach on how to organize yourself, your goals and your interaction with others.

While I started my career with “just being a software developer” there is a point where you reach the peak of things that can be achieved by just that and to do more you need to rely on others. And that can be a difficult switch. I’ve seen and heard plenty of stories about people in charge that knowingly or through inaction create environment that fosters stagnation. For several years now I’ve been in position where I’m partly responsible for the careers and wellbeing of others, so I wanted to collect and share some of the materials that have helped me with inspiration or information on how to shape my approach to this work – focusing on first two aspects of it: Mindset and Goal setting.

Mindset

Before proceeding – understand that leading people is the privilege of working with people who trust you to have their backs, yet we still are employees of a company, yet we still need to ensure business success, because without it we wouldn’t be here. While there are many styles of leadership and each person finds their own based on their needs, personality and work environment, I can only list the ones that felt meaningful to me, some compatible with others, some situational.

As for me, one of the basic things that need to be in place is grounding yourself in reality:

First of all, main principles to strive for and how to build cooperation with others will affect most of your interactions. Here I take inspiration from David Marquet and Intent based leadership:

Longer format talk on the same idea can be found here: Intent-Based Leadership. Captain David Marquet - CMX Summit West 2015 – YouTube

and if you want more from the author, there is a book: https://amzn.eu/d/7i1AoJ9 and collection of ideas around leadership: Leadership Nudges with David Marquet – YouTube

If you are leading in a technical role, and this usually starts way earlier than what people usually asoicate with leadership: The Coaching Architect Manifesto (Roy Osherove) – YouTube and if you want there is a whole book on that topic Elastic Leadership

Still on the topic of mindset I want to throw in a book on career development that I found resonated with my world views and helped to enforce how I set my own career goals: So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love: Newport, Cal: 8601420220263: Amazon.com: Books

And as bonus I’ll add the book that introduced me to terms peacetime manager and wartime manager: The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers: Horowitz, Ben: 9780062273208: Amazon.com: Books

Goal setting

SMART – very basics for setting goals, probably everyone hears about it during their study years. SMART Goals – How to Make Your Goals Achievable (mindtools.com)

North star approach – for inspirational long-term goals. There are several approaches how to portray future visions and wrap them into stories and tales, but for me the north star symbolism resonates with using goals as guidance for work to be done. https://betterhumans.pub/the-north-star-approach-to-goal-setting-871b2ef54ca2

ORK (Objectives and Key Results) goal setting approach (supposedly) recommended by Google. I like how it focuses on hierarchy of metrics and goals – something that naturally appears in larger organizations. While I haven’t found the right tool to put this to use at scale in my team, I’ve found it useful even if just for thinking about yearly strategy goals that are communicated by my leads and how to tie them to my own ideas and initiatives. OKR: Learn Google’s Goal System with Examples and Templates (felipecastro.com)

This is as good as place as any to end the post. As I mentioned there is no right way, but these materials I consider my go-to references.