{"id":2295,"date":"2019-01-31T16:30:22","date_gmt":"2019-01-31T21:30:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.soul-repairs.com\/blog\/?p=2295"},"modified":"2019-01-05T09:40:20","modified_gmt":"2019-01-05T14:40:20","slug":"technical-leadership-progression-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/soul-repairs.com\/blog\/2019\/01\/31\/technical-leadership-progression-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Technical Leadership Progression, part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In <a href=\"https:\/\/soul-repairs.com\/blog\/2019\/01\/29\/technical-leadership-progression-part-1\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Technical Leadership, part 1<\/a>,\u00a0\u00a0we talked about how someone grows into a technical leader aware of their team. In this post, we&#8217;ll continue on to describing a Tech Lead who takes <em>ownership<\/em> of their teams&#8217; success, and then moves into the higher levels.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>First, though, a quick reminder of the process as a whole. People in general move from <em>self<\/em>\u00a0up to the <em>enterprise<\/em>, and from <em>awareness<\/em>\u00a0to <em>ownership<\/em> at each of those levels:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-2283 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/soul-repairs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/technical-leadership-04-combined-diagonal.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"537\" height=\"210\" srcset=\"https:\/\/soul-repairs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/technical-leadership-04-combined-diagonal.png 537w, https:\/\/soul-repairs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/technical-leadership-04-combined-diagonal-300x117.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 537px) 100vw, 537px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Last time, we talked in detail about the Self Awareness, Self Ownership, and Single Team &amp; System Awareness stages.\u00a0<em>Onward!<\/em><\/p>\n<h3>Single Team &amp; System -&gt; Ownership<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If people find they\u00a0<em>enjoy<\/em> being the go-to problem solver for the team, the next step in technical leadership is <strong>advocating<\/strong> for the team &#8211; taking on some measure of <strong>ownership and responsibility<\/strong> for it.\u00a0This means speaking for (and potentially fighting for) the team, and it means being <b>stubborn\u00a0<\/b>on their behalf<i>. <\/i>It also means fighting for the health of the system(s) the team takes care of.<\/span><i><\/i><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There&#8217;s more <strong>strategy<\/strong> and direction-setting here, with focus on deliberate improvement. These are things like:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">setting and explaining the team&#8217;s technology direction<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">improving processes and architecture to lessen existing team pain<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">encouraging a team culture that appreciates improvement, innovation, and customer service<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This role requires strategic thinking, amazing communication skills, and <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">influence<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0&#8211; vision is always a hard sell, but it&#8217;s an especially hard sell in organizations with a massive backlog of projects to complete, or in organizations where someone outside of IT drives project priority. Because vision is a hard sell, and because &#8220;but why you clean up tech debt?&#8221; is something most everyone in IT has heard, a technical leader has to\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">represent and <em>sell<\/em> the system and the people who work on it<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One important thing to keep in mind, if there&#8217;s friction with the other leadership of the team (project managers, HR managers, other technical leaders), it will become <em>vital<\/em> to resolve here &#8211; no one wants to fight for a team or a system while also fighting for the right to do so.<\/span><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<blockquote><p>Depending on the size of the organization, the Multi-Team\/Multi-System sections and the Enterprise sections could overlap. These descriptions assume an organization large enough that &#8220;multiple teams&#8221; is not the same thing as &#8220;the entire enterprise.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<h3>Multi-Team\/Multi-System -&gt; Awareness<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This is very much like the <a href=\"https:\/\/soul-repairs.com\/blog\/2019\/01\/29\/technical-leadership-progression-part-1\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Single Team Awareness<\/a>, except&#8230;well, across multiple teams or systems. Someone becomes known for understanding That Esoteric Nerd Thing, so much so that people from outside of their team start to ask for help and debugging. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One option is to just answer those questions and send people on their way &#8211; but another is to take the opportunity to learn about those teams&#8217; personalities and their systems and help them find the <em>best<\/em> solution. Technical leadership in this stage requires\u00a0learning to communicate with even <em>more<\/em> people and being okay with even\u00a0<em>more<\/em> interruptions that pull away from <em>shhh,<\/em>\u00a0<em>just let me code stuff<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>Multi-Team\/Multi-System -&gt; Ownership<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Again, this is very much like ownership of a single team\/system &#8211; multiplied by however many teams. It&#8217;s a shift back to <\/span><b>strategically improving <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and proactively solving\u00a0architecture\/process\/culture problems &#8211; but this time, taking into account the perspectives and needs of multiple teams\/systems.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0tends to be a logical grouping of teams, typically teams that report to or through the same management chain or teams that work on roughly the same thing. This kind of work requires a lot of focus, attention, and time &#8211; and to be successful in this role, working with each team as often as possible is hugely important.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Also similar to Single Team Ownership, building relationship and understanding with other members of leadership is vital here &#8211; multiplied by\u00a0<em>each team<\/em>.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h3>Enterprise -&gt; Awareness<\/h3>\n<p>If the organization is big enough that there&#8217;s a distinction between multi-team and enterprise, zooming out enough to see the enterprise as a whole comes next. This level is less about helping people than Single Team and Multi-Team Awareness, and more about <em>learning<\/em> and <em>understanding<\/em> &#8211; the business drivers, how IT fits into those business drivers, where the inherent friction is between those two things<em> (spoiler alert: there&#8217;s always some)<\/em>, and what can and should be done to remove that friction for maximum efficiency.\u00a0<em>Many<\/em> people stop here, too. This requires seeing and understanding a\u00a0<em>lot\u00a0<\/em>of politics, and sometimes&#8230;it&#8217;s just better not to know.<\/p>\n<h3>Enterprise -&gt; Ownership<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This is coordinating improvements or implementing new things\u00a0<\/span><b>across the enterprise.<\/b>\u00a0It&#8217;s also advocating on behalf of IT as a whole or the\u00a0<em>company<\/em> as a whole if those thing are separate.\u00a0<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This type of role tends to include researching, understanding, driving, and teaching how to implement initiatives that could affect\u00a0<em>everyone<\/em> using a particular technology stack or process. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It requires a massive amount of influence, communication, coordination, understanding &#8211; and <em>determination<\/em>.\u00a0It also requires a <strong>strong community<\/strong> as support, because this is probably the most frustrating version of technical leadership &#8211; the politics that are seen and understood at Enterprise Awareness now must be <strong>navigated<\/strong>.\u00a0For the people who love fighting on behalf of people and systems, though, this is the <em>most<\/em> <em>rewarding<\/em> type of technical leadership.<\/span><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h2>Why you tell me this neat pattern?<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Our technical backgrounds are primarily and most recently as IT Architects. This included a lot of mentorship, and this progression came up for <em>everyone<\/em>\u00a0(including us! We are our own favorite guinea pigs!) as they went from developer -&gt; tech lead -&gt; architect -&gt; senior\/enterprise architect.\u00a0There are\u00a0<\/span><b>new struggles<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and\u00a0<\/span><b>new things to learn<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> at each stage, and it can be really helpful to know that that&#8217;s completely normal and that everyone goes through it. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There are also important skills that are required (like that\u00a0<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">people patience<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> thing) and occasionally people just say\u00a0<em>thanks but no thanks<\/em>. So, in addition to giving people who are interested in technical leadership words for their struggles and some <em>chill<\/em> that those struggles are normal, it also\u00a0helps give them a rough idea of what their career could look like and what they should expect.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Technical Leadership, part 1,\u00a0\u00a0we talked about how someone grows into a technical leader aware of their team. In this post, we&#8217;ll continue on to describing a Tech Lead who takes ownership of their teams&#8217; success, and then moves into the higher levels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,29,28,40,4],"tags":[69,63,70,68],"wf_post_folders":[],"coauthors":[11,26],"class_list":["post-2295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community","category-leadership","category-organizations","category-people","category-technology","tag-diagrams","tag-glossary","tag-multipart","tag-patterns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/soul-repairs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/soul-repairs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/soul-repairs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soul-repairs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soul-repairs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2295"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/soul-repairs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2295\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2317,"href":"https:\/\/soul-repairs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2295\/revisions\/2317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/soul-repairs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soul-repairs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soul-repairs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2295"},{"taxonomy":"wf_post_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soul-repairs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_post_folders?post=2295"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soul-repairs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}