Team leadership for technical backgrounds: does it work ?
Does having line management responsibilities work for tech-driven people ?
Something I learned over the years working in IT is that while opportunities do come and go all the time, not all of them will be 100% aligned with the career path you have in mind. But career paths are not set in stone, especially in this field where things can change very rapidly. So giving yourself the chance to experience an off-script challenge every now and then can be beneficial to your career, as long as you see growth potential in it.
Recently one of these opportunities came my way: becoming a team lead. I’m not saying that people leadership was off the cards, but rather something I saw myself experiencing later on my career. Fortunately this is being a very valuable journey where I see the learnings being applied to any future role.
How I got here
I always found professional motivation from the technical side of things, by coding, architecting solutions, learning new technologies. As time went by and I grew as a Data Engineer I started taking more ownership of technical decisions, translating business requirements, planning sprint deliveries and also mentoring junior peers in the team. I very much enjoyed doing all of that, even though it was not my responsibility per se, just part of natural growth.
When the team lead role came up I decided to take it as an opportunity to further develop these skills and to contribute more directly on other people’s careers. But I had a very important condition in mind: “I can step back a little bit from the technical side, but not disconnect from it”. You’ll see next how that is playing out for me.
Some takeaways so far
There is a lot to talk about this experience but I’ll be short and share points I found important to pass on.
1 - You will have less time to get your hands dirty
This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone trying out people leadership.
I do think I have less time to do the engineering work, but I feel I gain on other fronts. As the team is engaged executing what we came up with I have time to plan ahead, do my technical and non-technical investigations and still randomly pick up a ticket from the board to feel good with life.
The trick is time management. Learn not to jump straightaway into everything that pops up on slack and to block your calendar for concentration time.
2 - You’re no longer the problem solver, but the facilitator
I can use my experience to bring more options to the table or to veto some technical approaches during discussions, but being more hands off from the “how’s” gives team members the freedom to put their own faces on solutions and consequently grow on their own careers.
To be fully honest this is WIP for me. Letting it go is hard, but reflecting on occasions when the team proved me wrong or came up with better solutions than what I had in mind is very cool. You learn again and again that you can trust them.
3 - Context switching can be stressful
One of the things I like from technical roles is that I can get very invested into solving a specific problem without much interruption. As a team lead I usually deal with multiple things during the day and long concentration moments are not as common.
To make sure it’s worth switching to something else, ask questions. Most of the times it can wait until you finish what you are working on.
4 - Managing expectations can be tricky
On one side is the team: plenty of ideas, opinions and motivation to try things out. On the other side is the business, asking for deliveries that sometimes are just not in sync with what the team wants to work on.
Being in the middle of this can be challenging and making both sides happy every single time is just impossible. Learning to negotiate and to manage expectations well is an important skill. Being honest with all parts is the minimum to get this right.
5 - Build a strong team culture
Find ways to encourage communication and build trust in the team. Making sure everyone has their voice on decisions and that the whole team is accountable for the delivery. This brings a sense of belonging and when things get difficult outside the scope of the team people will get your back.
This is extra challenging with the world turning remote. Reach out to other team leads around you to learn what methods they are using to build their teams.
6 - Pushing for people’s growth is both frustrating and rewarding
People grow when they get out of their comfort zone. From personal experience I need to find motivation somewhere to get out of my comfort zone.
The experience of pushing others to either understand what motivates them or to put a plan on the back of this motivation might turn you into this very annoying figure. But when it delivers results, it’s great.
Wrapping up
I believe this experience has been very rewarding so far. I feel I can better understand what my previous team leads went through and why some decisions were made.
The condition mentioned above has been met so far and I’m still very much in contact with the day-to-day of the technical work. I believe I can be happy in this hybrid mode and I see myself switching between roles with a pure tech focus and others with line management in the future.
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