Maintaining Healthy Distance

If I’m being honest, I’ve never really understood the interview question “tell me about your leadership style”. I always thought to myself “my style is whatever is needed, situationally”, and I still believe that, to a certain degree.

As I’ve grown as a leader, though, I’ve definitely identified a way of working that I believe to be effective for me, for my team’s delivery, and for their professional development. A way that I call “A Servant Leader, Maintaining Healthy Distance”.

What it isn’t

At first, I toyed with the term “Benign Neglect” to describe this approach, but it misses the point of being distant; to communicate it as simply an excuse to ignore the team, let them do their own thing, and only involve myself when things go seriously wrong.

This is not that.

What it is

Instead, it’s a way of working with the team that ensures that I’m close enough to see everything that’s happening. Then intervening only when I believe the organization, team, or individuals would benefit. It’s really as simple as that.

Rubber, meet the road

Okay, so that’s pretty vague, what does this mean in practice?

Communication

• Communicate early and often – roadmaps, organizational changes, technical dreams, all of it. A LOT!

Empowerment

• Avoid team meetings where I don’t believe that I will add unique value – the team should own the meeting and its success/improvement.
• Bring opportunities to leaders on the team. Then assist in setting context, brainstorming, & accountability, and let them bring it to the rest of the team to come up with their own solutions.
• Rely on my lead engineers to oversee delivery – this is best way for them to develop into strong people leaders and, eventually, managers.
• Work with the team to develop meaningful metrics for team performance and post them publicly for the team to index their success upon.

Monitor

• Read every single Slack message sent by team members in public channels (especially our support channel) – things can go off the rails quickly, sometimes. I need to keep abreast of the mood of the team and help to bring them back to alignment from time to time.
• Read PR requests regularly – if I’m not attending all the meetings, I need to keep up with the work being done, its quality, and its tempo.
• Occasionally submit PR requests – it’s important to stay in touch with team coding standards & tooling. They’re not always going to complain about things that I can help with.

Relationships

• Post regularly in Slack. Be silly. Be transparent. Be friendly & supportive. Make sure they know that I’m present and available to help at ALL times.
• Most importantly: weekly 1:1s, no excuses! If I’m going to be distant, I also have to be present. My team has to see me as a servant leader, not a disinterested, absent manager who doesn’t actually care about them. Plus they’re cool. If I didn’t want to meet with them, honestly, I should probably be second-guessing my career choices.

This is especially true for my leads. They may be my highest performers, but they also have the greatest potential to multiply the productivity and positive experience of the team. If I’m developing them into incredible people leaders, everybody wins!

But what about…

Okay, I hear all of you thinking to yourselves, “what about all the road mapping, alignment building, managing up, measuring progress, constant improvement, etc?” Well yea, I do all that too. This isn’t an article about all the things I do as a manager; there’s plenty more to write about! More to come…