The Applicable Bytes

Career & Growth, Technical leadership & AI for developers

1. Reset expectations without damaging trust

My personal oppinion is that this is most difficult thing, especially if as a tech guy you do not have a strong social circle outside your job. And there is usually someone from your team who is not happy with your career change. When this happens, it might be easiest to work with it, then to fight it. But that takes quite a lot of practice and patience, and honestly few burned bridges.

2. Build authority through actions, not ego

This one is tricky if you are maybe not the most skilled person in the team/company. Imposted syndrome hits hard here, but that is why you need to udnerstand that the good manager is not always (actually is rarely) the best skilled person in the company. Your biggest skill here is to see “bigger picture” and make decisions based on that, not always what is technically best thing to do. And that requires communication. There are few trics in communication and negotiation like mirroring and observations, but the key I think is being prepared for the difficult questions. And constantly checking yourself if decision you made was the right one.

3. Navigate early tension with confidence

Tough one. I personally use humor to brake tension, but that doesn’t work reliably. It requires good relationships in place, which is hard if this is your first leading responsibility. Techniques like labelig and cold read are very effective here, but again, like everything else, this is a muscle that you might not have trained so far. However, starting intentionally might help you A LOT.

4. Balance empathy with accountability

Again a sense of balance is important here, and if you are like 90% of tech dudes or dudetes, empathy is probably not the first thing you write on your CV. We just think more logically, but we do have feelings, and we “feel” that something might not be right decision. And when we do that, we start procrastinating, we start challenging decisions, and we jump to safe choices and do what we know, and what “feels” right, and sometimes even fun. But kids do what is fun, grownups do what is needed for the higher purpose. And you will need to get other grownups, probably smarter then you, to do what is not fun, what they do not believe is the right choice, because it benefits the company or the team at this point. And you need to understand how to connect with people, and still get them to trust you and help you succeed.