Last month I put together a panel for the Lead Dev on recognizing and rectifying your mistakes as an engineering leader. I rarely moderate panels, but for this audience and this topic I was in!
The big failure of most panels is that they are full of abstract platitudes. To avoid that – especially on such an important topic – I took a slightly different approach and prepped a case study with each panelist. We did a deep dive into an actual mistake they made, what happened as result, and what they learned. I’m really grateful to each of them for trusting me in this process, and I hope you find the end result helpful.
Many teams have the same fear when it comes to a new manager: they fear the process monster.
Process monster (n): a manager for whom the answer is always, always ‘process’. The process monster will add more and more processes to the team until the team collapses under the weight of them. Eventually, the monster will move to another role, and the failure of the team will be explained as ‘resistance to process’.
I’m sure you’ve encountered process monsters in the wild before. Some have enough empathy and are in the right roles to be successful, while some have the effect of strong glue: slowly grinding a team to a halt under the illusion of improving efficiency that never materializes.
Last year I spoke at the Lead Developer, and this year I was excited to come back as an attendee. It was really great last year, but speaking is super stressful and always my priority is to give a good performance, so I sometimes don’t get to enjoy events I’m speaking at that much. Or I’m just too distracted by nerves and post-speaking-FEELINGS to take that much in!
Like last year, the event was AMAZING. An incredible lineup of speakers, many women. This time it lasted two days, which was awesome.
I live tweeted a number of talks.
Heidi on the 7 Righteous Fights – wow this talk was amazing. So insightful about the things that if you don’t deal with earlier end up being incredibly painful later. And also hilarious.
Duretti on building a healthy team. I loved this talk so much, and I’ll be sending the video to my team and encouraging them to watch it.
Crystal on Imposter Syndrome. This was full of wisdom on the way that people – especially under indexed people – are made to feel that they don’t belong, and “imposter syndrome” as a manifestation of that. It also has some great tips for combatting that, e.g. asking a friend for 3 things you do well.
Melinda on employee evangelism. I really appreciated this because it focused on helping employees build their own capabilities as speakers, or writers, and the benefits of hiring as a side effect of that. It gave me a bunch of ideas for helping people on my team.
Laura on remote work. I’m super interested in remote work as someone who runs a remote team, and this talk was a really helpful insight into another person’s process and priorities.
Camille gave what I think is her best talk yet on rebooting culture. It was incredibly honest about her own failings, and how she came back from them, and packed with insight.
I had an amazing time, and I hope to be at the next Lead Developer event – in NYC in February!
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