I recently started my tech leadership journey as a Developer Manager. As we're all aware, switching roles means change in responsibilities. You bring in learnings from your past experiences and stack them with new learnings, required to be successful in your new role.
The first thing to hit me when I started my leadership journey, was that I don't have user stories assigned to me. So how would I track my progress? For a long time, they were trackers of my progress, contribution, and success.
What does success look like? like really, what does this even mean?
Although I knew that as a leader, I won't have user stories assigned in a sprint, but it still felt odd. This transition was very interesting to me. I was seeing the same things but with a new lens.
TBH I was feeling overwhelmed.
I sought out leadership coaching from Tom who I knew from my dev days at Propel Ventures. He helped me to clear the fog from my lens. Which in turn helped me to form a strategy for what kind of leader I would like to be. After going through the thinking process for days and reflecting on what success looks like to me, it became clear that my top priority is coaching my direct reports and supporting them in their success by all means (obvious right?).
The next thought was what's the best practice to achieve that?
1:1 check-ins are sort of forced interactions and this was the area I wanted to improve since my dev days. I started forging a strategy to convert check-ins into coaching sessions. 1:1 are the most intimate interactions that devs have with their managers, so they need to be in a trusting and safe space, where they can be vulnerable and candid. All I needed was a framework that works for my leadership style and so I created one. I'll share more details in upcoming posts.