Peer Connections

I caught up with a peer earlier today, another Engineering Manager leading a close proximity squad. We’re both fairly ruthless with pruning our diaries, but these meetings have stuck - a sure sign they’re proving valuable to us both. It’s a recurring meeting we’ve kept for the past few months to get feedback, vent, get a second opinion, or exchange ideas.

Subscribe now

What’s most striking about these sessions is that more often than not, we’re working on the same problems without realising. I’ll come to the session with a challenge, expecting it to be unique to my context, only to find we’re facing the same thing. For example, today I started a conversation about balancing the pace of delivery with collective team knowledge and up-skilling. The challenge is that teams often default to pace, working through tickets quickly and dishing out instructions to less experienced team members, solely to get work delivered to the required quality. In isolation, it’s an admirable feat.

Hidden Costs

The missed opportunity here is the long-term inefficiency it breeds in the team. Those leading the work, the pace setters, work tirelessly to keep things moving. In doing so, they solve multiple problems, anticipate issues, and get to know the codebase intimately, growing their expertise. However, as a collective team, we're suffering. Less experienced team members find it hard to keep up. They lose confidence, take instructions they don’t fully understand, which leads to mistakes and further erodes confidence (note to self, write an article on confidence in software engineering!). Over time, the knowledge gap widens, and the roles people play in the team become more rooted. Without intervention, the problem grows until either (a) someone leaves and norms are challenged/reset, or (b) someone is brave enough to speak up, momentarily slowing the pace and affording a chance to up-skill others.

There are well-established methods for handling at least part of this problem: pair programming, where two people work on a problem with one driving (writing the code) and one directing (thinking ahead), with regular rotations; and mob programming, where the whole team focuses on a single problem collectively. In practice, though, I’ve rarely seen teams stick to these practices strictly, instead adapting them to their environment and gradually watering them down until much of the intended team benefit is diminished. These practices take discipline, huge amounts of commitment and energy and work well when the environment is setup to support them, which is rarely a universal norm.

Slowing Down

Returning to the peer discussion, we debated the role we as leaders play in this scenario. We concluded that ultimately, given the context we’re in (meaning this isn’t always the right answer everywhere1), our role is to ‘slow the team down’. It sounds counterintuitive, but it’s a founding principle of a good team: sustainable delivery as a team, not at the expense of the team. As Managers and Leaders, this is a lever we can pull and a responsibility we must handle. As long as we observe and accept an unsustainable pace without comment, we’re setting that bar of expectation for the team.

Finding Support

This brings me to the headline of this post: Loneliness in Engineering Leadership. Team pace is just one of many challenges a team could be facing at any time. Not all are immediately visible to the team—if they were, they’d likely self-heal. As an Engineering Manager at the squad level, it can often feel like you’re a team of one. You wear the manager hat, so whilst you’re ‘in the team’, you aren’t necessarily ‘in with the team’. You’re responsible for challenging team norms, nudging the team forward, calling out problems, and providing feedback even if it’s unpopular. There will be times when the team celebrates your ideas and appreciates your insights, and other times when you question whether what you’re doing is helping, whether your diagnosis of a situation is correct, or whether you could have phrased feedback differently.

In these scenarios, having another Engineering Management/Leadership peer to share your struggles with helps immensely. It can be incredibly fulfilling just to know that you’re working on similar problems, or that the approach you took is one they align with or would have taken themselves.

It highlights the importance of remembering that whilst you might be leading a squad, your 'first team' are your leadership peers—the group collectively leading the teams that make up your Engineering group. It’s unnecessary to experience loneliness when there are others just like you feeling the same way, facing the same struggles, and ready to support one another. 

Share

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

It’s week 3 and I’m trying something new again! For week 1 I dived into some training I completed on the craft of Story Telling. I was thinking out loud based on some new learnings. For week 2 I shared a framework I’d developed for when I’m building High Performing Teams - sharing experience I’d built over many years. This week, I’m going to dive into some things that have been on my mind over the past few days. Things I’ve come across in my day to day work or challenges I’ve faced that I’ve worked to solve. I got some feedback on my last article that I should consider a shorter format which I’ll be doing this week. Let’s jump right in!

Overreaching Empathy

I read an article about burnout this week which highlighted things I hadn’t really considered previously. I’ve experienced burnout myself and I’d say it’s unsurprising after 15+ years working in tech whilst going through several life events including getting married, purchasing a home and bringing children into the world. I always talk to my teams about how we’re all ’single beings’ - that whilst we might keep personal life personal and work life ‘in the office’, ultimately both facets of life have an impact on each other.

In this article, it spoke about the effects of ‘Overextended Empathy’. That is, as a leader not only carrying your own struggles, but also emotionally carrying the struggles of your team members. I pride myself on being someone that leads with empathy and understanding, but it got me thinking about the times I’ve been most stressed and whether this has come from me carrying a broader burden than is necessary and helpful.

I haven’t quite worked out what adjustments I’m going to make with this learning yet - how does one lead with empathy and care, whilst also remain disconnected enough to prevent other individuals struggles weighing you down?

Feedback and being ‘too nice’

This week saw the commencement of the twice yearly performance review process at my employer. As a manager this is a challenging but also exciting period. Focus changes from Team Building, Strategy, Roadmaps and Prioritisation to Culture, Individuals and their Performance.

Building an environment of continuous, immediate feedback is ideal, as it helps people learn from feedback whilst it’s live and in context. However, performance review time offers a valuable opportunity to reflect on the bigger picture and to provide more overarching feedback focused on the whole period in question.

What I’ve come to learn is that the ‘nicer’ someone is, the harder I find it to give constructive feedback. I hear myself mentally saying things such as ‘but they’re so nice, I’m sure they didn’t mean X’, ‘we’ve built such a good relationship, I’d hate to say something that damages this and takes us back 5 steps’ and ‘how could I possibly tell this person that whilst they meant well, they actually had Y impact on me’.

On the counter side of this, I’d be horrified to think that someone isn’t being honest with me because I’m too nice and they’re too afraid of upsetting or hurting me. Interestingly, this is enough of a trigger for me to rationalise why offering constructive feedback is so critical. I need to role model what I wish to see back - If I’m not offering constructive feedback, I probably shouldn’t expect to be receiving it.

This got me thinking about how I continue to be kind and empathetic, but without creating an environment where people aren’t honest with me about where I could improve. I don’t believe the answer is to stop being nice 😊. Instead, my focus should be on creating the safest possible environment for people to be honest with me about my performance and where I can improve, and to welcome this feedback with open arms in the hope it compounds into continual helpful feedback.

I’m going to remind myself the teachings from the book Radical Candor about good feedback being high in Care and Challenge. Any feedback I offer during this reporting period is going to make this front and center and be a reminder that I’m offering (or receiving) this feedback from a place of kindness first, not a place of provocation.

Time Buckets

I originally wrote a full article on this topic but have abstained from hitting the publish button as it’s not quite right yet! When I say time buckets, what I’m referring to is the process of creating a time allocation (usually in percentage terms) to guide teams on how to prioritise their time. An example might be: “Allow 30% of your time to work on underlying platform and productivity improvements” or “Allow 15% of your time to work beyond your immediate team boundary to encourage collaboration”.

I've frequently observed this concept in action during my career. Whilst it can be an effective tool for leaders to direct team efforts, it often leads to 'lazy prioritisation'. By this, I mean it simplifies task allocation but can unintentionally discourage critical thinking about which tasks truly need prioritisation, instead masking the real issues behind a layer of abstraction. Instead of teams critically thinking about whether feature A or enabler B is the right next step given business strategy, user demand, market forces and platform health, they’re loosely following the original time allocation constraint and assuming this will lead to a win. It also has the effect of removing team/individual empowerment - they’re having their work day allocated for them to some extent. Many teams I’ve worked with have at least 2 time buckets allocated to their time. I can recall a product manager once asking me - “after all these percentages of time for different initiatives, what’s left for our users and our product?”.

I’m not sure I have a solution at this present time. I suspect the plus side of using this approach is that it removes a lot of bureaucracy and free’s up teams to work in line with what is assessed to be the global priorities. If an organisation has a tech debt/platform problem, this is a giant sledge hammer that can immediately create space to improve things. It ignores nuance though and perhaps breeds an environment where people are less practiced in pitching and making a case for investment in the things they feel are important. Which one of these 2 evils is the better is probably scenario dependent.

“Let them”

I listened to a podcast this week which discussed a major source of stress and anxiety being the attempt people make to not only control themselves, but to control those around them. It seems obvious when I think about it. I’m in complete control of myself. I control where I go, what I’m exposed to, how I think, what choices I make, who I speak to and how I interpret the world based on my past experiences. This is a full time job. Trying to do this for people around me is both exhausting and impossible.

I had 2 immediate reflections from this. First, to assess where I’m currently attempting to do this and why. Consider what impact I’m trying to achieve and whether there’s a better way of doing this rather than via perceived control. This feels particularly pertinent when I consider my role as a parent of 2 young children! Second, to consider what this means from a Leadership perspective. A CEO can’t stand up and see chaos in an organisation and just say “let them”.

My takeaway is a stark reminder that as a leader my role is to create an environment that breeds success. I’m not here to control everything everyone thinks, says and does. That would be impossible. I’m here to create the best environment possible, where people thrive, grow and innovate. I should be thinking about what context is important to share, what direction we’re heading as a team, what opportunities there are to create competitive advantage and how we deploy our collective strengths. If I get this right, I shouldn’t be worrying about individual reactions because I can’t control them. If reactions aren’t what I expect, I should be assessing the environment and culture to determine why, not focusing on fixing the individuals.

Ultimately, this serves as a reminder to me that my energy should go into the environment and culture I’m building, not into trying to control the uncontrollable. I suspect that in doing this, I’ll be far less stressed, far more productive and far more resembling of the leader I strive to be.

Share

Subscribe now

💡 As always, I'd love to hear your reactions to this article. Does it resonate with your experiences? Have you faced similar challenges in leadership or personal growth? How do you balance empathy, feedback, and control in your role? Feel free to share your thoughts, stories, or any strategies you've found effective in the comments below.

Leave a comment

When I launched this newsletter, I knew from prior similar endeavours that for me to launch this successfully, I’d need to develop a backlog of content upfront that I could publish - the reason being that it would give me a buffer for any weeks that I have competing priorities and also set me up for success from the start rather than risking feeling overwhelmed and falling back before I get going.

Well it’s week 2(!) and already I’ve decided the articles I pre wrote don’t feel right for my second week (put this down to me discovering and refining a writing style I’m comfortable with). Instead I’ve chosen to write what’s top of my mind and hit the publish button straight after - probably further from my comfort zone that I’d like to be, but being comfortable is boring so here we go!

I was talking to someone recently about my take on building high performing teams. This is a big topic and something one could write a book on and still have words to share, many have!

I thought I’d use this week’s writing and reflection slot to break down how I approach the opportunity to build high performing teams. As an Engineering Leader, this is perhaps one of the most enjoyable parts of the role - it’s equal measures of challenging and rewarding.

The 3 levels - Individual, Team, Organisation

The framework I’ve developed fits into 3 levels. Each of these need to be optimised to support the development of ‘high performance’. In isolation these create pockets of excellence, but when focusing on high performing teams, all 3 need to be aligned and considered.

What is a team?

At its most basic level, a team is a group of people with a common purpose and mutual dependency.

If you have a common purpose but no dependency, you have an association or a coalition.

If you rely on one another but have no common purpose, you have a network or community.

This presents an interesting lens on a team when discussing goals and mapping/developing skills. For a team to hit the criteria of a common goal and mutual dependency, there needs to be an ambitious enough goal that it takes the collective efforts and skills of the team to deliver it. If the goal could be delivered with half the team, the mutual dependency is diminished and they’re unlikely to work as well as a team unit.

Team of teams

Describing a team using common purpose/mutual dependency is useful as it means, at least in a work environment, that most people are likely members of multiple teams.

Why is this relevant? For leaders, you’ll have squads working to deliver team goals, you may also have multiple squads working to deliver department goals. You may have multiple departments working to deliver organisational goals. Following the prior description, each of these units are in theory a team and should be supported in this way.

At each of these levels can you/they answer - Who am I? Who are we? What are we here to do?

Does everyone answer these questions in the same way? Is there organisational clarity and alignment?

Are the goals at the individual, team, department and organisational level in alignment and amplifying one another, or are they creating conflict? When this happens, how easily is it managed?

Start with the individuals

A team starts with a group of individuals. It’s the collective contribution of those individuals and the way they come together that makes a high performing team.

At an individual level, when considering how to develop drive and motivation and thus performance, I default to the work of Dan Pink who proposes we focus on - Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose.

Autonomy

There’s 2 places I start. First - flooding individuals with CONTEXT. I’m a strong believer that context is king and I have lived experience of working with both an excess of and a lack of context. I’ll always choose the excess - it enables far better decision making, less rework, less frustration and more innovation.

Share context on the business, on company performance, on strategy and change, on the wider market, on things happening across the team and department, on your own internal thoughts. Anything I have access to as a leader, that isn’t sensitive (there should be a high bar for this) should be shared with individuals/teams. With context, individuals can work autonomously without constantly checking they aren’t missing important information or asking for permission because things are being withheld without good reason. They’ll be less likely to doubt themselves and more likely to take calculated risks which could pay off.

Secondly - Situational Leadership. Simply put, adjusting my leadership style to the individual. Autonomy shouldn’t feel like abandonment. For some individuals, having strong direction from a leader can still sit alongside the feeling of autonomy. For others, it’s appropriate to delegate and if you don’t, you’ll be stealing away autonomy for no good reason.

With fluid context and effect deployment of situational leadership, the first key steps to creating autonomy are in motion.

Mastery

My experience suggests the vast majority are motivated to work for good reasons. They’re working to learn, grow, spend time with interesting people with shared interests and work on things that make an impact and create meaning/purpose.

I approach Mastery in a couple of complementary ways:

1. Working with individuals to understand their goals and dreams and agree challenging development objectives that enable them to develop mastery in the areas they’re most interested.

2. With the understanding garnered from (1), creating opportunities via business objectives/projects to support the development of these skills/experiences through real life work. Marrying the individual and their motivations and goals with the opportunities available across a business is where the magic happens :)

Purpose

Often, an individuals ‘why’ will come out through conversations about the skills they’re working to master. Ultimately, it’s hopeful your team members have joined your organisation and team because the organisational purpose aligns with things that matter to them. Even where this is clearly the case and indisputable, it’s still important to help clarify and tell a story on how the individual is making a contribution to the organisations purpose (picture the janitor saying they help put a person on the moon). Often, particularly in large organisations, the wider organisations purpose can feel quite abstract at an individual level so exploring this can help surface ways to effectively frame this so it still supports individual purpose.

There’s a forth lens on the individual, which is self awareness, introspection and meta-cognition (thoughts about thoughts). Perhaps these loosely fit under the ‘Mastery’ heading - mastering self. Coaching has been a great way to bring these topics into focus with individuals and is often the most appropriate means to manage performance challenges at an individual level.

The Team

I could argue that the team level is more complex than the individual. At an individual level, you have a known entity. You have direct feedback channels, single brains to interpret and a 1:1 communication channel. At the team level, you’re unleashing these unique individuals and aiming to define an environment that gets the best out of them as a group. Suddenly the communication isn’t directed back at you, there’s unseen events and behaviours, patterns are forming and preferences getting embedded.

Focusing on the environment and culture within the team, here’s where I first set my sights:

1. Feedback. I see this as the cornerstone of growth and improvement. My job is to encourage regular and ‘radically candid’ feedback (high in both care and challenge) and normalise this across the team.

2. Learning about and respecting individual differences. I want team members to understand themselves and their preferences, but also understand the same of their team. Knowing that one responds best to data, another likes to focus on the creative experiences of solving a problem and another thinks people first before anything else means team members learn how to interact and bring the best from each other rather than finding it an annoyance.

3. Creating an environment where all voices are equal. This means ensuring everyone gets a chance to speak and be heard, conversations are respectful and the backgrounds and experiences of the team are celebrated and used to their competitive advantage.

4. Psychological safety. Communication is the critical dialogue of a team and members being comfortable being themselves and avoiding the cognitive load of masking unlocks this. In an environment where psychological safety prevails, ideas are aired and celebrated without fear of negative consequences. Problems are surfaced and discussed openly - leading to continuous improvement and innovation.

5. Clear Metrics, Goals and a team relevant Strategy. Metrics and goals can be used as a means of focusing minds and efforts, creating a multiplying force where team members are pulling in the same direction. A team relevant Strategy comes from understanding team challenges and opportunities, where they fit within the organisation, how they can deploy their strengths to create advantage and can be used to build energy, motivation and momentum towards a better future.

6. Playing to Strengths. There’s far more variety in humans than there are role descriptions on a typical Org Chart. Whilst having clear roles and responsibilities are helpful, I like using them in combination with deploying people to where their natural strengths and interests are. If a PM is naturally great at Design, or an Engineer is naturally great at interacting with users, celebrate and enable this. Equally, where there are tasks in a team that no one wants to do, creating fairness by distributing these on a rota is a good way to cover all bases without individuals carrying the load.

7. Recognition. Building in room for recognition and praise from the outset, with variety and surprise is a great way to develop high performance and nurture more of the high performing behaviours being sought. Getting this right is hard. Work is busy and recognition is often the first thing that gets overlooked. Equally too much praise without substance waters it down, hence the need for relevant praise, and variety so it get’s noticed and is meaningful. I love asking managers “When’s the last time you took specific time out of your day to say thanks to someone” - the answer often takes a while to surface which suggests recognition probably isn’t in the place it needs to be.

8. Work-life balance. Particularly in creative problem solving roles, healthy minds and bodies are absolutely critical to developing high performance. This doesn’t come from repeatedly working 16 hour days and working until people are running on empty. Teams are typically long term constructs and whilst surges of energy and focus can be effective and rewarding, a deliberate approach to a sustainable work life balance is far more effective over the long term.

This isn’t a conclusive list, but it’s not a bad start :)

The Organisation

It’s worth noting this article isn’t ordered by priority of execution. Whilst individuals and team is the obvious place to start, understanding organisational goals, dependencies and opportunities likely need to happen in parallel to ensure the individuals and team are being configured relevant to the environment they exist in.

I’m not going to go so deep on this element - I’ll save this for a future article. However under the organisation heading my focus is typically on the following key areas:

1. Wider organisational goals and metrics/performance. This helps inform team strategy and ensures the team is adapting in a way that makes sense for the organisational direction.

2. Dependencies. Which other teams are critical to my team’s success. How closely do they operate together? How easily are communications flowing? Are there any teams dependent on mine and can I frame them as a customer to ensure we’re satisfying their needs?

3. Networks and relationships. Where and who do I need to be influencing to support my team’s success? Where do I focus to ensure stability and ongoing investment? What stories do I need to tell to ensure continued interest and excitement about their work? What relationships do I need to encourage at a team level?

4. What organisational opportunities exist that I can pursue to drive change for the benefit of my team? Perhaps there are processes owned by alternate departments that are slowing them down or conflicting projects that need alignment.

5. Organisation wide ways of working and ceremonies. Setting a team up in a way that complements the cycles (planning, learning, delivery) an organisation typically goes through to create a more seamless flow.

Across all these levels, Organisation culture plays a big part here and that’s often difficult to change from the ground up. This is where a leadership role is so critical. It offers the ability to read what’s happening across teams, combined with the influence to nudge culture in the direction that unlocks more success. Whilst this article isn’t a comprehensive run down on high performance team building, my experience suggests that starting from these first principles and not overcomplicating the challenge often gets you 80% of the way there. The final 20% falls into organisation and individual uniqueness and often needs a tailored approach.

I’d love to hear your take on this challenge! What works for you and are any one of the points I referenced here particularly relevant for your current context?

Share

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

Recently, I got the opportunity to attend a training course aptly titled ‘Telling it like TED’. The course focus was on arming attendees with the tools and techniques used by the greatest ‘Ted Talkers’ of all time.

In this article I’ll be focusing on what makes a good story (for context, a good TED talk contains at least 3x stories!) I’m using this article both to share and spread the learnings I took away, but also as a way of collating my thoughts and memories to help me better embed this learning and give me something to refer back to in the future.

Why Tell Stories?

It’s estimated the average person hears or reads over 100,000 words a day. The question we should therefore be asking is - how is my message going to be the one that get’s someones attention and sticks around long enough to create meaning for that person and the change or impact I’m hoping for?

The answer - Telling a well structured story that uses sensory language to switch your listeners brains on, lifts them into your story and creates memories that are more likely to stick.

A story isn’t the right answer to every type of communication though. If you spent all day telling stories, you’d over complicate simple messages and waste a lot of time. Picture a firehose to put out a candle. As an Engineering Leader that spends the majority of their time delivering through others and galvanising people behind a strategy, story telling is one of the most effective ways to win over ‘hearts and minds’ and connect with people in ways not possible with basic data and presentations.

What makes a good story?

At their very basic level, all stories have a start, a middle and an end. The great thing about a personal story is that you’re able to decide how to frame it, where it starts and where it ends to portray the message you want to land. Life is complicated - the stories you hear are never as simple as they’re told. The person telling them has removed the noise, the bits that aren’t relevant to the message they’re sharing. They emphasise the parts they found most interesting or important and in doing so craft their story in the way they want it to be heard.

Mastering the art of storytelling involves skillfully crafting narratives that strip away the superfluous, leaving only the core elements. This ability to paint a vivid mental picture for your audience, where what you envision is precisely what they perceive, is the essence of exceptional storytelling.

When you’re telling a story, your audience automatically turn the words you’re saying into images, sounds and smells. Their brains activate their senses to try and make sense of the words you’re broadcasting. The more you’re able to fill these senses with your observations, the more likely your audience will share your story cognitively and the more memorable and impactful your story will be. Even now, as you’re reading this article, without realising I bet you’re translating these words into imagery in your minds and framing them in a way that makes sense to you and your context.

Story Structure

Freytag’s Pyramid outlines the structure of a good story which follows a ‘story triangle’:

• An exposition

• Rising action leading to…

• A turning point (Climax)

• Falling action leading to…

• A Resolution

This triangle hangs together based on your stories purpose. Let’s demonstrate this with an example:

Purpose:

Express the power of innovation and risk taking, where opportunities can arise from unexpected places.

Exposition:

In a bustling London tech startup, a dedicated developer named Alex discovers an old abandoned project called "Project Casper."

Rising Action:

While exploring the project's code, Alex finds an algorithm that could drastically improve their current product. But integrating it poses risks and could potentially destabilise everything her and her team have built.

Climax:

During a critical product demo with investors, Alex decides to implement the new algorithm live. The system falters, causing panic.

Falling Action:

However, after some subtle tweaks things stabilise, showcasing incredible efficiency and capabilities, far beyond what the existing product could do and winning over investors.

Resolution:

The successful demo leads to major investment. "Project Casper" revolutionises the industry, and Alex is hailed as a visionary in the tech world.

Ok so maybe life isn’t quite this simple - but as a story we set the scene, we capture interest with rising action, we hit a critical point where the story could take a turn (climax), we break the suspense with ‘falling action’ and then end with a resolution of the story.

In the The Leader's Guide to Storytelling, Stephen Denning shares that the best stories are:

• True

• Positive (in the sense of an outcome)

• Minimal (don’t get lost in the complexity of your story)

• Paint a before and after contrast

When crafting a story that follows the story triangle, it’s good to check against the Stephen Denning criteria to ensure you’re following the triangle, but not losing the key aspects of a good story along the way.

Patterns of influence

So you’ve crafted a good story. You’ve navigated the triangle all whilst ensuring you’re being truthful, speaking from the heart and from a place of passion, focusing on the most important elements and sharing a contrast. How do you land this with your team effectively?

“It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.”

Based on surveying TED talk audience members, Van Edwards found that people rated speakers comparably on charisma, credibility and intelligence whether they watched talks with sound — or on mute. In other words - the way you portray yourself has as much an impact on how you’re judged as the words you use. 

To improve how you’re portrayed, play close attention to where your hands are. Let your hands do the talking!

Some basic hand gestures that can add volume to the words you’re saying are:

• Hands facing down, with a lowering action - Calming

• Hands open and wide but low - Open

• Hands pointing - Direct

• Hands high and body exposed - Emphasising, Highlighting

• Hand on chin - Reflective, Thinking

Throughout your story, you should expect to switch between these different gestures to emphasise your words. Don’t stay in a single mode or you’ll blunt your hand gesture tool and it’ll lose its impact. Your hand gestures and movements should support and amplify the words you’re saying.

Be conversational, drop the script and speak from the heart. There’s nothing wrong with having a script, but use it as prompts for your story so you follow the right path rather than using it word for word to make your point. Include vocal variety, don’t be monotoned or your words will quickly become background noise. People pay more attention when surprised and exposed to variety - don’t allow your words to become wallpaper.

Finally - Remember to Smile - studies show it makes you appear smarter!

So - when to deploy the masterful skill of storytelling?

If you are doing Technical troubleshooting? Use analysis.

If you’re discussing Financial Reporting? Write a concise report.

Delivering Technical Training? Share a how to guide or a demo.

Chairing a Legal/Compliance meeting? Use a brief.

However if you’re joining a new team, leading team building activities, pitching a new idea, leading change in an organisation, providing mentoring or coaching or launching a new strategy - story telling should be a strong feature and continue to repeat throughout the process.

Speaking from personal experience, there are stories great leaders have told me 10+ years ago that I can still draw on to this day. They’ve left an imprint in my mind that is impossible to shake and thus has a subtle but essential effect on the decisions I take day to day as a result. I’m absolutely sure that at the time this was their goal, and it worked exceptionally well.

One example was during the launch of a new Engineering Strategy. The leader stood in front of her team, vulnerable and exposed sharing the history of the team she had developed and the mistakes of the past. She expressed how the decisions taken were right at the time, but wouldn’t work for the future. She outlined in vivid detail the team she wanted to build, the changes that would need to be made, how it would feel to work in that team, what they’d go on to do as a group and the lasting impact they’d leave if they joined her and committed to leaning in fully. She outlined the hard yards that would be ahead, but that the pay off would be worth the effort.

She spoke from the heart, didn't follow a script but instead allowed her passion to shine through. It was impossible not to listen and not to feel galvanised by the opportunity ahead.

Turn Your Next Workday into a Storytelling Masterclass

A well told story has the power to change the world. Now, it's your turn to bring this skill into your everyday work. Tomorrow, when you step into your work day, challenge yourself: Where can you replace a dry update with a compelling story?

Every interaction is a chance to practice, use storytelling to make your message resonate. Share your experiences, weave in vivid details, and watch as your words create impact. How will you tell your story tomorrow? What difference will it make?

Share

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

In this introductory issue you’re going to hear about me and my plans with The Debug.

Who writes The Debug?

I’m Steve, I’ve worked in tech professionally for over 15 years, working across a range of disciplines including IT Operations, Data Centres, IT Infrastructure and Software Engineering. In the most part, I’ve worked in a Leadership capacity across these roles so my primary focus has been on the human and business aspects of Technology. This means I’ve spent my time studying, experimenting and crafting the art of coaching, building high performing teams, influence and persuasion, strategy, planning and organisational change. I love my job, it’s my passion and through it I’ve been lucky to work with some exceptional talent and share some amazing experiences.

Through my career I’ve progressed from an entry level individual contributor caretaking IT systems and responding to out of hours pages, to being a subject matter expert running services and hiring and building specialist teams, to leading and transforming a 100+ strong team to create more fulfilling roles and greater customer impact.

Whilst this outlines who I am professionally, it doesn’t really outline who I truly am as a person.

Of all the things I’m proudest of in my career, it’s the times where I’ve worked with individuals to build their confidence, set goals, identify their strengths, step outside their comfort zones and go on to get promotions and/or deliver things they never imagined possible that inspire me the most. Whilst technology is my natural home and the environment I’m most comfortable in, it’s nothing without the people and ingenuity they bring to the problems we solve - technology is merely the tool to get us there.

Why I’ve started this publication

I’ve always had a passion for writing - it’s the therapeutic process I use to organise my thoughts, where I develop my creative ideas and where I cement things I’m learning before they drop out of context.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how I can broaden my impact. I’ve spent the best part of my career problem solving and whilst it’s been great putting ideas and improvements into practice, the impact only goes as far as the teams and organisations I’m working directly with. My goal with this publication is to openly share my real-world experiences, challenges, and practical problem-solving insights, all with the aim of inspiring and assisting others on their Engineering Leadership journey. I'm excited to build new connections, spark fresh conversations, and collaboratively learn from individuals who have navigated similar experiences

There’s no time like the present so I’m going to start the connections/community aspect today! Please subscribe and drop me a message to say hello, share your ideas, your thoughts and problems and any feedback you have. It’d mean the world to me to hear from you and would really help me get this publication off to a great start!

Subscribe now

What is my commitment to this publication and to you?

I’ll be sharing weekly insights on the most relevant, interesting and topical experiences in my role as an Engineering Leader. Expect truthful commentary, useful tools, challenging of industry norms and ideation. If you’re looking to progress into more senior Engineering roles, you want to work in tech or you’re already an Engineering leader, this publication will provide useful insights, will broaden your perspectives and arm you with tools to aid your progression. The subjects I’ll be covering here are the tools I’m using daily to progress my career.

Here’s a sneak peak on what’s scheduled for upcoming weeks…

• Exploring an underestimated skill for Engineering Leaders, with actionable tips.

• Insights into a recurring anti-pattern that's becoming increasingly common.

• Thoughts on business planning and objective setting.