The thing I wish I knew before being a team lead
On the heartbeat podcast, host Claire Lew has a question that she uses to ask to each guest: what is one thing or several things that you wish you would’ve learned earlier as a leader? While listening to the podcast I've often wondered how I would answer that question, and I've had a few back and forth , until I settled on the classic the higher you rise the less power you have. You have more influence, but less power . This seems intuitively true to to me, and it does reflect in the experiences I've made in my personal journey, from individual contributor, to team lead, to lead of leads. However, I always had this sense of guilt about it, because it states a true condition but not how to operate within this condition. Sure, one way to address it is to write,write, write or repeat the messages, but those seem means, rather than an end. Instead I was looking for an end, to justify those means and to use them coherently. The answer came to me, rather unexpected, as these thin...