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Elle Meredith
Elle Meredith

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Leading with authority vs influence

The role of staff engineer is a leadership role in most organisations. Staff engineers don't have direct reports in a people management sense. They lead projects, initiatives, and display leadership in their daily work.

Leading projects and initiatives are examples of leadership from authority. You are in charge of delivering a project, thus you get to tell people what to do! Same goes for a cross-team initiative you're leading to improve developer experience. These are explicit leadership situations. The third case is all about implicit leadership and that's where influence comes in.

What is the difference between the two? and which should you use when?

Continue reading at https://blackmill.co/blog/lead-with-authority-vs-influence

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