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Discussion on: Avoiding burnout as a new tech lead

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griffinator76 profile image
Nathan Griffiths

Oh some of those situations sound awfully familiar! I've had a couple of lead roles now and while there were many rewarding aspects to those roles, particularly helping people in my team grow their skills and confidence, I also fell into a few of the traps mentioned in the article.

Things I wish I'd done, or done sooner or better:

  • Learned to delegate
  • Focus on creating an environment where people can succeed, because they have the right skills and the confidence to use them
  • Managed my time better by blocking out periods for team admin, meetings, project work
  • Restructure the team where it's not working effectively
  • Reached out to another experienced people lead to mentor me

Things I wish I hadn't done:

  • Felt compelled to attend every meeting I was invited to
  • Worked every hour of the day and night - in the long run a burned out team leader benefits no-one
  • Allowed the loudest voices to monopolise my time
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intricatecloud profile image
Danny Perez

Even after being a lead a few times, its still easy to make the same mistakes - like just now I realized that I need to block out time to prep my team's performance reviews, I keep putting it off as not urgent, but it's important and into the calendar it goes.

Thanks for reading!