Since I started working in the development area, about 6 years ago, I always wanted to be a technical leader. Many years have gone by and I have worked with some leaders, some of them were quite good and others not so much. My desire only increased because I wanted to have this experience in my career. I've been working for 9 months now as a technical leader in the company I work for.
My team is small, we're 5 (counting on me) and at first I thought: Oh it's a small team, It will be "easy", I will be able to learn and improve my leadership skills (lol laughing nervously). I barely knew it would be (and in fact it is) really hard to lead any team.
As much as a technical leader has concerns most of the time in architecture, product, scalability, and all the other buzzword we already know, we need to concern also with all members of the team and how they can be even happier. If this happiness is aligned with the Product: Perfect!
I'm still very "Junior" in this area, but with the short experience I had I would like to highlight some points that are very important to me:
Constant update
First of all, the technical leader doesn't need to know everything, yeah you've read right! But it's indispensable that a good technical leader has knowledge of software development concepts, something general that can apply to any area, like mobile, front end or back end.
Being constantly updated is crucial in the area of technology and because of this we can't be attached to any framework, language or platform, this is important because it opens a wider range of possibilities.
Mentoring / Incentive
I always had a lot of encouragement from my last technical leader and I believe this is very important, today I know how difficult it's to analyze each person of the team and find points where they could "improve". Some practices can help, for example, encourage talks about some technical subject or not, write articles, test new technologies whenever possible, provide event tickets, etc.
Communication
This point for me is essential in any area. I have always been very transparent in all my career path and I believe that this eliminates any doubts.
When it comes to leadership, transparency is even more important, so work with your team to have transparent and direct communication, which builds trust and confidence and is essential for a team.
Feedback
Feedback is a practice that should be common within the team, it comes from both the leader (which should always happen) and anyone on the team, there are usually two moments of feedback: those that are more punctual that have a greater focus on some behavior or expectation and the recurrent ones, whose focus is broader and various topics can be addressed.
All feedback should be done responsibly, however informal it may be at times, a misused word for making a lot of difference.
Conclusion
It seems like it's not that much, but it's hard to achieve all these points. I'm currently studying hard about leadership, obviously I make mistakes, but the important thing is always to try your best to have a healthy and engaged team! If you have any tips, feedback on technical leadership or disagree with me, please comment below and we will bring even more content!
Thank you so much for the attention of everyone who read!
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