Leadership Without A Paycheck
Jennifer Wadella
Jennifer Wadella
@likeOMGitsFEDAY
- Director of Angular Development at Bitovi
- Angular GDE
- Non-profit founder
- International Speaker (pre-pandemic)
This talk may contain strong language, harsh truths, and serious passion.
People Don't Quit Jobs - They Quit Bosses
Kansas City Women in Technology
- 7 years
- 50+ volunteer team members
- Countless lessons and mistakes
Lessons Learned Fast
Create clear vision
Create Core Values
How and why your team does things
Explain Your Why
Communicate Early & Often
Connect the Dots
Open Doors of Communication
Notable Leadership Resources
- 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership
- Servant Leadership
- Radical Candor
21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership
John C. Maxwell
1. The law of the lid
2. The law of influence
3. The law of process
4. The law of navigation
5. The law of addition
6. The law of solid ground
7. The law of respect
8. The law of intuition
9. The law of magnetism
10. The law of connection
11. The law of the inner circle
12. The law of empowerment
13. The law of picture
14. The law of buy in
15. The law of victory
16. The law of the big Momentum
17. The law of priorities
18. The law of sacrifice
19. The law of timing
20. The law of explosive growth
21. The law of legacy
Servant Leadership
Robert K. Greenleaf - 1970 essay "The Servant as a Leader."
Servant first - focusing on the needs of others before your own.
Guiding Principles
- Listening
- Empathy
- Healing
- Self-awareness
- Persuasion
- Conceptualization
- Foresight
- Stewardship
- Commitment to the growth of people
- Building community
Radical Candor
Kim Scott
Common Threads
- Humility
- Self-awareness
- Influence over authority
- Intuition & learned experience
- Importance of growth and autonomy
Strike a Balance in Content You Read
Nothing will teach you better than experience, but having an understanding as scenarios approach you will help.
My Lessons
- Building a Team
- Building Trust
- Building Growth Culture
Building a Team
Pragmatic Interview Process
- Why do they want the job?
- What are they hoping to get out of the job?
- How do they handle conflict?
- How do they solve hard problems?
Culture Add > Culture Fit
Optimize Onboarding Process
- Equipment & Tools?
- Appropriate Access
- Personnel introductions
- Documentation of Tribal Knowledge
- Get personnel as autonomously
operational as soon as possible.
"It's better to have a hole in your team than an asshole in your team!"
Dan Jacobs
Resist Homogeneity
Understand Motivations
Be Ready for Team Conflict
Beware of value-shaming & toxic positivity
Building Trust
Trust is Hard to Build and Easy to Break
Establish Lines of Communication
Make it clear for how your team can approach you, provide multiple methods.
Get Comfortable Explaining Your Thought Process
"Open Calendar" Policy
In a remote world, open calendar is the new open door policy.
Getting Feedback
You must take feedback AND act on it when possible
Giving Feedback
Tailor feedback method to the individual
Set Your Team Up for Success
- Clear expectations
- Clear deliverables
- Clear process
Don't Piss Off Your Engineers
- Process to document their status without asking
- Push back against priority switching
- Help guard team against distractions
- Get buy-in for deadlines & deliverables
Constant Introspection
- Is my ego playing into this?
- Am I letting my values influence my team?
- What level of responsibility did I have in this?
Understand Job Trauma is Real
Building Growth Culture
Balance Servant Leadership
Know when not to be a "snowplow" parent
Prioritize Allowing Autonomy
Don't Shy Away From Hard Conversations
Address issues as they arise, reports should not hear negative feedback for the first time in reviews or upon disciplinary action
Praise in Public, Criticize in Private
Know There Are Some Battles You Cannot Win
Your Job is NOT to ship Code.
Your job is to empower your TEAM to ship code.
Summary
- Humility
- Self-awareness
- Influence over authority
- Intuition & learned experience
- Importance of growth and autonomy
Resources
- 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership - John C Maxwell
- Servant Leadership
- Radical Candor - Kim Scott
- Management Basics (The Trinity)
- Mistakes I’ve Made as an Engineering Manager - Sarah Drasner
- When Teammates share grief - Lara Hogann
Questions?
Slides available at: leadershipwithoutapaycheck.jenniferwadella.com
Want to join my team? I'm hiring Senior Angular devs. Email jennifer@bitovi.com