Show up and craft clear and compelling visions tech leads! (No. 84)
We're still on the fundamentals this week. And if you want to do it right, you'll be on the fundamentals for the rest of your tech lead career. Today: showing up and vision crafting!
Tech Leads!
It’s Wednesday, and by the time you get this letter, most of you are closer to the weekend than not. Finish strong tech leads!!
Remember that this week we’re focusing on the fundamentals, and, to me, the Four Core are absolutely fundamental. You already know this, but it bears repeating often. You can’t get good at the “higher order” parts of being a tech lead, like public speaking, making hard technical decisions, coming back from setbacks, building safety on the team, helping shape culture, or even mentoring until you have done the fundamentals first.
This is easier said than done. You’re smart and clever. Accordingly, you look around, usually unconsciously, for a more exciting path to being a great tech lead. Seek as you may, the fundamentals remain the most direct path. It’s fun to talk about organizing your team or squad or whatever. It’s also fun to compare the features and functions of the latest code review tool, but if you’re not doing the hard work of practicing the Four Core, then you’re wasting your time.
The Four Core are not exciting, but they are fundamental.
This week I’m trying to remind you to practice the Four Core, every day, because it’s like building muscle memory. When you have that muscle memory then you can spend more time focusing on the higher order stuff.
Alright, let’s go. On Monday, I reviewed Number One: Listening. Today we’re going to review Number Two and Three, Work Ethic and Vision Crafting, respectively.
Work ethic again tech leads!
In the book, How to Be A Tech Lead, I called this one a “bias for action,” and I’ve subsequently been calling this “showing up” on the list and the pod. I’m starting to feel like the right term is “work ethic,” although I’m still really fond of showing up. 🤷♂️
Whatever name I settle on, and naming things truly is the hardest problem in computer science, the basic idea is that, once you’re in a lead role, you probably (but not necessarily for some of you) have to increase your activity and energy level. Remember your contributions now come from your team, so you need to activate them and get things moving. You don’t do that by sitting behind your desk fussing around with the codebase.
One measure of work ethic can be how often you find yourself stepping into leadership moments, which I explored with you last week. That’s one point I made in the book. But it’s broader than that. Great tech leads seem omnipresent on the team. They’re all over Slack, Github, Trello. They seem to show up in meetings everywhere. Their names come up in conversations, even when they’re not there. Managing this feat requires a lot of showing up and engaging the team, your management, and related functions. It’s just raw effort; there’s no short cut.
As with all the capabilities, there are maturities with it. At the beginner level, tech leads are passive and not particularly present. They may not have figured out that a big part of success in the role means getting active in issues beyond the code.
The next two levels are different from the other capabilities in how I describe the maturities. At the intermediate level, the tech lead is actually too active. They’re making a big splash, to be sure, but they’re also spreading themselves too thin, working way too many hours, not finishing things, or diving into things they should probably stay out of.
At the advanced level, the tech lead is highly visible and deeply engaged, but focusing his or her fire on the area where he or she can have the most impact. It’s still a lot of work, but you’re focused and impactful.
Craft clear and compelling visions tech leads!
The third capability in the Four Core is vision crafting. Vision crafting sounds lofty and grand, like something you’d expect to do wearing a black turtleneck and jeans while on a stage in front of thousands of people. It’s actually really practical and easy—mundane even.
Basically, what I need you to do is to craft clear and compelling visions for your team, even for simple tasks. Need them to change a button’s color? Vision crafting in this context can be a simple and quick, like, “Can you change the color to match the new branded comps using and the new style guide components because this new campaign is key for the product?”
Sounds wordy, but it’s a whole lot more inspiring than your dev pulling a sticky note off the wall that says, “Change .ctaButton background-color to #6a0dad.” The only reason you’d get out of bed to do that task is to get a paycheck. Most of us lead teams striving for more.
The vision is usually clear and compelling if it includes a how and a why. The how can be very detailed or sketchy, depending on the team. But it’s good for putting a few parameters or guardrails around how things should be. You’re the tech lead, after all, so need to provide direction at a pretty detailed level. You’re not Steve Jobs yet.
The why is a key though, so don’t overlook getting those words out of your mouth. The “why” gives your team some sense purpose. Even something mundane like “the company is rebranding” is better than nothing like “change the button color to X.” Everyone wants purpose in their work. You cannot name a single human being who doesn’t. It doesn’t have big and grand, but you’re the one person on the team who can create something. Do it tech leads!
At the beginner level, you’re probably not crafting any visions. Don’t worry. You’re hardly alone. This is a rare in the wild. At the intermediate level, your visions are getting clearer and more compelling, but you’re probably not articulating them often. At the advanced level, your visions are clear, compelling, and you’re repeating them in many different contexts, from big meetings to individual 1:1 sessions, tailored for each audience. You’re doing this because you feel the vision.
Alright tech leads! That’s a lot for one day. Remember, finish strong! Just a few days to the weekend.
-michael
Thanks for reading!
The Tech Lead Coaching email list and podcast are written and recorded by Michael Rice to bring more clarity, certainty, and confidence to my tech leads.
Tips? Have something you’d like me to cover or someone you want to me talk about? Drop me an email to me@michaelrice.com. Hope you will. 🤞
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