Leadership 101

I believe in full transparency and open communication and I always try to practice what I preach. I do not pretend to be a leadership guru, nor do I write this to offer a magic bullet or a fast track to leadership (Spoiler alert: there isn’t). I am writing this because I want to bring together the knowledge I have gathered and processed over the past months, all the experiences I have gained over the past 25 years and consolidate them into a set of core principles that I believe embody the foundations of good leadership. It is my way of making sure that, now that I have decided to take on the role of architecture team lead, I have at least done the initial work and am prepared.

To prepare for this focus shift, I’ve actively been working with several people to define my personal management style and have been reading a lot of material on leadership and team management. In doing so, I’ve been able to evaluate more than 25 years of real-world experiences with people leading and managing teams - of which I was a member or closely related to. My previously purely personal opinions about some of these leaders, both good and bad, have now been underpinned by several true leadership gurus and seminal works. They have confirmed what, over the course of those 25 years, I had come to conclude. Even more, I now know why I had certain opinions on their leadership skills.

My commitment as a team lead is a first fundamental step in the implementation of how I believe a team lead should operate. It’s the cornerstone to start from and to fall back upon: open communication. This thing paints a bigger picture and tells the story of how I live this commitment and how I have consolidated a lot of ideas that are coined plentiful and which we all have heard before, in a thinking framework that makes sense to me and resonates with my life principles and the fundamental care taker I am.

As always: if you believe that I’ve made an error, cut a corner or missed some subtlety, please get in touch and let’s discuss it, because I’m always looking for things to improve in whatever I do. Basically I apply agile methods to every aspect of my life.

So, how did I come up with this new direction for the next professional chapter in my life? And why does it involve leadership?

Leadership by Numbers

Why do I believe I’m a good team lead? Of course I do, because if I didn’t, why would I pursue a role that is so fundamental to people, that can make or break the work of others?!

For starters, I took a fair amount of time over the past months, to actively outline this next step in my professional life. I didn’t start out with the idea of becoming a team lead. It was the outcome of some brutally honest reflection on the past 25 years and looking forward to the 15 to come.

Reiterating that entire journey is something for when we can spend some time and discuss it over a nice BBQ or a pint of beer. Yet, simply looking at the numbers, should probably give you a hint:

In 11 (officially non-leadership) positions, I ended up actually leading 8 teams, ranging from developers, over functional, technical and business analysts, but also technical writers and solution & application architects.

Indexing those positions and next categorising them as jobs ‘I am really proud of’, and those that were… ‘less gratifying’, it turns out that in every one, that to this day I still look back upon with a smile, I actually led a team in some way. In the ones that didn’t make it into my history books, I didn’t assemble and/or lead a group of people.

Yes, not just “lead”, often it was actually first “assemble”. Because when faced with existing, yet disconnected teams, I often created communities to instigate cross-team communication, thus essentially creating a virtual team. Now, I never put myself “up” there as their leader. I simply do the stuff people don’t like to do: schedule recurring meetings, make an agenda, follow that agenda, take notes and document the outcome, create action lists and follow up upon those. In a way, I first and foremost try to do everything that might be a roadblock for people to cooperate, I simply try to make things happen ↗, to be useful ↗.

When I was confronted with these numbers, 8 out of 11, and the explicit definition of what I did with and for those teams, I had to admit - probably being once again the last one to actually see it - that I’m probably a team lead, and apparently even by nature. Give me a team and you essentially give me my fundamental purpose, the reason I leap out of bed on Monday, the fundamental answer to that existential professional “Why?” question.

Leadership requires Focus

That motivation, that urge, that drive, is what is found in many lists of fundamental leadership traits: the focus on the success of the team and not on personal success. When leading a team, as a team lead your sole focus should be on the team and its members. That’s what you are meant to do, that’s your task. The well-being of the team and each member is a full-time job and requires a full-time focus. Combining it with other operational work is a form of multi-tasking and I believe we have by now, in 2024, all come to the agreement that people, by definition, simply can’t multi-task and if they try to do so, that the quality of each task is degraded. Focus is key, especially in team leadership.

I even dare to go as far and call it a conflict of interest. Because when taking on architectural work yourself, alongside leading a team of architects, then who leads your own architectural work? In doing so, I feel it would be a form of dictatorship, because apparently, as a leader, you believe you are omnipotent and don’t need to be led?! Still, at the same time, you believe your team members have to be. There is a mind f*ck that I can’t reconcile and therefore will never do myself: you’re an architect doing architectural work, or you’re a team lead, ensuring that the architects on your team can do their best architectural work. Period.

Yes, in several situations I was both a team member and a leader of the team. In my defense, I was never officially the team lead. I just did it, because I experienced a gap and tried to fill it. Every time I felt uncomfortable, because I couldn’t focus properly, which made it difficult and I felt like I couldn’t do my best as a leader. Again, because I wasn’t the leader, it never came out so clearly at that moment. Now I know why.

Leadership fosters Growth

To ensure that team members can bring their best work to the table, a team lead has to focus on the team and its members. Two very important focus points come into play here: inclusivity and personal development.

Inclusivity means that every member of the team feels 100% part of the team. From the most senior architect to the most junior intern. There can be absolutely no internal hierarchy that puts anyone “above” someone else. No one can feel superior and no one should feel inferior, in any way.

There is a vast amount of constructive ways to support inclusivity: pair seniors with juniors and make sure that by the end of their cooperation, the junior has acquired additional skills that would enable him to repeat the task more autonomously. Turn things upside down: let juniors take the lead in a task and turn seniors into shared knowledge centers for the juniors to consult and use to reach their goal - inherently the seniors oversee them. More classic examples: organise regular huddles, where everybody presents and answers questions about their work, driving the team progress as a group effort (I prefer a broader interpretation of “daily stand-up” 😇).

Basically: make sure that no one should or can take credit for a task just by himself; ensure that there are always multiple members involved and required to reach the goal. It’s always a team effort. This also ensures that no black holes or ivory towers of knowledge are created.

Inclusivity has an inward orientation. It tries to bring together the team as a whole. Personal development now injects growth in such system. Personal growth of team members results in growth of the team. And just like the team is more that the sum of the team members, the growth of the team is more that the sum of the personal development of the team members. The return on investment in personal development repays itself multiple times in terms of team performance.

Leadership is the awesome responsibility to see those around us rise.

Simon Sinek

This doesn’t imply that every team member has to be identical. Take the prime example of uniformity, the army, in mind for a second. Although the team has a common battle ground and common weapons, just like in any army there are abilities and preferences that typically result in specialities. Team members have their personal set of goals, priorities and interests. As a team lead it is very important to identify these, because in them seeds for personal development are to be found. Find what makes a team member tick and nurture that, provide time dedicated to exploration and study, choose tasks that require skills in that particular area that are just beyond his abilities and above all create a space where he is confident that it’s okay to “make mistakes”.

Words matter and even a simple change in wording can help set a completely different scene. Try this for a change: replace “make mistakes” by “learn” and suddenly even the goal no longer sounds negative in any way. After all, don’t we commonly state that “you learn from your mistakes”? Embracing mistakes as a source of learning is such an important trait to… learn.

Leadership embraces Management

“Team Lead”, “Leadership”… words indeed do matter. I remember very clearly to this day words from a wonderful mentor early on in my professional career: “The difference between (managerial) power and leadership is that power is given from above, while leadership is given by your equals.” He was trying to frame a decision (from above) to inject an outsider in our team to manage it. Up to that day, I had been leading the team by the grace of all team members and was initially not amused by this deus ex machina. As with many of my mentor’s words, they did strike a nerve and were transformed into a principle I’ve adhered to ever since: leadership trumps management and I will always pursue the former.

Fast forward 25 years and I have, of course, fine-tuned this idea: both leadership and management are important aspects with respect to a team. Management basically deals with numbers and is a matter of the head. It requires careful thinking and should be very much like lady justice: blind.

Leadership on the other hand deals with people and is a matter of the heart. It requires listening and should be empathic. While management mainly focusses on performance, leadership brings trust to the table. So you can basically trust management with your life and leadership with your wife.

I still believe that leadership trumps management, but I also see management as a necessary evil that can coexist with leadership to support it. Together they form a sacred marriage for a happy and performing team. And only for that reason and in that constellation, I can accept that a team lead is introduced in a team and is how I will always introduce myself in any team.

You manage things; you lead people.

Grace Murray Hopper

Leadership is Redundant

Taking on this new role implies that I lay to rest the role I’ve cherished for more that 25 years. Focus! A team lead, even that of an team of architects, is no longer an architect himself. He is fully service minded towards the team and its members now.

One thing that will remain unchanged is my consulting motto: I will always try to make myself redundant, I will always remove myself from any situation where I (no longer) can add value. This doesn’t mean I will try to abandon the team as soon as possible, no, on the contrary. It means that I will always try to make sure that in any output of the team, there is not a single dependency involving “me”.

I will question and challenge ideas, propose alternatives… all during the architectural process and I will do so to help each and every team member. No longer taking on the role of an architect doesn’t mean I erase those 25 years of experience. Those remain fully at your service. Yet I will be invisible in the result of that process. The team member is responsible, will remain accountable and must take credit for the output.

A good leader is a person who takes a little more than his share of the blame and a little less than his share of the credit.

John Maxwell

In every step of the way I will be there: in front of her, advertising, promoting, supporting her work, behind her, backing up and defending, and besides her, helping in any way possible like any other team member. The only place I will never take is hers, I will not impose my ideas, I will not undermine hers. I will only offer my ideas as humble targets for her to shoot at and practice. A Team Lead should ensure that team members are the best version of themselves, not himself.

It is better to lead from behind and to put others in front, especially when you celebrate victory when nice things occur. You take the front line when there is danger. Then people will appreciate your leadership.

Nelson Mandela

Leadership as a Service

Team Members are chosen to do their job. So is the team lead. The job of the team lead is to enable and motivate team members, not dictate how to do their job. Team members should know their job better than their team lead. The team lead must make sure that they can perform at their best.

Leadership is not about the results. It's about taking care of the people who are responsible for the results.

Simon Sinek

Even when the outcome isn’t what the team lead would (personally) prefer, he will always praise and defend it, because it is the outcome of a team effort. During that effort he can question and challenge, all to bring out the best of each member. Yet in the end, the final outcome is the best and must be treated as such.

A team lead nevers gets in a team member’s way, even more he will make sure that the road ahead of each member is free of any blockage. Pretty much like one of the offensive linemen in American football, he blocks opponents and protects his backs.

Team members can be blocked by many factors: it can be a human factor, a knowledge factor or a financial factor. As a team lead you deliver a de-blocking service for each of these: talking to HR to find ways to deal with personal situations, hire additional team members, finding courses or hire external experts, discussing & acquiring additional budgets,…

In whatever they do, team leads always advocate others more than they advocate themselves. They prioritise the needs of the team over their own. If problems arise, a team lead will be the first to face them. When successes are celebrated, the team lead is behind the bar. By creating such an environment, the team can perform at its best, with full support and complete trust. In a way, team leads therefore provide a service to their team, because only by the performance of the team can the performance of the team lead be measured. Team leaders never have a direct impact on the results. The result of their work is what the team can achieve through it. As true catalysts, they influence the outcome by influencing the process without being part of the outcome themselves.

Leadership requires Listening+Reflection

My team members can rest assured: I have been in their shoes, I have experienced many different team leads, each with their own good, bad and ugly style. So when a team member comes to me with a problem, I will listen without prejudice, not reshape the problem into something I think it could be, so that it becomes less relevant and try to make it go away. What I will do is listen until I understand the problem from her point of view and then try to give advice from that angle.

"It doesn't make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do."

Steve Jobs

It’s probably one of the more well-known quotes from Steve Jobs. My personal favorite though is harder to capture in a two to three line space. In 1992, Jobs explains that he tries to take “a longer term view on people”. Meaning that when he sees something not done right, he doesn’t rush in to fix it. When building a team, you’re building that team for the next decade, not the next year. So it is important to consider what to do so that the person that screwed up learns. And that can only start by fully understanding the person and that can only be achieved by listening.

In the same line I will always assist you in solving a problem, but I will never take it out of your hands, telling you “I will solve it.” The reason is evident: maybe my solution is not a real solution and by solving it my way, I may think the problem is resolved, while in reality it is not. If a team member suggests an approach to solving a problem, I will never ignore that approach and impose a different one. What I might do is propose one, offer one as an alternative, explaining why I think it might be a candidate. In the end it will always be the team member that chooses the way forward. By keeping the team member in charge of the problem resolution and only assisting, she can be the judge and also reap the honors. I can’t repeat it enough: a team lead is not the do-all fixer, the team lead enables, facilitates and never has to get any credits. Careful listening is the best strategy to fullfil those duties.

Listening is the first step in any learning process and learning is a constant factor in leadership. Dealing with people means that every situation is different, simply because every person is different. Learning to identify and apply all these sometimes subtile differences is a constant learning process. The vast amount of learning material out there is a blessing. However, it will always require more on-the-job learning and this on-the-job learning comes from reflection.

A team has goals that need to be achieved. The first step in doing so is to commit. Only from this commitment can valid actions be put forward. Each of these three steps is a source of reflection for a team leader. Reflecting on each step fosters improvements in subsequent iterations: How can we improve the definition of our goals? How can we make the commitment even more reliable? How can we better align actions with that commitment? What do the team members need to better execute the actions? The team leader continuously scans the people and the process, looking for improvements to positively impact the people and the outcome.

Leadership is Parenting

When I look at all this knowledge and best practices about leadership, I can’t shake the idea that leadership and parenting are not only intimately connected, but that they are actually one and the same - by a few years or so.

Let’s start with the goal of the team lead and compare it to that of a parent. So far I’ve used phrases like “ensure that team members are the best version of themselves”, “make sure that they can perform at their best” and “bring out the best of each member”. When I look at my children and try to define the fundamental goal I strive for when guiding them on their way, I pretty much use the same wording. As a parent I too want them to become the best version of themselves.

True leadership lies in guiding others to success. In ensuring that everyone is performing at their best, doing the work they are pledged to do and doing it well.

Bill Owens

The analogy also holds when we look at the way the relation is constructed. Both team members and children were a deliberate choice. They didn’t choose each other - although I firmly believe that the opportunity for team members to meet new team members before the final decision is made and have their say in the new hire is one not to be missed. And like brothers and sisters, in a way, they will have to get along and live happily together.

In that last aspect lies one of the first and foremost tasks of the team lead and parent: ensure that they can get along and live happily together. The team lead and parent share this responsibility to focus on the team, on the family and its serenity.

The tools they have at their disposal are grounded in the same principles: adhering to an open and constructive form of communication, listening and motivating create a foundation for both team members and children to rely on. Because one learns by doing, by making mistakes, they both benefit from a protected environment, which allows to learn by taking smart risks. Although we can believe in the good of everyone, we also know that this is sometimes too idealistic. So any good team lead and parent will also always hold their team members or children accountable for their actions.

It basically boils down to the most important lesson one should teach, the one message you must get across: “It’s okay to try and fail, I will support you to get back up again, always”.

In doing all that, one word takes a prominent place. One word can be used to clearly mark the boundaries of the playground. As a parent one stands above all others and that is “No”. Setting boundaries is one of the most important aspects of parenting and it is no different in leadership. It is easy to say “Yes”, because it makes everybody happy… for a little while at least. Children without boundaries are all over the place and although fun, it will cost them dearly in the long run, when they do encounter them.

Saying “No” to a team member is also about setting boundaries. Clearly marking the boundaries you expect them to adhere to, doesn’t limit them. On the contrary, it offers them full autonomy, within those boundaries. By clearly setting boundaries, as a team lead you openly give them your trust.

Often it even sounds more like “Why?” It is a conditional “No,” in the sense that it involves setting boundaries that are built on questions. When the questions are answered, the boundaries are removed, else they stay. The same principle also plays in parenting, only here the “Why?” questions rather arise with the other party involved ☺️

The art of leadership is saying no, not saying yes.
It is very easy to say yes.

Tony Blair

And just like parents have to learn to let go of their children, a good leader also has to let go. Because, if you don’t, you’re sending a message “I don’t trust you to do your job.” Trust, but verify ↗, check in from time to time, confirm the heading, advice, support, motivate. Just, don’t be part of the road and the goal. Make sure that they know that you trust them and will always be available when needed.

Leadership demands Accountability

OKRs ↗ (Objectives and Key Results) is a framework that helps a business define its goals, as well as a way to measure them. It’s made up of two components: Objectives, which are specific and clearly defined goals, and Key Results, which is how the goal’s progress is measured or monitored.

Although OKRs are almost as old as I am, I only came into contact with them after I became a parent. So I can only conclude that, again, on this topic too, leadership and parenting apply the same best practices, as the way I hold my children accountable is nothing more and nothing less than the principles of OKRs.

When my children pursue a new goal, I always take time to clearly define that goal together with them, essentially turning it into an objective. Given my own experience, a first step in supporting them consists of me sketching a scene that is bit more complete than the few words they initially can come up with to define it. This often brings new insights and more clarity.

Once the goal is clear we also try to come up with possible outcomes and/or consequences. One of the most profound lessons I’ve learned since I’ve become a parent is the importance of a clear definition of the end game. Without it, many quests are abandoned, lead to frustration or simply produce something completely different than what we had agreed upon. By itself these are all valuable lessons, yet when they occurs too often, a negative pattern can emerge teaching something undesirable: that one shouldn’t be accountable for their goals and not follow-through on them.

Key results in a way define a set of possible outcomes. They allow both parties to refer to them when discussing the goal and its progress. In case of committed OKRs - these are goals that are realistic and achievable - the key results are typically well defined, they can be “ticked off” and a clear positive or negative conclusion can be reached. In case of aspirational OKRs - these goals are ambitious and might not be reached - the road to the goal is more important than the goal itself, therefore the key results are more focused on the road towards that goal or define typically when to end trying to reach them.

So when one or more key result are triggered, both parties can use that trigger to claim victory or abandon the pursuit with their head held high. On the other hand not reaching any of these is therefore a clear and upfront commonly agreed upon sign that one derailed somewhere. As a parent or team lead it is now time to intervene and demand accountability.

When thinking about key results, I often find that they align with someone’s personal priorities and interests. Especially when the goal is suggested by the child itself, it is a good idea to understand the underlying priorities and interests that underpin this new goal. It all starts with listening! They are excellent candidates to start from when defining key results. Sometimes understanding these motivations can even lead to restating the goal itself, because goals based on poorly formulated or incomplete ideas require further clarification.

A Catchy Tale

My son plays baseball and not so long ago he expressed his desire to specialise as a catcher. Allow me to clearly state upfront that at that point in time I had only an uninformed, general impression that the catcher was one of the dullest and more passive roles on the field: catch the ball that the pitcher throws. I found it strange that a young boy would aspire that. So I had a lot of reasons to dive into this, because I at least had to know what we were talking about. After all I have a parental duty to ensure my son chooses wisely and can perform at his best.

After I had attended a pitch & catch training, I had to do two things: first, I had to completely revise my unfounded impression that the role of catcher was dull and passive. Second, I had to investigate my son’s motivation, because based on my new insights I had to see if his perception was correctly aligned with certain aspects of that role.

What I learned during that training was that more than half of the strategic plays start with the catcher. If, like I did, you believe that it’s the pitcher that decides what kind of ball he will throw, think again. The catcher is the one who oversees what is happening on the field, which bases are occupied and which runner he wants to try to put out. So his input in what kind of ball the pitcher is going to throw at him heavily influences the pitch.

So when I sat down with my son, discussing his interest in catching and gauging his priorities why he wanted to specialise in it, I learned that he considered it foremost to be a safe position, given all the protective gear that the catcher has. Okay, he recently had taken a hard pitch on his shoulder, so I could see where this was coming from. Luckily it wasn’t his only motivation. He also already understood the almost intimate relationship with the pitcher and he wanted to team up with a good friend. Finally, he just found it more fun than hitting and being in the field. All in all more than valid and enough reasons to pursue it. At this point I clearly confirmed my support for his goal. Goal, not yet an objective, because we still had to define it a bit more clearly and come up with some key results.

Knowing my son pretty well, I had to explore his feelings about the strategic importance of the catcher. Certainly, today’s specialised roles still focus primarily on doing their best on the basics. The pitcher tries to pitch a ball that is within the allowed window, that the catcher can catch and the batter hopefully misses. The batter most of the time still misses it, so the game currently doesn’t demand much strategy. Yet in a not so distant future, the coach and the whole team will expect such strategic alliance between pitcher and catcher and my son must be brutally honest today about subscribing to such future requirement. In that respect, it is an important key result that demands that effort will be addressed to learning and applying strategic plays as a catcher. If he doesn’t want to subscribe to that, he simply can not take on the role. News flash: He is going to specialise as a catcher!

Leadership in Reality

In the introduction I referred to the vast amount of great learning material that is available, if you want to dive in the world of leadership. When discussing listening and reflection, I touched upon the fact that on-the-job reality kicks in and adds another layer of things to learn.

As with any other discipline, leadership in books is all nice and dandy, yet reality is always a lot less schoolbook-like. It can be straight-up ugly. That doesn’t mean we can’t set a high standard and try to apply as much best practices as possible. If reality will push several of these off the table, we better make sure that our table is filled with an abundance of them.

This is what I bring to the table initially: a strong focus on the team and its growth, understanding the importance of management aspects while understanding the redundancy of the role, therefore being of service first, always listening first and then reflecting, essentially being a parent, giving trust and demanding accountability. And from there, tirelessly eager to learn and improve, always.