10 things to stop doing to become an effective Tech Lead

The Tech Lead role comes with a lot of responsibilities but some of those are unrealistic and we are the ones putting them on ourselves. 

To remove some of the burdens of the role, here are some things to stop doing to increase your effectiveness as a Tech Lead:

1. Stop trying to fix everyone's problems 

You are not a therapist! 

An effective tech lead listens and offers support, but does not try to fix all the problems people have.

Although it’s important to empathise, you have to set clear boundaries and refer colleagues to professional support when you are not equipped to deal with the situation.

2. Stop trying to become a developer ninja 🥷🏼

You might already be an amazing developer. That is great!

But, as an effective tech lead, that is not your goal anymore. 

As a tech lead, your success is tightly tied to the success of your team and to ensure this group's success, you will have to spend more time on people and business and less on code. If that is not the case, something is not taken care of in the team.

3. Stop guarding the gate 👮‍♀‍ 

Stop being the only one that can approve a production release!

Stop having to approve every PR before it moves further in the pipeline!

Instead, share this responsibility with your team:

• Trust them more

• Give them more credit

• Allow for more mistakes and fix them together

Just stop being a blocker! Trust me, you will feel so much better! 😉

4. Stop being a knowledge silo 📦️

Stop holding on to all the information! You don’t have to do this! 

An effective tech lead works continuously to distribute whatever context and knowledge is in their heads. So take the burden from your shoulders and start sharing:

• Do knowledge-sharing sessions and give away that knowledge to your team members

• Let others drive some initiatives and take some ownership

• Answer everyone’s questions

5. Stop trying to stay on track with the latest technologies in your free time

Make learning new skills part of your day-to-day as a team so you can learn together through the use of:

• hackathons 

• learning days

• spikes to experiment with a new tool

6. Stop trying to predict every way in which your system can go wrong

Be open to "fast fail and learn"

A system will go wrong and you will deal with it when you get there together with your team. 

7. Stop being the go-to person for every technical topic

Stop giving all the technical answers all the time! 

Instead, teach people to teach themselves: share where to start looking for the answers, guide them on the road to answers, and let them struggle a little.

(At the end of the day, that is how you learned right? 😁)

You don’t have to solve all the technical problems in the team. 

You are accountable for the results but not responsible for the fix. This is where you have to rely on your team to bring in the required knowledge and skills and fix it together. 

Delegation is key.

8. Stop being the first one to talk 

in meetings, in 1-1, in the standup, on Slack questions 

Let others take some responsibility:

• Make space for other voices -> let others give it a go

• Listen more before jumping in

• Learn to stay in awkward silence

Tip: I have a trick for this that works in a remote environment: I always stay on mute so even if I start talking people don’t hear me

9. Stop working over hours to keep up with everything 

Working over hours does not only affect you, it affects your team.  

They look up to you! If you overwork they overwork and that is a recipe for disaster.

Practice self-care and setting proper boundaries - people will follow ;)

10. Stop being there all the time

Usually people like the feeling of others depending on them, of being everywhere. Gives them a feeling of control.

I can tell you from experience, that feeling is fake.

As an effective Tech Lead, you want to make yourself dispensable.

Your team should function just as well with you as without you.

You can test this with a simple experiment: Go on a real vacation (no notifications, no work emails). See what happens 🙂

⭐️Extra 11. Stop focusing only on tech!

Investing into levelling up your non-tech (soft) skills is one of the best things you can do to become a more effective Tech Lead because most technical problems are people problems 😃.

—--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Let me know what you think

➡ Just reply to this email with your questions and what from these topics you would like me to deep dive into in the next editions

➡ If you are not already subscribed and want to see more content like this press the button 

Thank you so much for being here! ☀️

Remember: you are not alone on this journey 😊

Until next time,

Ane