During the Technical Guidance Training, an internal training, which we have at SHARE NOW we ask people from the leadership positions to tell their leadership stories. It's an open form where people talk about the things they consider important. One person, the head of our tribe once shared their ⚡️ insight that I consider important: when you are in the leadership position, people look at how you behave.
Pfff, you may say. I look like anyone behaves, that's what our monkey-like species do! But hear me out. In any team, group, or party of people, we have leaders. Assigned or the ones who emerged themselves, but we have someone to look at and assess their behaviour.
Staff+ are also leaders, your team and other people in engineering are watching you. This is your privilege and another tool that you can use to help ourselves and business.How?
1️⃣ Be confident. Once, when I wasn't staff yet, I was pairing with a person who had just finished university and started to work for a big consulting agency here in Hamburg. We had a task to write some tests to solidify critical software migration. I took this as an opportunity to learn
Java and overall, I thought, that I was learning more from this person than they from me. Later, I got feedback from their supervisor that they are happy with my contribution to this task because my calm and steady approach has brought confidence to the task. My pairmate was quite hectic initially, he knew the theory, but he was under the pressure of the task size and how critical this task was. From my side, I was not scared at all. I did not know what to do, but I was confident that we could do it. My behaviour made them feel safe and do the job.
As
Staff+ you need to radiate confidence and calmness. We know that this is only a job, and we can do it. It's only a matter of time. Other people will follow you.2️⃣ Normalise things. Some people might be hesitant to ask questions, because they consider them "stupid" and obvious to others. There are lots of such people, actually. You, as
Staff+ can change that — just ask a "stupid" question and show others that it's safe and helps to achieve the results. This way, you normalise some behaviour in your group. You can normalise other things as well and make your team stronger this way:
* fail, take public accountability for the failure, and fix it — this way you show that making mistakes is safe;
* on the meeting, ask a person who has something to say, but is silent, about their opinion. Make a room for them to speak out.
* praise or celebrate in public — normalise acknowledging the good things 🎉
3️⃣ Be positive. You have to be positive you don't have any other choice.
Staff+ it's not a role where you can say — things are shit and I don't know what to do about it. Things might be tough, and it's fine to recognise that. But you need to indicate that there is a way out or that you, together, will figure it out. Because if you don't do it, people might lose hope at all, and this is not what we want. For any problem, after a short period of grief, there is only one question to ask: what can we do about it?.Staff+ behaviour might be an effective motivation for people around. Let's use it wisely. You and your actions shall lay down a solid bedrock upon which it's possible to build and strive to success.