How do you become a leader without explicit authority?
Four years ago, I was coming back to work from my first maternity leave, and was working 3-days a week. I kept my head down and got my coding tasks done in my limited time in the office. Week after week, this is what I did. Soon it became crystal clear to me that even if I did this incredibly well — as well as I possibly could — I wouldn’t be given the opportunity to lead a team, or do more strategic work. I would just get more coding tasks assigned to me. At that point, I could see that what I was doing wouldn’t get me to where I wanted, but I also didn’t know what I should do instead. So here’s the post I wish I had read then.
Leadership can feel like this weird amorphous quality that people are told about, but not necessarily told how to do it. You’re told that you need to start exhibiting leadership so that you can step into Leadership roles, but what even does that mean? How do you lead without explicit authority? And do you have to be be overly confident and delve into possibly uncomfortable areas like blatant self-promotion and company politics to do so?
I asked my Twitter followers what being a leader meant to them, and you can click through to see that while the specifics differ, there are a lot of common threads — empowering others, building trust, having influence.
A good leader is someone who people want to follow. Everything else ties back to that one statement, but there are many ways that people can lead. People may want to follow a leader because he sees them as a whole human, and does everything in his ability to help them achieve their goals. People may follow a CEO because she lays out an ambitious vision for the company and inspires all the employees to work towards a common goal.
Leadership is a set of mindsets and how they affect your ability to influence others, not a role. There are certainly roles and jobs that have the word “Lead” or “Leader” in them. It is probably extremely difficult to do those jobs effectively without displaying some attributes of leadership. But there are plenty of people in leadership roles — maybe even some at your company — who you wouldn’t want to follow. So being called a leader doesn’t mean you are one. And it’s also not necessary to having a position of explicit Leadership to be a leader.
It’s frustrating to be stuck in that rut of wanting to take on more, of stepping up, but not knowing how. It sucks to do great work, but feel like you’re not being given opportunities. Whether you want to stay on a technical track or explore management, you need to get over that initial hump of being seen as a leader. Here’s a 3-phase process to follow:
1. Observe: What kind of leader do you want to be?
How do you figure out what you should do to be someone people want to follow? Start to observe the people around you — there are (hopefully) people who you would want to work with again. If there are not, consider starting a job search, but also think back on previous coworkers. Are there people for whom you might even consider leaving your job in the future for the chance to work with them again. Why? Is it that they always have your best interest in mind? Or they are a product visionary and clear communicator who can deliver presentations that motivate and excite? Is it that they challenge you to think critically about your technical decisions and ask the right questions to help you figure out a better approach? Or that you can always count on them to give you honest feedback? I have a very distinct memory of working with someone for about 6 weeks, and I experienced tremendous growth in how I approached technical architecture.
Similarly, pay attention to when you withdraw from people. Maybe that’s that you start to tune out when someone stands up to talk at a company meeting. Ask yourself why.
You may notice that even with the same person, you can at times want to follow them, and at other times withdraw from them. Tech is rife with extreme models of “successful leaders” who are product visionaries but awful to work with. Rather than completely emulate a person, be discerning about which attributes you’d like to take on and which you wouldn’t.
Be sure to look at people who aren’t in explicit leadership positions too. If you are drawn to working with them, they are probably most successfully displaying leadership without explicit authority. There are a bunch of lists out there of different types of leaders, like this one. You can probably think of people in your own workplace who fit into some of these leadership styles. See if one particular style resonates strongly with you. And if you only know of a particular type of leader (say, command-and-control), know that there are other options. My own leadership style is closest to servant leadership.
2. Experiment: Come up with a plan of action
Brainstorm a list of things to try. It might feel like you don’t have time, and that you need someone to give you permission to carve out time to do these things, but ponder this thought experiment: If you were your manager, wouldn’t you want someone to think critically about how they spend their time and constantly be trying to increase their impact (without needing to give them permission)? You’d probably be thrilled!
Examples are useful, so here are some possible things to try (assuming you are a technical IC): Respond as quickly as you can to code reviews and tech specs sent your way, see if a new hire or intern would like to get coffee and ask how you can help them, give props to someone at the weekly team meeting, have a whiteboard chat with a few people to brainstorm high-impact tasks or projects to improve a particular area of the codebase, volunteer to write a post for the engineering blog, commit to giving a brief tech talk in a few weeks, facilitate a meeting, speak up when something seems off, suggest process changes that make people’s lives easier.
Note that none of these things require permission from anyone, or a specific role or title. Though it might feel like you don’t have time, just block off an hour or two a week on your calendar. Let’s be honest — you’re not that efficient with your time that it would be the end of the world.
3. Analyze: What worked?
The feedback loop for leadership-ey things is less tangible than that of committing code. But it’s there — so it’s time to review the results of your experiments.
If you responded more promptly than usually to inquiries, did you find that people sought you out for advice and feedback more often? Does the new hire or intern you got coffee with message you on slack to ask you questions?
Think about the impact of the things you did. If you spoke up in a meeting to facilitate a conversation between people talking past each other, did you get some appreciation or feedback afterwards? If you documented how to contribute to a service, and emailed it with the team, take the time to feel good about the fact that you just massively decreased the time it takes for someone to get up to speed.
Take what worked and what you felt good about, and iterate on it. To be honest, it doesn’t really matter too much what it is. You may have experienced roadblocks with certain areas, but you’re probably starting to see that you don’t have to be stuck in the status quo, waiting for someone to say, “Hey, you’re really good at coding, why don’t you take on some leadership responsibilities now?” You can just do some things that make sense to you. If what you want is to move into an explicit Leadership role, now when it’s time for a team to have a Tech Lead or Manager or Project Lead, you’ll already have been exhibiting “leadership attributes.” And if you don’t, you can still be a leader and continue to expand your impact.
If this post resonates with you, email me at jean@jeanhsu.com and let me know how your experiments go.
Note: This is meant as a starting point to get you out of that “how can I lead if I’m not given opportunities” rut. There are very real and common biases and patterns that exist that make it easier for certain people to be seen as leaders and move into leadership roles, while others (namely, women and people of color, but also introverts, people who are not overly confident, and really anyone that doesn’t fit a specific mold) experience a lot of friction and setbacks. That’s a topic for another post.
