Questions tagged [leadership]

Leadership has been described as "a process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task".

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145 votes
12 answers
27k views

How to lead a group of developers who have much more talent than you

I recently was asked to take a hybrid leadership/development role with the client I am working for. I will be billing at a higher rate and responsible for reporting and other administrative tasks. I ...
USER_8675309's user avatar
  • 5,115
135 votes
18 answers
51k views

How to react when employee is not interested in career development?

I am a manager at a large tech company. Three months ago, all the managers at our company had career conversations with our team members. One of my team members has expressed that she is not ...
Dave Welford's user avatar
119 votes
8 answers
21k views

How do I give feedback when I know more about the topic than the presenter?

I believe I have specialized expertise in a specific area of technology. At work, I often have to sit through presentations given by others in the same area of technology that I have expertise on. ...
Lone Learner's user avatar
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109 votes
13 answers
27k views

An employee has low self-confidence, and is performing poorly. How can I help?

I am looking for some leadership/management advice. My situation is quite similar to this one, but (as you'll see below) I'm already trying to do what was suggested in those answers. I manage a ...
Spiny Norman's user avatar
94 votes
11 answers
26k views

Should I tell an employee she's sabotaging herself, two weeks before I leave my job?

I am currently the manager of a team of 15 people. In two weeks' time I will leave this job for a totally different one, in a different sector and a neighbouring city. At my current job, I have one ...
JK39's user avatar
  • 927
81 votes
8 answers
32k views

Co-Worker quit today, boss is pretending it didn't happen. Is this weird?

I'm an engineer at a small business that employs 10 people, well 9 now. One of our machinists that has worked here longer than almost anyone else texted our boss this morning and said he is quitting, ...
TheColonel26's user avatar
75 votes
10 answers
21k views

I'm a leader/manager. One of my team members told me they received a better job opportunity. Should I disclose this information with my boss?

Currently I'm working in a leadership/management position for a tech company. Part of my responsibilities is to help my team as a career advisor and guide them to improve their performance and achieve ...
Bonifacio's user avatar
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75 votes
11 answers
19k views

I'm the Tech Lead, my boss is the PM. In case of disagreement, how much should I push my point of view?

I'm the tech lead of a project and my boss is the Project Manager. He is formally in charge to decide what to put inside the project and I'm in charge of deciding how things will be implemented. In ...
heapOverflow's user avatar
  • 4,341
69 votes
7 answers
10k views

Why do interviewers ask leadership questions even for "follower" positions?

I remember trying out for choir in college where I had to go through an interviewing process. The director asked me questions like "How did you form, lead, and manage a singing group?" as if I was ...
Mickael Caruso's user avatar
68 votes
11 answers
16k views

How to help an experienced developer transition from junior to senior developer

I have a subordinate developer on my team who has 15 years experience and has decent technical skills, yet requires the kind of handholding that I usually associate with junior developers. He asks for ...
Rhys Edwards's user avatar
58 votes
11 answers
24k views

Senior employee of my team understood my email as an order and didn't like it

I'm leading the Agile team with a flat structure and we recently got a new team member. He is 10 years older than me and more experienced in some things (emotional intelligence) and he is local in a ...
Mark's user avatar
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58 votes
10 answers
15k views

Asked to be lead of my slightly disgruntled team

I recently came on to a team as a senior engineer at the same level as my peers. Many permanent members of this team have long standing issues with the management. There isn't a lead person on the ...
Dinglemeyer NeverGonnaGiveUUp's user avatar
57 votes
3 answers
12k views

How can I recommend that a colleague be excluded from my team?

Background My colleague and I were hired as leads on a new data warehousing team. She does great in meetings, knows the right questions to ask and appears very competent in customer-facing situations....
user3739835's user avatar
55 votes
6 answers
13k views

How should a leader behave when they miss deadlines themselves?

As a leader in an organization, one has to set an example by being disciplined. But sometimes even leaders can commit a blunder, be it a consequence of workload or anything else. My friend (we are ...
user5377's user avatar
  • 1,765
53 votes
11 answers
17k views

Am I overreacting to a new rule where I have to check-in my status every morning?

Three months ago I started a role at a new company as a software engineer. Within two months, I helped onboard the team to a lot of contemporary best practices. They didn't do proper source control, ...
Proton8's user avatar
  • 1,599
48 votes
9 answers
24k views

Should I put my name first or last in the team members list?

I have been working on a project for about 4 months. When it started, it was me alone, but over time, I was "assigned" a few other employees to help with tasks. I was told to delegate stuff to them ...
Kaito Kid's user avatar
  • 2,790
47 votes
11 answers
24k views

Boss wants someone else to lead a project based on the idea I presented to him

This is going to be kind of meta. I work for a city government and am, and I say this humbly, probably the most technical person on staff. I've built websites, deployed with Docker, Heroku and AWS, ...
AnonyWorker's user avatar
44 votes
6 answers
8k views

How to deal with a difficult junior programmer?

I am the technical lead of my team and have joined that team a couple of months ago. Most members were there before I was. It took me a couple of weeks to earn the trust of my team but I was helped by ...
ereOn's user avatar
  • 2,031
43 votes
6 answers
8k views

How to include activities demonstrating leadership from games onto a resume?

Over the past 4 years while at school I've been almost fully responsible with running the ins and outs of my guild. Its been a full time job managing literally hundreds of people ranking from the ...
easymoden00b's user avatar
  • 1,280
42 votes
9 answers
29k views

What can I do if I am asked to learn different programming languages very frequently?

I am a software developer and I know languages like Java, JavaScript. A few days ago manager asked me to learn some other language to work on services related to those language. It took me few days ...
AConsumer's user avatar
  • 590
41 votes
7 answers
16k views

Is it normal for startup team leads not to protect their team members?

I've recently switched jobs after 13 years from a team lead position in a corporate environment to a senior developer role in a kind of a startup, mostly due to financial reasons. I have a ticket ...
mostafawornout's user avatar
38 votes
7 answers
2k views

Should I Just Deal With Interruptions?

I'm a lead developer of a 6 person software team. Among the applications we develop are some that are used for in-house operations. As lead, I'm a resource to the other developers and a liaison to ...
Chris Schiffhauer's user avatar
35 votes
9 answers
6k views

Do people need to be positive to be promoted?

I am a software engineer by trade. I am good at my job. I get universally good reviews. I have lead two teams (at two different companies). Both were successful - delivering our product on time, with ...
Telastyn's user avatar
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33 votes
3 answers
6k views

As a peer, how can I provide leadership for my team?

I have been listening to a lot of leadership podcasts. One was an interview with former Indianapolis Colts' Super Bowl-winning coach Tony Dungy, who wrote a book titled The Mentor Leader: Secrets to ...
Nicole's user avatar
  • 8,681
32 votes
4 answers
1k views

How do I become better at Delegating work?

I am an introverted programmer who is very good at what I do. I have been suddenly pushed into a position of a team lead, due to my seniors leaving jobs/ moving to different Projects. I have always ...
leo's user avatar
  • 329
31 votes
9 answers
3k views

As a leader, how can I communicate to my staff that I don't need to be as technical as they are?

As a leader, on a few occasions, I had team members wondering why I was not remaining technical or why I was not paying attention to the most technical aspects of their jobs. On the other hand, I ...
David Segonds's user avatar
29 votes
7 answers
18k views

How to handle a team that does not want you as team lead?

The team lead of a project in my company got promoted to Project Manager and one of the oldest developers who worked for 2 years on the project expected to become team lead. I worked in a different ...
Julia's user avatar
  • 1,112
29 votes
8 answers
10k views

How Do I Motivate a Junior Developer?

Background I'm a Team Lead for a software development department and about 4 months ago I began aggressively spearheading an internal program to hire and train up junior developers, specifically ...
Garandy's user avatar
  • 616
26 votes
4 answers
5k views

Am I overly concerned about a newly hired Senior Developer with low performance? [closed]

TLDR: This is my first time having to deal with is apparently incompetent behavior as a Lead Dev (note: I am NOT in a superior/management position). Am I being too critical? What actions should I ...
Reverse Engineered's user avatar
26 votes
9 answers
3k views

What makes employees hesitant to speak their minds?

It seems that at every job I have had, there was little expectation to be candid. People seemed to be walking on eggshells, and wouldn't offer an honest opinion. For example, at my present job, we ...
Indecalke's user avatar
  • 279
22 votes
9 answers
9k views

How should Directors deal with an overbearing branch Manager?

Talking about a branch manager who gets great pipeline and conversions, the numbers all look right, but employee turnover is very high. His high standard for his staff, requiring high work ethic and ...
gstea96's user avatar
  • 349
22 votes
11 answers
2k views

Frameworks to advance diversity, equity and inclusion

I am a manager at a mid-size software company where I am responsible for several engineering teams (30 people approx). I'd like to attract and retain more diverse talent but don't know how to advance ...
Josh's user avatar
  • 579
21 votes
7 answers
12k views

How can I suggest a list of improvements to my leaders/team without offending them?

I have noted down a list of ways I think we can drastically improve our efficency. Mainly relating to an inefficient attempts at using an Agile methodology. I have some big improvements to suggest in ...
Bekahland's user avatar
  • 431
21 votes
5 answers
2k views

How do I handle an employee situation when I only have perceived authority but no actual authority?

I am a hypothetical dept. chairperson at a high school (I no longer get paid for the position but am still considered the chair). My authority is really next to nil but the dept members look to me for ...
Xandria's user avatar
  • 313
19 votes
6 answers
7k views

I feel like I'm thinking alone on a team-based project, while other members just follows what I said without any input. What should I do?

I feel like the team members that I work with seems to be just nodding automatically to what I say. Yes, I'm assigned as the project leader, but I don't expect that all my suggestion to be followed ...
el-cheapo's user avatar
  • 974
18 votes
7 answers
2k views

How can we encourage people to visit conferences or do anything else to improve skills?

We're a small team of around 15-20 people. Around 70% of them are really passionate in what they're doing, visit conferences, spend even their weekends on hackathons and have a big progress in their ...
user avatar
17 votes
7 answers
8k views

Management is pushing 'pairing' on non-programming related tasks. Is this a correct use of pairing? [closed]

I recently became the lead on a new team. My previous team was more pure software development. We pair-programmed ~80% of the time utilizing TDD. My new team is in charge of supporting, maintaining, ...
Bilbo Baggins's user avatar
17 votes
6 answers
6k views

CTO acts as Individual Contributor (IC)

This is a "Team / Tech Lead acts individually over leading a team" type question, but at a higher level of a CTO. We're a small fully-remote business with a successful product solving ...
sabok61434's user avatar
17 votes
4 answers
5k views

I offended an employee by discussing his performance. Should I try to make amends?

I have an employee that I think has been underperforming the last few months. I don't have a "smoking gun" to prove that he is underperforming, however I do have some circumstantial evidence and a gut ...
ProgDog's user avatar
  • 703
16 votes
3 answers
1k views

How to lead teams to turn criticism into collaboration

As a designated leader who has gotten the respect of those I lead - here's a problem I've had before. When working on project is where there are other potential leaders with strong opinions, I've the ...
Lucas Kauffman's user avatar
14 votes
3 answers
5k views

Dealing With an Insubordinate Coworker

I am a project manager for a small team (about 7 people). I was chosen for this position by management over the one other senior member of the team, let's call him Bob. We both had reasonably ...
RoboticsChick's user avatar
14 votes
2 answers
4k views

Great CEO with horrible management style

I'm a relatively inexperienced HR professional. I've been with my organization for 1 year and have a situation that I feel very positive about, but am unclear about my next steps. Here is a little ...
Chris Brink's user avatar
14 votes
1 answer
551 views

Show leadership with self-organized team

I believe in self-organized teams and management by objectives, unfortunately that leads my boss to think that I'm not leading. I'm a technical lead for more than 5 teams. From my perspective it's ...
Chris's user avatar
  • 5,126
13 votes
2 answers
4k views

What to do when your CEO is destroying your startup? [closed]

I founded a mobile application company with 3 other people, three of us took 10% while one took 70% and the title of CEO. We were ok with this because it was his idea and he had the connections to get ...
user avatar
13 votes
5 answers
3k views

As a team lead how can I bring changes into the team without resistance from team?

I have been joined to new team and new project as a Team lead. This position is first time for me. I am leading 3 modules. I am above the 3 module leaders. I have identified few areas where ...
Babu's user avatar
  • 6,054
13 votes
4 answers
2k views

Is it okay to be wrong as a CTO?

I'm working as a CTO in a small company. We have a few part-time employees but will increase the workforce when needed. For the past 6 months I've been working on introducing tests with the goal of ...
iveqy's user avatar
  • 249
13 votes
3 answers
1k views

How to delegate work when I'm not a lead

I've read the excellent answer by bethlakshmi on how to better delegate work, but I think my problem slightly precedes that one. After 1 year at my company, in our year-end review, I was praised and ...
im so confused's user avatar
12 votes
6 answers
7k views

My staff is pressuring me to fire a talented employee [closed]

I hired a very talented employee a month ago part-time and this has triggered a stir ever since. The employee is talented, creative, innovative, courteous, generous and very intelligent. He was very ...
Jose21's user avatar
  • 211
12 votes
6 answers
1k views

How to demonstrate technical leadership skills in a situation where my inputs may not be welcome?

I work at a large software enterprise. Multiple orgs, multiple teams, huge hierarchy of managers and managers of managers. I am a fairly senior individual contributor with more than a decade of ...
geekgawd's user avatar
  • 419
12 votes
4 answers
3k views

How do I handle conflict with an extrovert boss?

I am a female programmer who is an introvert. My lead is a male who is an extrovert. We are a team of two and we both started in this company at the same time couple of months back and my lead is new ...
coder coder's user avatar

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