While searching for the answer, I realized the TTGM framework. TTGM stands for Teach - Trust - Set Goals - Mentor. A mnemonic to remember it is Time To Gain Mastery.
Honing & keeping technical skills sharp require time - time to learn & practice the hard skills. Practicing often involves working on complex, intensive projects. How then, might you make time available for also leading people?
My mind supplies a natural response: Trust. You need to delegate to those whom you are leading - and trust them to find ways to succeed or learn quickly from failures to do better in the next iteration. I am reminded of Master Kim’s line from the Korean Show, Dr Romantic 2, “A person does as well as you trust them to, matures as much as you care for them, and as much as they are acknowledged they grow.”
“A person does as well as you trust them to, matures as much as you care for them, and as much as they are acknowledged they grow.”
A second thought knocks and says: Teach. Achieving mastery in a subject demands that you be able to teach it to a beginner; that you build the ability to go back to the basics and build ladders of understanding to higher levels. As a leader, if you can guide someone to level up from basic to advanced, you become an expert. Gerald Weinberg says in his book, Becoming a Technical Leader, “Whenever I want to learn about something, I arrange to teach a course on the subject.” Teach enough number of times, and it’ll likely involve people who learn differently than you, are curious about elements of your subject that you have not yet thought about, who struggle with parts that seem obvious to you - each of these will enable you to deepen your own roots in the subject.
“Whenever I want to learn about something, I arrange to teach a course on the subject.” - Gerald Weinberg
Set clear goals. For your growth in technical skills & leadership. Where do you want to grow? Teach it. What do you already know well? Continue practicing it. Do you want to switch gears to try something new? Enlist the help of others who are further on the road to mastery in it. Being clear about your goals will help you direct your energies efficiently.
Mentor. Go the extra mile. Leading involves supporting people in their growth journey. There will be moments where you need to choose - to focus on the technical work or assist another in how to fend - this will define the line between you as the technical expert and you as the technical leader. There is no right answer here, except that if you strive to be both, you have to divide your time between both streams. How much of your technical expertise do you sacrifice? What will you get in return? Will it be worth the sacrifice? The answers are unique to you. What is certain is that to be a technical leader, you must take additional steps beyond the convenient ones to enable others to become independent contributors on the team. Learn & practice the art of mentorship.
This question was posed by Gerald Weinberg in the preface of his book, How to Become a Technical Leader.
Read my introductory review of the book here.