If we want quality feedback, we must know to be vulnerable. If we want to give quality feedback to our teams, we need to prepare a space for them to feel comfortable with being vulnerable. Feedback is a two-way street. Without sharing our stories, whether failures or successes, we cannot get quality feedback that truly helps. And we cannot give quality feedback if we don’t know enough about the person in front of us....

Leaders must show patience to listen. While dominating every meeting doesn’t strengthen your authority, listening to others does not undermine it. Meetings, especially the 1:1s, are not places to dictate your ideas breathlessly. You must have meaningful dialogues with your peers and reports to find the truth and more innovative solutions. Breathless leaders are quick to form their impressions about people and events, and they never spend time to confirm them....

Emotional maturity is essential for a successful management career. Vulnerability and emotional maturity are not mutually exclusive. Emotional maturity is not to be a ghoul. Emotional maturity is: Not to be overly sensitive to events. To think before reacting. To stay calm and attentive. To see the world more objectively than through our elevated emotions. Not to confuse directness and honesty with being disrespectful. To be less self-centric and more outcome-oriented....

Office and remote work have different strengths, and combining them brings out the best solution. Working from home means more focus time, less commute, and more flexibility in personal matters. More focus can undoubtedly improve productivity if your only measure is to count the lines of code you deliver. Engineering is more than programming, and it needs more than just more focus time for productivity. Long-term investments can improve short-term results, such as our code throughput....

Democratization of decision-making is not the same as the democratization of discussions. And often, we need just the latter. Usually, the reason why collaborations fail is that there are too many decision-makers present. And people think discussing a matter gives them the right to decide the action. It might, but not in an ideal scenario. Always have one final decision maker if the action is to make a decision. It does not have to be you, but whoever has the most knowledge and can see beyond....

Trust can be many things, two of which are to trust people’s competency and honesty. Honesty and competency are two different things even though they might have some overlapping areas. This distinction matters when you work with someone. They can be an honest person, but they might not possess the required skills to do a job well done. The same applies to competent but dishonest people. You need both of them in the same person if you are willing to work with them....

Things won’t change for the better on their own until you do something about it. It never did in my own life. Systematic self-improving is essential to attract opportunities to yourself and recognize them when they knock on your door. When you accept them, it is the same systematic self-improvement that will help you to complete the journey successfully until the next one comes around. Perhaps it is not this simple all the time, but for the majority of us, the formula is this simple....

When you decide between two options, see if there is a third one! And most of the time, that’s the correct answer. Clean code or not? Enough clean code… Do this or not? Do it and fail fast… Questions frame our way of thinking. When we are presented with only two questions, always check if another question is to be asked. And you will be surprised at what doors the new question opens in your head....

If you are having difficulty pivoting your teams, it could also mean an output-oriented mentality is dominant among people. It is time to think in terms of outcomes with your teams. How are they different? Simple: If you are solely focused on your deliverables, it is output-focused thinking as deliveries being your output. If you are focused on how you make a difference in your customer’s life, the difference is the outcome; hence, outcome-oriented thinking....

Some people confuse respect and humility shown to them with incompetence. How can you tell if you are on the receiving end of this confused treatment? Several: They never ask you for your opinion. They don’t answer you in a reasonable amount of time or at all, even if it’s their job or you built a relationship with them initially. They interrupt you constantly as they cannot show patience to listen to what you have to say....