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Leadership

Leadership in the Technology department is distributed: it belongs to whoever is taking the lead on something, not only to people with seniority or line reports. Those who do hold senior or management roles lead by serving.

Distributed leadership

Anyone can lead: as the Engineering Owner or Product Owner of an objective, when running a design session or workshop, when leading an investigation or an experiment, or when they see something that needs doing and start. Distributing leadership gives people ownership and accountability and brings more perspectives into decisions. It makes the department more adaptable and keeps ideas and feedback flowing in every direction.

When you take the lead, the behaviours we expect are:

  • active listening rather than directing the conversation
  • coaching, mentoring and sharing knowledge rather than teaching or preaching
  • taking responsibility for coordination, communication and documentation, without needing to own everything
  • taking accountability for the thing you are leading

Servant leadership

Those in senior and management positions point the spotlight away from themselves and onto their teams, and make sure they are never a single point of failure. The questions they keep asking are "how can I best serve my team?" and "how can I help my team thrive?"

What we ask of ourselves as leaders

As a leader in this department, I am:

  • A servant. I lead from behind, uplifting and supporting. Commanding others diminishes my leadership. I distribute my responsibilities and my team's so that we are resilient. I ask more questions than I answer.
  • Mission-driven and vision-guided. I am a missionary, not a mercenary. I champion our mission, vision and values, and I look beyond the immediate to the medium and long term.
  • Kind. My interactions are guided by kindness, without exception.
  • Trusted. I am open and honest. I do not mask or warp the truth, and I keep confidences. I demonstrate the behaviours I expect of others.
  • Accountable. I take full responsibility for my actions and my team's outcomes, successes and learning moments alike.

And because I will never know less than I know right now, learning is at the heart of it. I am:

  • Bold. Strong opinions, loosely held. My views may be distinctive and unpopular.
  • Brave. Being proven wrong is the best outcome, so I actively try to disprove my own views. I am curious and willing to explore.
  • A mentor. I see the potential for learning in everyone and encourage curiosity, bravery and development every day.
  • A student. Of technology, of leadership, and of the ideas we build on: agile, lean, DevOps, rugged software and software craftsmanship.

Duties

Every leadership role has specific duties, set out in the progression framework. These apply to all of them:

  • succession planning, so that nothing depends on one person
  • seeking feedback, and giving clear and timely feedback to those around you
  • reporting problems early and acting to mitigate them