Welcome back to the next edition of Seed the Way, a newly inspired newsletter where I share my adventures and explorations in software engineering leadership. Long before I ever became an engineering leader, I was a youth swim coach. I started through the assistant ranks at the age of 17. Eventually, I became a head coach of a summer program during my college years. After college, I took on a part-time role for a year round program. I mainly worked nights and weekends coaching mostly 10 to 14 year old swimmers.
Competitive swimming was one of my many passions as a kid. I was fortunate enough to swim on my college team at Georgetown for a couple of years. It’s an interesting sport to be a part of because it has both individual and team dynamics. There is a high sophistication of analytics, as well as technique. Of course, let’s not forget that there is a challenging, psychological aspect to the sport that requires a variety of approaches in communication, training, support and empathy.
Many of the coaches that influenced my earlier career weren’t incredibly empathetic. I was a child of the 80s and the style and charisma of coaches back then was predominantly focused on pushing you to your limits. There were moments of positivity, but that was between a lot of guilt and pressure to perform.
I realized at a young age that I was motivated by a presence of positivity. I was discouraged by negative feedback. I would regress when I was pressed to challenge myself until I failed. When I got into coaching, I knew from the start that I didn’t want to coach from a place of negativity. I wanted to challenge my athletes to get the best out of them. I needed to do it from a place of trust, certainty and empathy. I had to maintain positivity at all times.
I coached for roughly 9 years. Many of my athletes had success in their swimming careers. What I’m most proud of are the successes I hear about my former athletes in their life. I stay in touch with many of my former athletes. Some are reading this post as we speak. These relationships have lasted in many cases 25+ years because I coached from a position of positivity and saw my role as a servant leader.
What Is Servant Leadership?
Servant leadership is a philosophy that places emphasis on the importance of serving others first, rather than focusing solely on an individual’s singular goals and objectives. Servant leaders prioritize the needs of their team over their own personal interests. As such the greater whole of the team are more effective in achieving team goals often resulting in the development of a strong, loyal team.
The principles of servant leadership were introduced by Robert Greenleaf in the 1970s. He proposed that leaders must act as servants first, and leaders second. This means that the primary role of a leader is to serve the needs of their team, rather than expecting their team to serve them.
Leaders practicing this management philosophy would need to be adept at:
Listening: Prioritize listening to team members and seek to understand their needs and concerns.
Empathy: Demonstrate empathy and understanding towards their team members and strive to create a supportive/inclusive work environment.
Collaboration: Prioritize team collaboration and seek to build strong relationships at all levels of the team.
Trust: Build trust with team members through transparent and honest communication. It’s important to avoid surprises.
Growth: Place emphasis on growth and development of their team members. Seek ways to provide opportunities for learning and advancement.
Why I Apply Servant Leadership with My Teams
The VPE role can be incredibly lonely at times. I’m sure other disciplines in a company such as the CFO, VP of Marketing, Head of Sales or VP of Customer Success can share in the loneliness as well. I can say with a strong sense of convocation that I don’t feel very lonely in my role as a VPE. The reason is all about my application of servant leadership.
Let’s start with the team principal. We are all a part of a team. We may have unique roles and responsibilities. Some on the team will have a high degree of specialization in their work. Ultimately, we are working towards the same or common goals of company success and individual growth/development.
It’s easy to share the company goals to the broader team. It’s nearly impossible to understand an individual’s growth and development opportunities without putting emphasis on listening, empathy, collaboration and trust. We have to be able to engage with our staff in a more personal way, some might say as a coach or a mentor.
It’s our job to listen to our staff to hear their goals, desires, fears and concerns. We take that data, plus all of our observational data, and from it we make recommendations. We can’t simply function as an intake machine for our staff. It has to be a balance of intake, observation and analysis with a goal of providing advice, direction and feedback.
The reason is quite simple. The investment in time and the relationships can be lifelong. We are often on a team or in a job for a few years. Relationships can span teams and careers. As you advance within a company or move on to other roles at other companies, those profound relationships that you built through servant leadership techniques will pay forward. It may come through former colleagues joining you in a new company. It will also come from seeing your former staff ascend through their own leadership growth to become VPEs or CTOs at other companies.
One day you might find yourself having coffee or lunch with an old colleague, or you meetup at an industry event. As you parse through the memories of funny work stories and catching up on life, your former colleague shares just how important your leadership style impacted their career. They share that they learned so much from that experience and it made its part as a management roadmap for their own leadership career.
Techniques to Employ as a Servant Leader
What I’ve realized over the years is that the biggest investment you have to make as a servant leader is to provide your staff with time and availability. I talk about this in greater detail in my Manager Readme. Below are a couple of techniques that I leverage.
One on Ones with Direct Staff and Skip Levels
I try to give my direct reports windows throughout the week to meet with me. Some reports like to meet 1x a week, some 2x a week and then of course I have a few folks who only want to meet every other week. I think it’s important to have skip levels with your staff on some regular cadence. I generally shoot for 1x every 6 to 10 weeks.
We maintain a running document, shared between the two of us. It is our joint responsibility to add topics for discussion prior to the meeting. We use the time to discuss the topic and in order for the topic to be closed, we have to provide a summary/resolution. If the topic has no resolution, we jointly agree on action items and set dates for follow-ups.
Office Hours
I employ a 60 minute block twice a week for office hours. Anyone in the company or in my organization can sign-up for a 20 minute session. Some weeks I will get all 6 slots consumed. Other weeks, it might only be 1 or 2 attendees.
It’s important to be present and available to your entire staff. Your staff, regardless of their level, needs an opportunity to engage with you as a leader beyond a staff meeting, email thread, slack message or monthly video. Trust and relationships have to be built at all levels of the organization. Just by making yourself accessible to your entire staff can go a long way establishing trust with your colleagues.
Asynchronous Updates and Advice
I like to write, hence I’m here on Substack. In my day-to-day role as a VPE, I employ writing as a technique to communicate to my broader staff. I tend to write 1 to 2 blog entries a week on our internal wiki. I often write about leadership concepts, technology opportunities and advancements. Each post can take 2 to 5 minutes to read and review. I find these posts often become conversation starters during office hours or skip levels.
Once a month I drop a 2 minute video sharing updates about our successes as a team, as well as things coming down the pipeline.
In past roles, I would often have large department meetings. Given the remote and global nature of many of my teams, I found that those meetings were less effective over time. I still meet with my teams, but I opt for a more intimate experience to engage in discussion. If it means I have to run multiple versions of the same meeting, I see it as an investment rather than a distraction.
Celebrate with Positivity
Every management book will tell you the importance of celebrating your wins. You have to be deeply committed, consistent and disciplined to celebrate your team. I equate it to the experience I had as a child on my birthday. I knew the first call I would get the morning of my birthday was from my grandmother. The clock would hit 8:01am and the phone would ring.
You want to set the tone as the VPE. Your staff will follow your lead. Create a culture of positivity and celebration. Find ways to celebrate your entire staff, whether that be from a slack message, a reward system, a department/company email or some other means. If you don’t see your staff making the same attempts to celebrate, give them the feedback.