Journey as a leader

Posted on August 3, 2019 by sujatad

I began my journey in leadership a number of years ago, starting with managing small projects and teams and slowly taking on larger more challenging projects and teams. Along the way, I took a number of management and leadership courses, read a lot of books, blogs, biographies, watched a lot of TED talks, attended conferences and even led a non-profit organization for several years. All of these helped me learn and become a better leader.

Management and Leadership are often confused as being one and the same but they are not. Managers have people who work for them and leaders have people who follow them. Managers can grow to be good leaders.

There are many definitions on what leadership is and the one I like best is ‘ is the art of motivating a group of people to act toward achieving a common goal with intelligence, integrity, honesty and humility’.

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Coaching Technical Teams

Posted on May 20, 2019 by sujatad

Coaching is a very important part of a manager/leader’s role, as it affects the morale, productivity and long term success of the team. Coaching simply involves,

  • Empowering teams to tackle problems and come up with solutions on their own
  • Encouraging risk taking and learning from their mistakes.
  • Providing skills training and mentoring individuals to develop their key strengths.
  • Encouraging open discussions, and providing creative outlets for ideas.
  • Giving constructive feedback
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Team Goals

Posted on February 4, 2019 by sujatad

Goals built around a common purpose help teams become more cohesive and collaborative. Goal setting can be challenging, both in terms of identifying and then marking progress. I generally start the year, by bringing the team together for a team meeting to, set collective team goals, by first,

  • Reviewing the company goals for the year and then talking through what we would like to have as team goals for the year. Is there any particular learning goals? Are there any metrics we’d like to meet? And so on.
  • Each goal is a SMART goal
  • Goals are made visible through the organization
  • Progress on goals is discussed at team meetings and 1:1 meetings.
  • At the end of the year, the goals are reviewed.

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Top 4 leadership qualities

Posted on January 2, 2019 by sujatad

A good leader is someone with a vision, who is passionate about that vision and has the courage and commitment to bring that vision to fruition.

Here are four characteristics that leaders have,

Ability to Inspire

A good leader needs to able to get others to see the vision and follow it so the vision can be achieved. Leader’s stay calm and collected in the face of any opposition. They remain positive and often repeat the message if it not heard the first time. Also, they try to take steps that show everyone they are serious about the vision and also have a plan to achieve it.

Great Communication Skills

Clear and inclusive communication, is the key when outlining a vision. It is important to hear feedback from both people who agree with the vision and the ones that don’t. It takes courage to convince, and let the passion shine through to the audience so they get behind the vision.

Make good decisions

A vision succeeds when the right decisions are made at the right time. Of course decisions can go wrong, and a leader needs to stand behind all decisions, and be accountable. A leader also empowers and coaches their team to make appropriate decisions and not be afraid to fail, and learn from the failures, and get better.

Innovative

Great leaders believe in innovation and creativity, and that is what distinguishes them from everyone else. They are constantly looking and pushing themselves and their teams to get creative, whenever they encounter a problem. They think outside the box and encourage that in others. They explore ideas, even far fetched.

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Budgets

Posted on October 5, 2018 by sujatad

Coming up with the appropriate project and team budgets for the upcoming year can be challenging and time consuming.

  • Determining resource needs on new projects can be daunting, particularly if you still have elements of the plan to be worked out.
  • It is hard to anticipate unexpected needs that might arise in the later part of the next year, and determine contingency buffers.
  • Time it takes to decide investments on training conferences and so on. Engaging team in some of the process does help.
  • Evaluating technical tools to purchase is an interesting exercise.
  • Negotiating with other managers on common budget items
  • Monitor and manage expenses
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Fun at work

Posted on May 24, 2018 by sujatad

Having some fun at work is important. Even as teams work late nights to make deadlines or try to achieve the different organization and personal goals, it is important that they pause for some rest and relaxation. This builds team camaraderie, reduces stress and ultimately does improve productivity and employee retention.

We have had various events over the years such as

  • costume competitions around halloween,
  • bring your dog to work day
  • team building events such as escape rooms and bowling
  • food trucks and cook outs and potlucks
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Navigation improvements in ReSharper 2018.1

Posted on April 29, 2018 by sujatad

Some improvements in ReSharper 2018.1 Resharper…

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Genetics

Posted on April 29, 2018 by sujatad

Came across some really cool research in genetics, that will help cure several genetic research – Harvard Research

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Management – Listening

Posted on January 2, 2018 by sujatad

One of the most important things one can do as a manager is to listen.  Often in a drive to appear assertive and decisive, one can forget to listen – you are hearing or appearing to hear, but not really listening. If you make a split second judgement on what you hear without really listening it could result in poor decisions.

To really listen,

  • First pay attention and try to understand what the person is saying.
  • Even if you feel you don’t agree with what the other person is saying, hear them out and try to understand their view point.
  • Don’t try to reject what they say out of hand.
  • Lastly, before you proffer a solution to the problem, find out first if the person already has a solution in mind.
  • Work on a solution that is win/win to all.
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Liveshare

Posted on December 10, 2017 by sujatad

LiveShare allows developers collaborate, with cloning a repository. Live Share allows you to share the context of the code, so you get instant, bidirectional collaboration. Debugging is cool as Microsoft puts it – Collaborative debugging goes further, allowing you and your teammate to independently inspect objects using debugging features like hovers, locals and watches, the stack trace or the debug console. You are both able to set breakpoints and advance the debug cursor to step through the session. Check it out.

https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2017/11/15/live-share

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