Leadership

Practice · Chapter 15

Leadership

A key architect skill. There is no single leadership style that fits every leader or every situation — discover the style that suits your personality, and tailor your approach to what each person you lead needs while remaining yourself.

Getting others to follow you

• Leadership is largely about positively influencing others through your actions, words, and attitude.
• Earn respect and credibility by delivering high-quality work consistently, being dependable, and helping others.
• Conducting yourself with integrity builds trust over time.

Core leadership behaviors

Behavior	What it means
Dealing with challenges	Stay committed through setbacks; motivate the team past barriers; a positive attitude is contagious.
Being a technical leader	Own the architecture and technical direction; provide guidance/support; demonstrate technical excellence; innovate; articulate a vision that keeps the team focused and motivated.
Taking responsibility	When things go wrong, take responsibility instead of blaming; focus forward on fixing the problem and extracting lessons, then move on.
Focusing on others	The shift from developer to architect moves focus from self-improvement to helping others succeed — developers, customers, management, BAs, PMs, QA.
Delegating tasks	Assign work (e.g. coding) to others; delegation builds trust and motivates people to perform.
Driving change	Spot what isn’t working; champion new tech, methodologies, or process improvements; embrace change and experiment/prototype — even failed experiments teach something.
Leading by example	Saying one thing but doing another destroys trust; model the right approach and attitude so others follow.
Depending on others	Be humble; admit what you don’t know; ask questions; lean on team members with more expertise — collaboration fosters trust and surfaces better ideas.

Communication and leadership

Leadership and communication are highly interconnected — that is why communication was covered first. Whether sharing a vision, giving technical guidance, delegating, mentoring, or reporting status, effective leadership depends on communicating well.

Mentoring others

• Make yourself available to support, advise, and teach others; build a relationship with each mentee to raise the chance of success.
• Mentor soft skills as well as technical topics.
• Put the mentee’s interests above the organization’s — encourage them to follow their goals even if it means leaving.
• Mentoring benefits the mentor too: it improves your leadership skills and builds credibility.

Related

• Negotiation — strong negotiation skills are part of leadership.
• Soft Skills — leadership is one of the interconnected interpersonal skills.

Citations

• Software Architect’s Handbook (Packt, 2018), Ch.15 “Leadership”, pp. 1100-1111.