Think of a child growing up. The child can bring out the best from within based on a supportive environment and parents.

Replace the following:

• child with a person at a job
• environment with team
• parents with leaders

A child may not necessarily see parents as leaders, but if we look at it, parents are expected to lead by example, create a culture of respect and trust, and at some point, create a space for the child to grow and lead their lives. As leaders, this is what we do too.

Leading by example

A child grows in its parent's shadows and tends to do things following them. It is necessary to lead by example and not just dictate how things need to work.

At my previous job working at a highly regulated digital health tech space, we had to follow strict compliance rules for Jira tickets; tickets needed to have good acceptance criteria defined and all conversations tracked in comments. For every release cycle, we should have been able to store all the digital artifacts for ten years. And during this time, if any of the product development work led to any loss of a patient's life, we would be able to track down the source of the cause.

Also, for writing tests, we had to have a very high bar to writing tests and a coverage threshold.

Given how monotonous both these tasks were, we often used to skip or assume things were either spoken about a Jira ticket or write simple tests to meet the coverage threshold. As a leader, if I wanted to change this, then I had to do this myself and lead by example!

Respect and trust

Trust is a primary part of any relationship, personal or professional. A child blindly trusts its parents, but as they grow, they learn to distinguish between what is right and wrong and identify whom to trust and not. Leading by example is a great way to build trust.

Respect follows trust. It is necessary to be respectful in our deeds and actions.

Parents and leaders need to earn respect and trust and not demand them!

As a new Engineering Manager at Anaconda, I wanted to build trust via my work, actions, and commitments to be trusted to do the job.

Trust also means, to me, living up to the smallest commitments or statements that I might have made. For example: diligently following up on a task or helping a colleague to get their job done.

Safe space to grow

When there is respect and trust, there is a safe space.

While giving children a good life and education are important, they also need to grow to be confident and independent. As leaders we want our teams to grow, to be able to do their work, while we are not being bottlenecks or micromanaging them.

When I have new joiners on the team, especially junior folks, I encourage them to ask questions or make sure they feel safe and comfortable asking questions. No question is stupid!

Let go

It is also important to realize the spirit to let go, meaning, our job is to create a space for growth and make sure they have resources and space. But we also at some point need to realize that they may not come back or have other options to pursue.

Notes

• It is not easy
• It is a big commitment
• We are responsible for growing others