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66 results for "engineering leadership"
…d capital. A synthesis of the canonical leadership, management and business literature — Drucker, Grove, Christensen, Horowitz, Do…
Founders, CEOs, CTOs, engineering leaders stepping up
The leadership style most associated with high performance — and most faked. Here's what Bass…
Heifetz's model is the leadership style for problems with no known answer — the kind that dominate modern executi…
…s model is the antidote to performative leadership — but only if you avoid the common trap of confusing authenticity with disclosu…
…ecision-making, and growing into senior leadership.
…echnical founder to operating CEO — the leadership stack to run the company, not just build the product.
Build the leadership reps to run a department, not just a team.
Robert Greenleaf's original idea is often quoted and rarely practiced. Here's what serving the team actually looks like — and why it require…
Hersey & Blanchard's model is the most useful 'when to do what' map a new manager can learn. A four-style toolkit that matches your behavior…
Amazon embedded 16 leadership principles into hiring, promotion, and performance — making 'culture' literally…
…ng · Between meetings · Independent directors · When the board isn't working
Conflict isn't the problem — avoided or escalated conflict is. The Thomas-Kilmann model gives you 5 modes and a clean way to pick between th…
Most listening is waiting to talk. Real active listening is a discipline you can train — and it changes every meeting you're in. Three moves…
…ublic speaking isn't performance — it's leadership at scale. Three structures, two delivery rules, and the one thing that beat…
…n it as a system — not a vibe — through leader behavior, team norms and structural mechanisms.
…than facts (Jerome Bruner). Here's the leader's storytelling toolkit — without the cringe.
…hat a mental model is · Five for people leaders · Do this Monday
Leaders, HR, founders, transformation owners
How to design IC and management ladders that give people a real path, hold a consistent bar, and avoid becoming…
…ference calendar · Anti-patterns to refactor out
How to run weekly 1:1s that build trust, surface real issues, and make feedback land — without becoming status meetings.
Why most feedback fails, and the small set of frameworks that make it useful, specific, and bias-aware.
How to prepare for and run the conversations every manager will face — performance, conduct, exit, conflict — without making them worse.
The mindset shift, what to stop doing, what to start, and the conversations to have in week one.
Spans of control, layer counts, and the operating signals that tell you a team needs to split, get a manager, or be reorganized — without bu…
Most HR dashboards are unread. The reason is consistent: too many metrics, no decision context, no benchmarks, and no narrative. This is how…
Most delegation fails because the handoff is incomplete. Here's the 7-point handoff and the 5 levels of authority that fix it — with the exa…
At the exec level, your words are the operating system of the company. Here's how to write and speak so they execute correctly — without spe…
Stress at work isn't about how hard you work. It's about how much control you have over the work. Karasek proved it — and the Whitehall stud…
Most leadership stress is not a thinking problem. It's a physiology problem. A 60-second primer…
Most workplace negotiations aren't deals — they're scope, comp, deadlines, headcount. Fisher & Ury's principled negotiation works for all of…
Goal-setting, feedback systems, ratings vs. continuous performance, and reviews people don’t dread.
From senior engineer to manager people actually want to work for.
Human Capital Management
…kipped. Here's the sequence, where most leaders break it, and the diagnostic to find which step you're stuck on.
Most leaders treat resistance as the problem. It's actually the most valuable data you have…
…liam Bridges drew the distinction every leader should know: change is external; transition is the internal psychological work.…
…people metrics that matter, dashboards leaders read, and how to avoid vanity HR data.
A wrong VP hire costs founders 12–24 months. A right one compounds for a decade. The full process — when to hire, how to write the role, sou…
Founders raise on story before metrics. A complete guide to the narrative arc, the deck, the metrics investors actually look at by stage, pr…
Brian Chesky's 2024 'Founder Mode' essay landed because the standard 'hire good people and get out of their way' advice fails for founders.…
Founders, HR, leadership
What every new manager needs in writing on day one. The unwritten rules are the most expensive ones — write them down.
Situation–Behavior–Impact–Intent. Delivered within 24 hours, in private. The model that doesn't require you to be Kim Scott to use it.
Values without behaviors are slogans. Pair each value with: what it means, what it doesn't, one ritual that proves it, one decision it chang…
A short, defensible dashboard for leaders. Skip the vanity metrics and track what predicts hire quality and retention.
Every management decision rests on a hidden assumption about whether people actually want to wor…
Engineering vs Sales. HQ vs Remote. Founders vs Joiners. Tajfel's research explains why the…
Conflict management decides which mode to use. Conflict resolution is the practice of running the c…
…conomics, systems thinking — how senior leaders actually think.
The system around the review matters more than the review itself. A modern approach to goals, feedback, calibration, and the conversation.
…s · Refresh and promotion grants · Pool management and dilution · When equity actually pays · Questions employees should ask
The simplest and oldest change model — and the one most useful for thinking about behavior change at the human level. The fundamental physic…
Kotter and Lewin work at the org level. ADKAR is the model for the human level — what each person needs to actually change, and which letter…
HR leaders, ops, founders evaluating tools
A weekly running doc both sides edit. Replaces status with real conversation. The single highest-leverage manager habit (Gallup, Grove).
A new-hire ramp plan written as outcomes, not tasks. Co-authored in week one. Predicts retention better than any onboarding survey (Watkins)…
Quarterly 30-min skip-level with each report's reports. Surfaces things their manager will never tell you.
Levels, behaviors, scope of impact — shared in a doc, not whispered in calibration. Reduces promotion politics by ~50% (per Pave & Lattice b…
Agenda, decision log, action items, named decider. Use for any meeting >15 min. Cuts meeting count ~20% because no one calls a meeting they…
…embedded with a business unit, advising leaders on org design, hiring, performance, and people risk.
…nitive ability, role-related knowledge, leadership, and 'Googleyness'.
…all' — and rebuilt performance reviews, leadership principles, and managerial expectations around it.
…System (TPS), drove decades of quality leadership.
A 2012 white paper described Spotify’s engineering org. The model was a snapshot, not a stable framework, and Spotify itself moved…