Other people’s problems: a primer on coaching

This talk offers the perspective of a Staff Technical Program manager as the first one hired in a company, deconstructing the evolutionary journey that paved the way for hiring more of them.

In this episode, Cate discusses how to supercharge your career as a leader and thrive in your current role whilst supporting your team members.

But as is often the case in business, priorities constantly shift and where you focus your efforts will too. So how do you strike the right balance between working on the technical direction of the business and those tasks that require you to put your leadership hat on?

In my talk I will explain that this is generally a pretty bad idea; it won’t surface the best ideas and it doesn’t let more junior engineers develop their skills. Instead, I introduce some steps you can take to make sure that the idea adopted to solve a problem is the best idea available, even if you aren’t the one who came up with it. Perhaps counter-intuitively I will show how this increases your influence in your organisation and sets everyone up for success.