Richard Hart

Head of Something @ Somewhere
Kent, UK

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There is No Debugger For Leadership

There are many mechanisms for understanding issues and creating fixes when there are bugs in your code. Your computer will tell you when you’ve made a mistake, give you feedback and await your next command. So as a developer, you learn to live in this constant cycle of feedback. Constantly making mistakes and constantly making changes. It becomes second nature. But it’s through these constant mistakes that we learn what does and doesn’t work. We learn to see patterns and spot errors sooner. These mistakes and what they teach us are what make us grow.

Moving into a leadership role can often feel like the total opposite. There is no fast feedback for your decisions. Sometimes it may take months to know you’ve failed, and sometimes you may never know at all. So you can end up doing everything you can to avoid making mistakes. But just like the developer, you need to make mistakes to grow. It’s uncomfortable and painful, but you have to make calls when afraid or in doubt. You have to learn to live in the cycle of mostly absent feedback. Sometimes you’ll pick up on the effects of the choices you made, sometimes that feedback will be faint, but it’s only in that faint feedback that you’ll find growth as a leader.