Three Career Mistakes That Made Me a Better Leader.
A few specific mistakes stand out in my mind as slapping a lesson directly into my brain. Here are a few of them.
Welcome to my newsletter! I'm Dave Anderson, an ex-Amazon Tech Director and GM. I write this newsletter I've called Scarlet Ink, which is a weekly newsletter on tech industry careers and tactical leadership advice.
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When I was younger, I had the common misconception that as I advanced in my career, I would make mistakes less often. Every time I made a mistake, I was embarrassed. Soon, I hoped, I wouldn't make these dumb mistakes. I'd be able to confidently do my work without screwing up in public.
I assumed that as we grow in experience and wisdom, this would lead me to a place of consistency and success. I'd confidently smile and make decisions, and people would nod and say, "Yes, Dave, I know him. He's quite the leader. Look at all the smartness things he does all the time."
And yes, you do (hopefully) get better at things. And if you did the same thing for the rest of your career, you'd hopefully make significantly fewer errors. But doing the same thing also locks you in place. In this industry (technology in general), you're either growing and learning, or you're falling behind.
Unless you're done with your career and ready to retire, stopping all personal growth is a disaster. And heck, even if you're retired from full-time work (waves happily), I'd suggest that personal growth is still key to a happy and fulfilling life.
Now we all know how fantastic it feels to be absolutely confident you're going to nail something, particularly while people are watching. I've seen a senior engineer's face light up when a couple of junior engineers say they're totally stuck on a specific technical problem that the senior engineer specializes in. Because they know they will smash this, and everyone will be impressed. It'll be fun.
NEW ACHIEVEMENT! The knowledge bomb!
You spent twenty-three uninterrupted minutes explaining the edge cases of distributed caching to three junior engineers who only wanted to know where the config file lived. They nodded enthusiastically, took exactly zero useful notes, and now believe you personally invented microservices.
Reward? Showing off IS the reward!
(Yes, I've been reading DCC lately. My second read-through as book 8 recently released.)
But unfortunately, if we're comfortable and confident in our job, it also likely means we're no longer being challenged. If it's easy, we're not making mistakes. And if we're not making mistakes, we're no longer growing.
If you're always proud of how you execute, it quite possibly means that you're executing on things that are too easy.
I tell my daughter this all the time. It's great to read easy books or play songs on the piano you're familiar with. It's fun, and we shouldn't skip fun. But it's only when we're making mistakes and doing hard things that we improve ourselves.
When I coach other leaders, I'll see some common errors come up. "Oh, I know this mistake! Here's where you went wrong, and what you should be doing instead."
How do I recognize those mistakes? Is it just because I'm experienced and senior and have so much wisdom? Well yes, those are true. But where do you get wisdom? You make mistakes.
And so most of my most passionate lessons started with a painful mistake. Those mistakes are burned into my memory, and they translate into the lessons I've taken most to heart. So I'm going to share a few mistakes I made and what I learned from them.
