Engineering Leadership Development

How are you supported as you progress from being an individual contributor to becoming a manager or a technical leader?

  • Overcoming personal doubts and resistance to progression

  • Taking a broader perspective and thinking strategically

  • Becoming a conscious, empathetic, self-aware leader

  • Learning to let go of control, and enabling teams

  • Creating an inspiring vision and purposeful work

There’s no shortage of resources, courses, frameworks and patterns for the technical aspects of software engineering ...

… but when stepping into leadership roles, you’re often left to improvise and figure it all out by yourself. There are no recipes.

“The difference between a manager who knows what’s going on in an organization and one who is a purely politically driven slimeball is thin. But I would take either of those over some passive manager who lets the organization happen to him.”

- Michael Lopp, Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager

Towards conscious leadership

Supporting people on their engineering leadership journey

Good leaders develop over time. There are no books, courses, or inspirational quotes that will make a leader. Leadership is a quality that emerges through day-to-day experiences and conscious self-reflection to integrate those experiences as a gradual unfolding towards our potential.

There is no clear path to leadership in software engineering as each person is on their own path. Often people are thrust into leadership roles after becoming a technically accomplished individual contributor. However, being a technical expert doesn’t predict one’s ability to handle the psychological and sociological dynamics of people and teams.

We can support your engineering leadership development through the following programmes:

  • Engineering Leadership Development 1:1s

  • In-house leadership dialogue groups

  • Subscription to our public Leadership Labs sessions

Engineering Leadership Development 1:1s

✓ Detailed self-reflection survey to initiate the engagement

✓ 1:1 Personal and professional development sessions

✓ An evolving and actionable report summary of sessions

£250 per one hour session

£1,000 for 5 sessions

Custom pricing for wider engagements

In-house Leadership Dialogue Groups

✓ Regular group dialogues with the tech leeadership and stakeholders to share, reflect and grow

✓ Suspending our assumptions and judgement to learn and reach coherence

✓ An evolving and actionable report summary of sessions

£1,250 per 90 minute session

£9,750 for 12 monthly sessions

All prices are subject to VAT

Leadership Labs Subscription
(coming soon)

✓ Weekly online themed open dialogues, show up when you like

✓ Share, learn and develop as an engineering leader along with peers in the industry

✓ An evolving and actionable report summary of sessions with catch-up videos

£29 per person per month

Engineering Leadership Self-Reflection Survey

Your personal growth and development as an engineering leader is an iterative process, a journey of mastery with peaks, troughs, plateaus and setbacks. It’s not always clear where you are on your journey, and which direction you may explore next. Our self-reflection tool gives you a compass and a map to help you see where you are and inspire your next steps.


The four quadrants for leadership self-reflection:

1. Subjective:

The self and our inner world

Self-Awareness and Emotional Intelligence

Personal Growth and Learning

Resilience and Adaptability

Personal Values and Leadership Philosophy

3. Intersubjective:

Culture and relationships

Psychological Safety and Trust

Team Dynamics and Contribution

Empathy and Understanding

Motivation and Engagement

2. Objective:

Observable skills and behaviours

Technical Leadership

Problem Solving and Decision Making

Communication and Influence

Performance and Delivery

4. Interobjective:

Organisational
and strategic

Systems Thinking and Organisational Dynamics

Strategic Thinking and Alignment

Process Optimisation and Efficiency

Uncertainty and Organisational Change

For Tech Leads, Principals, Engineering Managers, Head of Engineering, and CTOs:

Try the free-of-charge self-reflection survey to gauge your leadership strengths.

The Engineering Leadership Self-Reflection survey questions are open-sourced and available on GitHub at Engineering Leadership Self-Reflection. It is version-controlled and will be modified over time to reflect emerging insights and changes in engineering leadership practices.

“As an organizational leader, you’ll always have a portfolio of risk, and you’ll always be doing very badly at some things that are important to you. That’s not only okay, it’s unavoidable.”

- Will Larson, An Elegant Puzzle:
Systems of Engineering Management

Discuss the best option for you

We’d love to discuss the best option for you and your team. Just send us a quick message about your current challenges or goals to get the conversation started.

Prefer to talk?

Book a call directly