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How to demonstrate leadership (for promotion) on technical teams as an introvert?

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Solutions Architect II at Amazon2 years ago

Here's the experience I have so far with leadership:

  • I schedule meetings between teammates to clarify things for everyone when people seem to be lost or start asking a lot of questions in a trend. This usually helps unblock them.
  • Most of my success comes from cross-team communications in terms of knowing and finding the right people for local tasks. I also jump on opportunities myself which usually end with good results. But I haven't yet been able to make a significant impact within my own team.

And here's more details about my current team:

  • My team is myself, a PM, one full-time developer, and two other developers/Solution Architects that juggle other responsibilities part-time.
  • I've had issues with a particular person who leans too aggressively sometimes questioning the impact of the work items I'm proposing. I'm able to work it out with them, but this relationship could probably be improved further.
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    Tech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course Hero
    2 years ago
    • The "superpower" of introverts is that they prefer building a small set of very deep relationship vs. a massive array of less deep/relatively shallow relationships like extroverts do.
    • This style lends itself well to being a tech lead as you generally need to win over just 5-10 stakeholders in order to ship a project, which is within the range an introvert is comfortable with.
    • Whenever you join a team or start a project, identify all the key stakeholders who could "throw your work under the bus". Strive to quickly build deep relationships with them, so they'll have your back when the time comes.
    • When it comes to relationship building, push to understand what a good product looks like in the other person's eyes and try to incorporate it into your philosophy leading and shipping products.
    • A challenge to consider: With this person that pushes back too much sometimes, can you develop an amazing relationship with them and turn them into a strong ally?

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