Below you will find a number of resources that have come together to form the views in this guide.
Guides
Leadership Styles
- 10 common leadership styles (plus ways to develop your own)
- What kind of leader are you? 8 common leadership styles (and their pros and cons)
- Different leadership styles and what they involve
Leadership Skills
- Important leadership skills for workplace success
- What are the top skills that make a great leader?
- Leadership skills
Anti-patterns
- How to fail as a new engineering manager
- Hacker news: What mistakes in your experience does management keep making?
Self Awareness
- Daring Leadership Assessment
- Project Implicit - implicit bias testing
- Johari Window Test
- Leadership style test
- How good are your management skills?
Daring Leadership
- Brené Brown on daring leadership in the workplace
- What Brené Brown teaches us about effective leadership training
Software Engineering Specific
- Developer turned manager
- Surprise! You're an engineering manager. What now?
- Engineering management: fact vs. fiction
- Things I've learned transitioning from engineer to engineering manager
- From engineer to manager: keeping your technical skills
- Should you choose a tech lead or engineering manager role?
- Good engineering manager vs. bad engineering manager
- How engineering management works at GitLab
- How can I prepare to eventually move into engineering management?
- The ultimate guide to transition from engineer to manager
- A step-by-step guide to becoming a better engineering manager
- How to be the engineering manager your company needs
- How do I know if I'm ready to be an engineering leader?
Reading
- Gergely Orosz reading & listening list
- 11 must-read books for new managers
- HBR Reading Lists
- 15 books every first-time manager should read
- Leadership reading list
My Personal Take
My own reading list takes in a great deal of the above books, but if we're keeping it 'short', I'd go with:
- Daring Greatly - Brené Brown - this book gives us some pivotal tools as managers. Brené weaves the tale between courage and vulnerability well, and this book will help you get in touch with your own fallibility, and help you show up authentically each day.
- Emotional Intelligence - Daniel Goleman - knowing ourselves so that we can choose ourselves is pivotal. Our 'lizard brain' and amygdala hijack is as likely to appear in the office as it is in the jungle, and we need to have the tools to deal with those situations.
- Radical Candor - Kim Scott / Crucial Conversations - Patterson et al - feedback is hard, but a good manager both seeks and gives feedback continuously. These books will help you navigate the complexities of feedback. We can do so much better than the 'shit sandwich' when it comes to feedback.
- The Five Dysfunctions of a Team - Patrick Lencioni - a superb leadership fable, but with a surprisingly powerful and easy message behind it. It talks of 5 dysfunctions that teams face - absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, and innatention to results. It's easy to follow, and gives many practical takeaways to help a team 'level up'.
- Turn the Ship Around - David Marquet - some of this plays into servant leadership, but it is fundamentally about taking that ageing model of 'leader/follower' and flipping it on its' head into 'leader/leader'. David Marquet achieved this change of leadership style while in charge of a nuclear submarine, so it is very possible the story will work in whatever sector you are managing. There's a great video summary on his website.
- The Fearless Organisation - Amy C. Edmondson - psychological safety is the key to unlocking high performing teams, and Amy's work is at the forefront of this. This book is accessible and gives practical data and meaning to the term, and tangible tools to help teams navigate towards a more psychologically safe environment.