The 5 Humbling Stages of Tech Leadership
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One of the most overlooked drivers of tech success is a leader’s humility to grow. In a field defined by speed, complexity, and constant change, technical skill alone won’t carry you very far. The leaders who thrive are the ones willing to recognize when their own habits are holding others back.
If you’ve risen through the ranks from a technical contributor to a leader, you may experience these sequentially, almost like stages, and that’s how I’ve written them here. But growth is rarely a straight line. Most tech leaders cycle through a handful of recognizable patterns—some helpful, others less so. I’ve seen them in myself, in clients, and in peers across the industry, and the less helpful ones tend to surface when pressure is high and old habits creep back in. Think of them less as permanent labels and more as stages we revisit depending on context. That’s why I’ve outlined them here: not as a judgment, but as a mirror you can use to spot your own tendencies.
Maybe you’ll identify with one or two right away. If not, just ask your team. They have a front-row view of your quirks and can probably tell you instantly. I know mine can point to the ones I’m guilty of most often.
Stage 1: The “I’d Rather Be Building” Leader
Symptoms: Negative consequences from either delayed decisions or decisions made in haste. Irritation when the team asks questions, followed swiftly by guilt. Uses phrases like “I gotta go heads-down on this tricky piece of code” regularly.
Diagnosis: This pattern is most common in leaders new to the role. I had a bad case of it early on in starting my company. You’ve always taken pride in the work. You’re probably good at it, and that’s part of what got you promoted in the first place. But it’s not what will make you successful as a leader. In fact, you’ll have to let go of it to embrace your new role.
Leaders tend to hang on because implementation work is satisfying. Solvable. Many leadership problems, however, are never truly solved and carry a high degree of uncertainty. Will this decision pay off in the long run? Do I have the team set up properly to motivate them? Should we prioritize this feature or that one? You make a decision, but the results come much later. That means you have to learn to get your satisfaction from trusting the process rather than from immediate results.
Therapy: Re-orient your definition of contribution. Leadership is your job now. The rewards aren’t always as immediate. Progress is rarely measured with a checkbox. But if you focus on coaching your people and refining your processes, the results can be even bigger over time.
Stage 2: The Helicopter Leader
Symptoms: Hovering constantly in Teams, Slack, etc., jumping in even on things others know more about. Even small decisions seem to involve them every time. Chronically exhausted and stressed. Strategic projects never get attention because they’re neck-deep in tactics.
Diagnosis: This leader suffers from a self-created state where they can’t ever detach, because their sense of fulfillment comes from believing they are the glue that holds everything together. By not empowering their team, they ensure that every decision requires their input, maintaining their own sense of importance. They also conveniently avoid the squishier strategic projects that carry a higher degree of uncertainty.
The Helicopter Leader is often the next stage after the “I’d Rather Be Building” Leader. They’ve given up implementation but not the mentality.
Therapy: Recognize that people can’t step up if you don’t step out of the way. Hang back. Give others a chance. Check your urge to jump in. If you feel something needs to be said, go through the right channel. Say it to the person in charge of that area rather than making a public statement. That preserves their authority to act.
Stage 3: The Late Crisis Hero
Symptoms: Stays out of the mix until late in the project, then storms in to declare everything a disaster and swoops in to save the day. May engage in huffing and puffing about their heroism.
Diagnosis: Despite outward appearances, this leader has made progress. They’re on the cusp of letting their team handle things—but they don’t quite do it effectively. Instead, they avoid engagement entirely until fear and guilt drive them back in. By then, they’re horrified by what their team has built without their input.
The hidden benefit is that they get to be the hero again by creating a problem only they can solve. This creates frustration for the team and especially for managers under them, as they can never be sure how much authority they truly have.
Therapy: Recognize that delaying a decision can be worse than making one and having to reverse course later. Decisions are your job—own them. If you feel you need to swoop in, direct your feedback to the person in charge of that area rather than making a public show of it.
Stage 4: The Force of Will Leader
Symptoms: Sets arbitrary, aggressive deadlines without consulting anyone on what’s realistic. May tie those deadlines to public declarations or promises to force results. Believes they can accomplish anything just by saying it with enough passion and f-bombs at an all-team meeting. Team members arrive full of passion and burn out within 18–24 months.
Diagnosis: This leader is frustrated that they can’t directly advance the cause, so they compensate by becoming the charismatic leader who achieves miraculous results through inspiring superhuman effort. The challenge is that this is not sustainable. By forcing ever-greater feats of daring, they may succeed once or twice, but eventually the house of cards collapses in the form of shoddy quality, mounting tech debt, and lackluster launches.
Therapy: Detach from the drug of glorifying your own contributions. Your job is to facilitate the success of your team—but in a sustainable way. Being exceptional by being fast only lasts until the next launch cycle. Being exceptional by making your product uniquely valuable is far more enduring (and healthier for your team).
I’ve personally experienced our company being known for rescuing late projects and making impossible deadlines. It’s good for the ego to pull a rabbit out of a hat once in a while, but exhausting for the team to do consistently. I don’t recommend making unnatural speed your calling card.
Stage 5: The Cartographer
Symptoms: Charts new directions boldly but leaves the details of timeline and execution to operational leaders. Trusts their team and sets enticing yet achievable goals.
Diagnosis: This leader has experimented with each of the four preceding types and tackled the personal limitations behind them. They’ve developed their team to stand on their own. They know their job isn’t the how, when, or where—it’s the what and why. They make decisions promptly when needed and don’t insert themselves when they’re not. They keep goals realistic so their team can operate sustainably.
Therapy: They may occasionally dip into the other styles when stressed but bounce back quickly to what they do best. Their task is to maintain the confidence and grounding to avoid leading with ego and to stay focused on bigger goals.
Leading through the stages
Technology evolves fast, but the evolution of a leader is slower, more personal, and often far less linear. We don’t pass through these stages once and leave them behind; instead, we circle back to them again and again under stress, insecurity, or habit. I’ve been every one of these types at some point in my career and I expect I will continue to revisit them through the duration.
Leading is one of the most potent crucibles for identifying one’s own weaknesses and working on them. The reason is that leadership has a way of surfacing the parts of ourselves that most need growth. As a leader, there’s nowhere to hide your faults, especially those rooted in insecurity. And that’s the crux of a lot of these issues: when we find ourselves fighting to stay in the implementation, hovering over every detail, or charging ahead by sheer force of will, it’s usually rooted in insecurity.
So, find what’s true for you. Where do you trust your team? Where do you need to work on it? Where are you willing to be a conduit for glory, and where is your ego driving the bus? Every leader needs to work on their relationship with their role. The ones who lead most effectively are those who have the humility to face it.