05. From Individual Contributor to Engineering Leader: Navigating the Mental Shift

Moving from a role like senior developer or software architect to engineering leadership is not just a promotion - it’s a more about change in mindset. What made you successful before won’t necessarily help you now. In fact, sticking to your previous definition of success can become your greatest obstacle.

In this short text, we’ll explore the internal shift required to become a technical leader - whether as a Tech Lead, Staff Engineer, or Engineering Manager. We’ll also dive into what it means to become a multiplier of others’ performance, rather than a top performer yourself. Naturally this is my subjective point of view - you can have different one.

Letting Go of Personal Output

As an engineer, your value was often connected to your outputs: code written, bugs fixed, designs delivered. Your performance could be measured directly by what you produced.

Leadership isn’t about personal output. It’s about team output. When you become an engineering manager or team lead, your role changes from delivering results yourself to creating an environment in which others can delivering great results.

This requires an intentional mindset shift. You move from:

If you don’t make this shift, you risk becoming a bottleneck: the manager who still tries to be the smartest coder in the room - and ends up being the reason things slow down.

You’re Not the Hero. You’re the Coach.

One of the most mental changes in engineering leadership is that you are no longer the hero of the story. Your job is not to be the best performer, but the person who builds a high-performing team.

That means stepping back and letting others take the lead - even when you know how to solve a problem faster by yourself.

The team should not rely on you to be the fixer of last resort. Instead, they should trust you to guide them, support them, and sometimes challenge them - but not to rescue them every time something gets hard

Your success is now measured by how your team performs without you.

The Mental Shift: From Individual Contributor to Team Enabler

This is key element in this transformation: you change from being an Individual Contributor to someone who Enables others.

You stop optimizing for your own efficiency, and start optimizing for your team’s understanding and performance. You stop asking, “How do I get this done?” and start asking, “What’s blocking my team from getting this done?”

This shift touches everything:

• Communication: You spend more time clarifying direction than explaining solutions.
• Time management: Your calendar fills with 1:1s and strategy discussions, not coding sessions.
• Feedback: You no longer wait for code review to give input - you shape discussions weeks earlier.

It can feel like you’re moving away from your craft. In some ways, you are. But you’re developing a new craft: the craft of leadership.

The Engineering Manager as a Multiplier

One of the concepts that really resonates with me is idea of leader being multiplier. As Liz Wiseman wrote in her book Multipliers, some leaders drain intelligence and capability from their teams, while others amplify it.

A god engineering manager is a multiplier. Your job is to increase the impact of everyone on your team. You do this by:

• Removing blockers early
• Focusing team efforts on the right priorities
• Creating clarity and alignment with product and design
• Protecting your team’s time and give them focus
• Supporting career growth and development
• Creating safe environment where people do not afraid to speak up

This is the mindset of leverage. If you spend one hour helping a developer improve how they perform and communicate their work, it pays off every sprint. If you create a better prioritization framework, the whole team benefits. That’s compound value - and it’s how you scale your impact.

Your Job is Not to Solve Every Problem

Here’s a hard truth: you probably can solve some problems faster than your team. You’ve seen more systems. You’ve handled more incidents. You know what works.

But if you step in every time, you become a bottleneck. Worse, you prevent your team of growth.

Good engineering managers resist the urge to jump in. Instead, they ask:

• “What do you think we should do?”
• “What have you tried so far?”
• “Who else could help you with this?”

By doing this, you help others build the skills, confidence, and resilience they need to gain - even without you.

This doesn’t mean you’re hands-off. It means you’re strategic. You show up where you’re needed most - not where you feel most comfortable.

Building Trust and Safety

As a manager or tech lead, your technical skills matter - but they’re not enough. The real foundation of leadership is Trust.

Your team needs to know that:

• They can speak openly, even when they disagree.
• They can admit mistakes without being punished.
• They can bring you problems without fear.

This is what safety looks like. It’s not about judging - it’s about creating an environment where smart, motivated people can do their best work.

When your team knows you have their back, they’ll become proactive. They’ll take ownership. When things go wrong - as they at some point of time will be - they’ll come to you early, not at the last moment.

How do you build this kind of trust?

• Be consistent.
• Follow through on commitments.
• Give credit publicly and feedback privately.
• Be vulnerable: admit when you don’t know something.
• Be humble: stay open for learning form others.

This kind of leadership creates teams that are not only more effective - but happier, more stable, and more proactive.

Final Thoughts: You Work for the Team Now

The most important mental shift you can make as an engineering leader is this:

You don’t work on the product directly anymore - you work on the people who build the product.

That means your time is best spent clearing paths, creating systems, and enabling growth. The better your team performs, the greater your impact becomes - not because you did it all, but because you made it possible.

Leadership isn’t about being in charge. It’s about taking care of those in your charge.

I think that the longer you work with a team, the less they should depend on you - if you’ve done a good job empowering them.

If you can go through that shift, you’ll not only become a better leader - you’ll help build better teams, better software, and a better workplace for everyone.