I was a technical manager and what I kept doing was, my tech lead, I was re-architecting and telling; he’d bring architecture solutions and different things, and I kept telling him this, that, and the other, and kept on making corrections.
I don’t remember what the shift was, but then I was talking to him, “Oh, well you don’t know this and that and the other,” and I was like, “Oh, wait, I should bring him in. He needs to know this stuff. And then he would maybe not make the same decisions, but at least factor those into his designs.” That was a point where it wasn’t like, “I need to tell you what to do,” but “There is some additional knowledge or perspective that I have and I need to impart that.”
It’s really giving people all the knowledge that they need in order to execute their job and do it well.
What’s really important as a leader is not necessarily imparting wisdom, although people love that. People are like, ” Wow, you always have these great sayings” and things like that. And of course, from the egotistical part, it really feels good. But really what you need to do is develop the confidence in folks and have them grow and provide the opportunities to take on those steps so that they can do it.