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From Doing to Enabling: A Tech Lead's Self-Correction Guide

leadershipengineeringgrowth

I spent months as the bottleneck on my own team.

Not because I wasn’t working hard. Because I was solving many problems myself instead of helping others solve them. I’d jump in, fix it fast, and wonder why projects kept stalling until I did.

As an IC, I wrote code. As a lead, I make other people better at writing code. My value isn’t what I ship—it’s whether the team ships faster next month than last month.

That shift is obvious on paper. In practice, it’s painful. Here’s what I’m learning.

Three Buckets

Every responsibility goes in one of three buckets.

Bucket 1: Hold Tight Things where my judgment is irreplaceable right now. I stay hands-on.

This should be very small. If it’s growing, something’s wrong.

Bucket 2: Delegate with Scaffolding Things I’m teaching someone else to own. I review and coach; I don’t do.

This is where the work lives.

Bucket 3: Let Go Things that won’t meet my standard. I’ve accepted that.

More belongs here than feels comfortable.

When You Want to Jump In

Pause. Ask: “What would have to be true for someone else to handle this?”

flowchart TD
    A{What's blocking them?}
    A -->|Nothing| B[Step back<br/>Let them handle it]
    A -->|Missing context| C[Document it<br/>Share it<br/>Step back]
    A -->|Not capable| D{Why?}

    D -->|Lack of experience| E[Pair & teach<br/>Don't rescue]
    D -->|Performance issue| F[Address directly<br/>via management]

Most of the time, the answer is in the first two categories. But I kept jumping in anyway. It felt faster. It was faster—for that one task. But it made me a dependency on everything that followed.

Redefining “Good Enough”

Wrong question: “Did they do it the way I would have?”

Your way isn’t always right. They might find a better approach you hadn’t considered. Different doesn’t mean worse.

Right question: “Did they reach a reasonable outcome and learn something that makes the next one better?”

Short-term imperfection for long-term capability. The discomfort means you’re doing it right.

Where to Invest

Not everyone is at the same point.

Find the people who are ready to grow. Not necessarily the strongest right now—the ones improving fastest. Invest disproportionate time there:

  • Give them hard architectural problems and protect them from interruptions
  • Spend more 1:1 time coaching
  • Let them make consequential decisions

When someone internalizes good judgment and makes strong decisions independently, they amplify the whole team.

Communication Patterns

I used to be in every discussion and every decision. That made me a dependency on everything.

What works better:

1:1s weekly. Transfer context, coach on decisions, catch misalignment early. Don’t skip these to “protect their time”—this is the work.

Status updates async. Slack or shared doc, daily or twice-weekly. People post blockers and progress. You read and intervene when needed.

Office hours, not interruptions. Set a window where you’re available. Batches questions. Trains people to collect issues instead of pinging every time they hit something.

Design reviews scheduled. Weekly or biweekly. People bring decisions to discuss. Keeps you informed without needing your approval for everything.

Write things down. Decision records, design docs, post-mortems. Your thinking scales without your presence.

Making Standards Stick

If the standard lives only in your head, you’re the constraint.

  • Write down decision records—not just conclusions but reasoning
  • Do post-mortems on tech debt decisions, not just incidents
  • Create templates for decisions that repeat
  • Make the thinking visible so others can replicate it

You’ve succeeded when someone explains the “why” to someone else.

On Being Fast

Being the fastest person in the room was valuable as an IC. As a lead, it’s a liability.

When you solve problems faster than everyone else, you become the constraint. People stop developing their own problem-solving muscles because yours are always available.

Fast pattern-matching means:

  • Jumping to conclusions others might have caught
  • Optimizing for speed instead of learning
  • Building solutions only you can maintain
  • Becoming the single point of failure

You have pattern recognition from years of practice. They don’t have it yet because you keep taking the practice reps.

The question shifts from “how do I solve this?” to “how do I help them build the pattern recognition I have?”

Let them do it. Repeatedly. Coach, don’t rescue.

The Grief Part

Moving into leadership means letting go of being the person who touches everything.

You’ll miss things. Projects will ship without your code. Someone else will solve the interesting problem. You’ll watch others learn what you wanted to learn.

This isn’t a problem to solve. It’s a loss to process.

The FOMO doesn’t disappear. But it gets easier when you realize what you’re learning now: how to make good calls with incomplete information across teams, how to spot when someone’s stuck versus working through it, how to transfer judgment instead of applying it, how to let go.

These are hard skills. They just don’t feel like “real” skills because they don’t ship code.

On Identity

High-performers build their identity around being the person who figures it out first, solves the hardest problem, ships the most.

Leading requires a new answer to “what makes me valuable?” The new answer is less gratifying.

If you’re not the one who figures it out first, who are you?

That’s the real question. The technical stuff—delegation, communication patterns, frameworks—is easier than answering it honestly.

Signs You’re Creating Dependencies

  • You swoop in when things are hard
  • People check with you before making decisions they could make
  • Extended hours, carrying it alone
  • Frustration with dynamics you’re creating

If you always rescue, you reinforce yourself as the single point of failure.

Talk to Your Manager

If your manager wants you to lead more, use that:

  • Tell them what you’re changing
  • Ask them to hold you accountable
  • Ask where to hold tight vs. let go
  • Make your growth visible

They see your patterns more clearly than you do.

The Real Test

Can you sit with the discomfort of watching someone work through a problem you could solve faster, without rescuing them, and call that a success?

Because that’s the job.

Weekly Self-Check Questions

  1. What did I do this week that only I could do?
  2. What did I do that someone else could have learned from doing?
  3. Who did I invest in? What did they learn?
  4. What did I let go of, even though it wasn’t perfect?
  5. Where did I feel the urge to jump in? What did I do instead?

Signs of Progress

  • Someone makes a decision you would have made, without asking
  • You learn about a problem after it was solved
  • A team member explains the “why” behind a standard to someone else
  • You feel anxious about not knowing everything
  • The team ships something while you’re out
  • Someone pushes back on your idea with good reasoning

If these make you uncomfortable, that’s normal. When they start to feel like wins, you’re getting there.

Self-Assessment Checklist

Use this to diagnose where you’re stuck. Check the boxes that apply to you this week:

🚨 Warning Signs - You’re Still in IC Mode:

  • You solved a problem that someone else could have solved with guidance
  • You worked evenings/weekends on things that weren’t urgent
  • Someone waited for you to make a decision they could have made
  • You reviewed every line of code instead of reviewing patterns
  • You jumped into an implementation instead of asking “who should own this?”
  • You explained something verbally that should have been written down
  • You skipped a 1:1 to “protect their time” or get more done

If you checked 3+: You’re the bottleneck. Pick one behavior to change this week.

✅ Good Signs - You’re Transitioning:

  • You wrote down context instead of being the only person who knows it
  • You let someone struggle with a problem (with support) instead of solving it
  • You asked “what would have to be true for X to handle this?” before jumping in
  • You said no to something that didn’t belong in Bucket 1
  • You spent more time coaching than coding
  • Someone made a decision without checking with you first
  • You felt uncomfortable about not being in the details—and sat with it

If you checked 3+: You’re doing the work. Keep going.

📋 This Week’s Action:

Pick ONE:

  • Move one thing from Bucket 1 to Bucket 2 (identify who to teach)
  • Write down one piece of context that lives only in your head
  • Set up office hours to batch interruptions
  • Let someone own a decision you’d normally make
  • Have a 1:1 focused entirely on someone else’s growth (not status updates)

The person who wants to learn everything, do everything, be the fastest and most thorough—that person built your career. You don’t have to kill them. But you do have to redirect them.

The drive that made you a great IC makes you a constraint as a lead. The same intensity, channeled differently, builds something bigger than anything you could build alone.