| A number of people have recommended good books. So i'll maybe drop a few pieces of advice that I've learned while managing a diverse group of ~35 people. * Listen to the people who report to you. They aren't always right, but they often are, and if they are pushing back then there is a good chance that they might be seeing something you don't. * Much of leadership is about communication. And much of communication is about planning. And much of planning is about knowing and understanding all the components of the problem you're trying to solve. So cultivate a deep understanding of your people, their talents, your business, your boss, and spend time thinking about how to best optimize all those things. * Its hard to lead in an area where you don't some expertise. You don't have to be the best, but you shouldn't be a slouch in the subject matter either. In order to earn respect you'll need to be able to understand what you're being told by your team, and you'll need to be able to articulate why you are making certain decisions, and that is seriously difficult if you don't have a good understanding of the domain. * Good task management and organization is remarkably similar to good distributed systems architecture. Teams should be organized so that communication and integration dependencies are minimized, because communication overhead grows logarithmically as the number of people who need to be informed increases. not nearly a complete list... but a start maybe. good luck! good leaders/managers are a scarce resource. |