Happy Friday!

A new subscriber asked what I think the top 3 leadership skills to develop are in 2026. I think that is a perfectly good question. Since they are an engineering leader I'll nudge my answers in that direction.

Facilitation

I've gone on about this for as long as I've been writing, and my opinion that this is one of the most impactful and underdeveloped skills hasn't changed. Every meeting that needs another meeting, or where people leave unsure about what to do, or where folks feel like "That could have been an email" is how you know this is important.

When meetings are facilitated well, people have clarity, purpose, and alignment.

One of my favorite resources is called "Collaboration Explained" by Jean Tabaka. If you'd like to see a talk I gave on how I facilitate team kickoffs you can watch that here.

Boundary Setting

This is a little less obvious, but something I see leaders struggle with a lot. If you've ever felt like you need your teams to be more independent, and dare-I-say, empowered, its is highly likely you need to work on setting boundaries.

Most folks would love to not ask for permission for everything but they've been trained to. Asking for permission is the safest way to go, because if they took initiative they'd get admonsihed for doing something wrong that they didn't know about.

Setting boundaries is all about telling folks the area they an freely operate in, and the boundaries they cannot cross.

For example, within a given project cycle, teams recognize an area for improvement. Can they simply implement it, or is there a hiden, "As long as it doesn't push our release back," or, "As long as it costs less that $1000 for tools?"

A technique from the TTRPG world is called Lines and Veils. It is actually a safety tool, but guess what, this whole topic is about safety. So Lines are hard boundaries that cannot be crossed. Veils are gray areas that aren't quite a hard boundary but likely need extra help or consideration.

Balanced Scorecards

Too many engineering managers get boxed into delivery mode. Delivery is easy to look at, manage, and talk about. Your teams may be struggling in an environment that is not conducive to work, and your processes are working against you, but we can always talk delivery.

I'm not suggesting delivery isn't important, but it is the easy thing. The hard thing is knowing you're leading people well and creating an environment for excellence. If you can create that, delivery becomes much easier.

So, a tool to help is something called a Balanced Scorecard. The idea is that you capture what good looks like for your area, and represent it with measures or signals in all of those areas. By assessing culture alongside delivery alongside quality alongside whatever else, you can create balance.

Having a tool like this does more than just help you lead, it helps you with your boss and peers as well. You can talk delivery like folks expect but also show these other meaningful results that keep you from sinking in delivery muck.

AI

Whats this, a fourth one? No, not really. AI told me I should always make my content about AI.

Alright, snarkiness aside. I know you were expecting more stuff like AI and not stuff like facilitation but AI is a tool. I could just have easily said, "Source Control" or "Jira."

AI is compelling not because of what it currently does but because of what we believe it will eventually do. The best course of action right now is to frame AI adoption as a series of experiments. This will help you find the right fit and approach to leveraging AI without exorbant cost and risk.

Has Leadership Changed?

In my opinion, no it hasn't. I think the pressures to become a manager that exploits people are ever-present, and the hope that we can finally be rid of it is as well. Getting to that though, means doing things that others don't.

You can have teams that never want to quit, stakeholders and peers that trust you, unmatched quality, and timely delivery. You have to build an environment where that is what wants to happen. The things I outlined above will do wonders for getting you started with that.

Sincerely,

Ryan

PS: If you'd like to ask more about any of these or have a chat about them. I'd love to. Just schedule some time.