The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source

Leading leaders who lead engineers (remastered) (Interview)

Mar 26, 2025

Lara Hogan, author of Resilient Management and a management coach for the tech industry, shares her insights on leadership development. She emphasizes the crucial roles of mentoring, coaching, and sponsoring in nurturing talent. The conversation highlights the transformative power of sponsorship for underrepresented groups. Lara also discusses the importance of adapting leadership styles to different situations and the necessity of clarity in feedback. This engaging dialogue explores how effective leadership is both a skill to be learned and an art to be practiced.

01:14:21

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Episode guests

Lara Hogan

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Episode notes

Podcast summary created with Snipd AI

Quick takeaways

Effective leadership encompasses wearing multiple hats, including mentoring, coaching, sponsoring, and delivering feedback to facilitate growth.

Sponsorship plays a vital role in career advancement by actively promoting individuals and increasing their visibility in professional settings.

Adopting the SBI framework for feedback leads to more constructive communication, emphasizing objective observations and collaborative solution exploration.

Deep dives

The Evolution of Heroku: Introducing Fur

Heroku is set to unveil its next-generation platform, Fur, which symbolizes a new era of technology and stability. Building on the success of Cedar, which lasted over a decade, Fur aims to embrace open standards like container images, OCI, and Kubernetes, moving away from proprietary systems. Developers will benefit from this transition, as they will now use familiar tools such as Docker and Pack, enabling them to build applications more efficiently. Despite these advancements, crucial elements of Heroku's foundational experience, such as prioritizing developer productivity and connection to GitHub, will remain unchanged.

Intro

5min

The Power of Sponsorship in Career Growth

20min

Adapting Leadership and Accelerating Build Processes

4min

Navigating Leadership and Coaching Dynamics

16min

Understanding Behavioral Change Through Neuroscience and Community

4min

Empowering Business Solutions with Retool

3min

Navigating the Path from Engineer to Manager

16min

Navigating Leadership: Linchpin vs. Cog

6min

This week we’re bringing you a remaster of our epic 2021interview with Lara Hogan – author of Resilient Management and management coach / trainer for the tech industry.

The majority of our conversation focuses on the four primary hats leaders and managers end up wearing; mentoring, coaching, sponsoring, and delivering feedback. We also talk about knowing when you’re ready to lead, empathy and compassion, and learning to lead.

Join the discussion

Changelog++ members save 9 minutes on this episode because they made the ads disappear. Join today!

Sponsors:

Heroku – The Next Generation of Heroku “Fir” is coming soon — Fir is built on a foundation of cloud native technologies and open source standards, ensuring portability, interoperability, and a vibrant ecosystem for your applications. Cloud Native for everyone, for the next decade and beyond.
Depot – Build faster. Waste less time. Accelerate Docker image builds, and GitHub Actions workflows. Easily integrate with your existing CI provider and dev workflows to save hours of build time.
Retool – The low-code platform for developers to build internal tools — Some of the best teams out there trust Retool…Brex, Coinbase, Plaid, Doordash, LegalGenius, Amazon, Allbirds, Peloton, and so many more – the developers at these teams trust Retool as the platform to build their internal tools. Try it free at retool.com/changelog

Featuring:

Lara Hogan – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Jerod Santo – GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X

Show Notes:

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

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