Episode 7: Role models, restructuring and living in the future with Danielle Leong
Oct 28, 2023
auto_awesome
Danielle Leong discusses the importance of role modeling, impact of restructuring, and living in the future as a manager of managers. Exploring her journey, supportive networks, team restructuring at GitHub, cultural mergers, leadership traits, and navigating complexities of managing managers.
Role modeling leadership style for personal growth and relationship nurturing.
Restructuring teams to manage managers necessitates cohesive organizational culture and shared goals.
Deep dives
Leadership Inspiration from Mentor at GitHub
Danielle Leong recounts her journey into management, inspired by a mentor, Helen, at GitHub, who demonstrated a supportive leadership style by guiding individuals to problem-solving rather than issuing instructions. This experience motivated Leong to transition into a management role to emulate her mentor's approach, emphasizing personal growth and nurturing relationships.
Building Support Networks for Growth
Leong highlights the importance of a strong support network during her transition into management. She underscores the value of colleagues like Lynn, Jim, and Annie who invested in her development, provided guidance, and offered a female leadership perspective crucial for navigating challenges specific to being a woman of color in a leadership position.
Evolution towards Managing Managers
Leong shares her progression from managing a team at GitHub to overseeing multiple teams and eventually becoming a manager of managers. She details a transformational process where by restructuring the Identity and Access Management team, she inadvertently transitioned into managing managers, setting the stage for new leadership challenges.
Cultivating a Unified Organizational Culture
As Leong ventured into managing multiple teams and managers, she focused on fostering a cohesive organizational culture. Implementing cross-pollination strategies to blend team practices and encourage mutual learning, she emphasized celebrating collective wins, enhancing communication, and aligning teams towards shared goals for sustained success and engagement.
Danielle Leong, a tremendous VP of Engineering and impressive portrait photographer, chats with me about what the importance of role modelling, the impact of restructuring and how managers of managers need to live further into the future.
Guest Biography:
Danielle is a seasoned engineering leader who is passionate about creating healthy, inclusive, productive engineering teams and helping them do their best work. She has a wealth of experience ranging from building teams at pre-seed startups to Director of Identity at GitHub to being an early engineer at Twilio. Danielle is also the creator and founder of Feerless, an app that provided crowd-sourced, preemptive notifications for Netflix users with PTSD. In her spare time, she runs a photography studio that specialises in colourful, fun, and inclusive headshots.