Darian Shimy, Engineering Lead at Square and sports coach, shares coaching techniques for engineering teams. Topics include scaling leadership through effective delegation, creating trust, ownership, and accountability, using repetition in communication, and adjusting communication style to improve engagement.
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volunteer_activism ADVICE
Delegate Through Three Levels
Delegating work effectively means passing responsibility for tasks, projects, and business metrics down the organization.
The goal is to enable your team to execute independently so you can walk away without disruption.
volunteer_activism ADVICE
Empower Decision Ownership
Trust your team by empowering them to make decisions and own the outcomes.
Avoid micromanaging decisions by encouraging consensus and responsibility ownership.
volunteer_activism ADVICE
Set Constraints, Let Teams Adapt
Provide strategic constraints but let teams decide how to implement solutions.
Accept imperfect methods if they achieve business goals effectively.
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Darian Shimy (@dshimy) shares the lessons he’s learned as a longtime sports coach and engineering leader. You’ll learn coaching techniques he’s applied in his engineering teams you can leverage to increase the value and productivity of your teams. Plus how to scale your leadership through effective delegation and how to create environments of trust, ownership, and accountability.
"when someone comes to you from a management standpoint says, 'is this okay? Can I do this?'They're implicitly removing the accountability and responsibility from that decision" - Darian Shimy
ABOUT DARIAN SHIMY
Darian Shimy is the Engineering Lead @ Square. As an engineering leader who scales teams and products, Darian Shimy is an industry veteran with over 25 years of experience. He is currently at Square with prior leadership positions at Weebly, Attensity, and eHarmony.com. He received an MS in Computer Science from The University of Southern California and continues to code as a hobby. Outside the professional setting, Darian is a softball coach for various age levels from the recreation to competitive level.
SHOWNOTES
How to scale leadership through effective delegation (1:40)
How to create environments of trust, ownership, and accountability (5:25)
The power of repetition in communication and how to get feedback on your message (13:11)
How trust saves you time and creates leverage to scale (15:26)
Improve communication by adjusting your style and asking more engaging questions (22:15)
How to reduce fear and increase team input in large meetings (27:37)
How to read the room: what cues and signals you need to pay attention to (33:11)
The leader who most inspired and impacted Darian (36:20)
The simple power of smiling (38:31)
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