If you are a born leader, you’ll find yourself spending increasing amounts of time in discussions helping people make decisions. At a small scale, you can do this by just adding meetings to your calendar or more emails in your inbox. But inevitably, you will reach your maximum capacity.
The key to scaling beyond the 40 hours of your week is to learn how to align people without ever being in the room.
My key to scaling leadership is capturing your core beliefs as principles or mantras that people can follow, even when you aren’t in the room. Like a guiding light or a vision statement, your core principles should be easy to follow, publicly documented, and agreed upon by the teams that follow you.
Since people know what I value and how I expect them to behave, they don’t need me in all discussions. This enables me to be everywhere simultaneously while keeping my calendar free for deep work.
I picked up my principles through books, mentors, and hard experiences that shaped who I am as an engineer. As I read Ray Dalio’s Principles, I realized that having these experiences in my head yields a fraction of the value they could provide by sharing them openly.
This blog post aims to share the lessons I’ve learned in my career and inspire you to start capturing your key principles.