Learning how to lead: strategies to
grow your technical leadership
Deb Agarwal
A.J. Brush
A.J. Brush
Human-computer interaction with focus on
technologies for homes and families built using
sensing, inference, and prediction.
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A.J. Recent Leadership Positions
• Project Leadership examples
– MSR Menlo project HCI lead
– MSR HomeOS project HCI lead
• Technical Conference/Society
– Pervasive Program Committee Chair 2009,
Pervasive Steering Committee ongoing
– SIGCHI VP of Membership (2006- 2009)
– Organization of several workshops
• Diversity Leadership
– MSR Women’s group
– CRA-W board
Deb Agarwal
• Create software and tools to enable scientists
to address complex and large-scale
computing and data analysis problems
• Project PI for ~15 years
• Example science areas
– Understanding California watershed dynamics
– Global FLUXNET Carbon flux network
– Environmental management data management
for an advanced simulation environment
– Carbon capture capabilities for coal plants
– Knowledge discovery workflow tools
Deb Leadership Positions
• PhD student
– Collaborating with fellow students
• Cost-Free Expert to Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty
Organization
• Staff Scientist
– Leading a single project
• Group Lead
– 5-6 people
– Small set of projects – collaborative tools
• Department Head
– 22 people
– Wide diversity of projects – cybersecurity research to
environmental science
• Senior Staff Scientist
WHAT IS A LEADER?
Leadership Roles
• Technical Leader
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Direct technical vision for project
Form collaboration/partnership
Arbitrate technical differences
Lead exploratory projects
Evaluate riskiness vs. milestone decisions
Small projects with teams of less than 10 people
Large multi-organization projects with teams of
more than 50 people
• Manager
– Focus on project management / people
management (from a few people to over a hundred
people)
– Hiring/career building
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Leader/Technical Leader's Job
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Take responsibility for a project
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Champion project and the team working on it
Represent/defend project
Become recognized as an expert inside and
outside your organization
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Organize and empower people to get the project
done
Keep/get project on track
Keep project funded
Provide wisdom to guide your organization's
actions
Communication, communication,
communication!
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People skills are very important
Understand Your Organization
• Know how to get resources you need
• Understand the political realities of your
organization
– Within your organization - management
priorities, organizational priorities, external
pressures, …
– How funding works – when and how to get it
and how to keep it
– Recognition opportunities and appropriate
timing of recognition for project and personnel
• Know the critical organizational project
milestones/expectations
Understanding your organization's
leadership opportunities/ladder
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Find out what your organization rewards
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Ask your manager, peers, senior leaders
See what matters on performance
reviews
Identify role models and talk to them
Technical leaders are often not obvious
• Examples
– Submit proposals/lead projects
– Help write vision statements
– Service externally
What leadership is NOT
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Doing all the work yourself
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Telling people what to do
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Working with researchers is like herding cats
Making all the decisions yourself
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You don't scale
You don't have all the information
You don’t need to be the smartest person in
the room
Assigning blame when things go wrong
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No one will want to work with you
QUALITIES OF A LEADER
Leadership Qualities-1
• Energetic and passionate
– Able to motivate self and others
– Passionate about what you are doing
– Passionate about the impact of your work
• Solid technical background and proven track
record
– Accomplished ideas
– Good reputation – able to engage people,
especially those with funding
– Project management – able to assess solutions
• Good business sense
– Aware of the competitive business
environment
– Able to align research with business goals and
strategies
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Leadership Qualities-2
• Strong communication skills
– Able to sell ideas
– Able to align/realign team
– Able to sell results and solutions
• Strong people skills
– Can motivate and engage team members
– Can effectively resolve conflicts
– Can navigate and manage company politics
• Strong network (connections)
– Knows how to get things done inside the company
– Can find proper support, resources, and contacts
• Authentic, with High Integrity
– Earns respect, establishes trust, maintains humility
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Leadership Qualities-3
• Takes ownership and holds self
accountable
– Organizes and empowers team
– Obtains sufficient resources
– Establishes reasonable milestones
• Is a recognized expert inside and outside
the organization
– Is sought out by management
– Provides a steady hand in tough times
– Provides wisdom to guide actions of the
organization
• Maintains relationships
– Manages down as well as up
– Communicates in a timely and sensitive
manner
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Able to Build Collaboration
Within the Team
• Create a shared vision
• Create a long-term plan with short-term
deliverables to divide research
• Establish clear roles and responsibilities
• Discuss preferred work styles
• Establish effective & regular communication
• Build a research team with a group identity
• Establish a process to get work done
• Clarify upfront how the “rewards” will be
shared
• Understand what others want from the
project – win/win
Building the Team
• Empowering people to take a role that fits
them
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Team lead on a sub-project
Technical expert on a topic
Trouble-shooter
Let key people know they are important
• Helping people to recognize when their
talents are a better fit elsewhere
– Identify their talents and passion
– Work with them to identify a role that fits for
them (inside or outside the organization)
BECOMING A LEADER
How to act like a leader
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Build your brand
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What do you want to be known for?
Deliver on your promises
Start leading from the bottom up
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You don't have to be project lead to exert
leadership over a team
• If you have an idea, take ownership and
do it (after appropriate checks)
– E.g. A.J. started the women’s group, intern
lunch series, got projects started
Steps to Get from Here to There
• Find good leaders to work for and with
• Offer to take ownership on part of a
project
 Learn to lead without power
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Most of your teams will not report to you
Removes the messy evaluation part of the
relationship
• Help others on your teams to succeed –
enabling the team rather than just
yourself
• Be visible (not loudest)
• Be passionate not dogmatic
Build a Team and Collaboration
to Work With
• Pay attention to what the other researchers
around you are doing and who is doing good
work (internal and external)
• Help others to solve their problems
• Find things that you are passionate about
 Share the credit, take the responsibility
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Recognize everyone's contributions
• Be humble!
• Collect the people who add value to the
collaboration/team
Leading Through Crisis
• Do your homework
– Study the problem
– Understand the options
• Recruit upper level management to help deal
with crisis
– Bridge funding
– Opens up lateral opportunities
• Be honest and up-front with the team
– Before the rumor mill gets out of control
– Lay out a plan for the future
– Recruit their help (get them involved where
possible)
• Once its handled take some time for yourself!
Leader Examples
• A.J.
– Menlo project leader
– My boss
• Deb
– My boss at GM
– My first two bosses at LBNL
– Leading through crisis
– Current collaborator
Leadership Disaster Stories
• AJ
– Dysfunctional work group/destructive
criticism
– Summer Internship example
• Deb
– Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty
– Cybersecurity for Open Science
Leadership Challenges
Deb
• Taking the time to do it well
• Empowering people on the team who
are remote
• Asking for help
• Imposter syndrome
• Networking
• Growing my replacement
• Listening with an open mind
Leadership Challenges
AJ
• Balancing moving the group forward
and being “bossy”
• Growing replacements and knowing
when to let go
• Changing styles to match needs of
different team members
• Giving constructive criticism/being
the “bad guy”
Final Thoughts
• Good leadership is a collaboration not
a dictatorship
• Look for the win/win for everyone
• Make the hard decisions
• Be honest – admit when you don’t
know
• Always support the team externally
– Take responsibility for issues
– Share credit broadly
Thanks!
• Tessa Lau, 2009 CRA-W leadership
panel
• Patty Lopez, CAHSI 2010 presentation
Recommended reading

How To Be a Star at Work: 9
Breakthrough Strategies You Need to
Succeed, Robert Kelley, 1998