 Hello, everybody, and welcome to this quick session. I'm Mark, engineering manager at SDRV. And this is my story. It's a story for those of you who already are or aspire to be leaders eventually. So this is me, a long, long time ago. When I first wrote a for loop, I was ecstatic about it. And it was the turning point, the moment where I realized that this is the career that I want to pursue, that I really want to be in software engineering. And at first, it was like that, do you know the feeling when you hit the backspace more times than any other letter on the keyboard? Well, that was me. But I worked hard. I worked really hard. I had a workout routine, 100 spacebars, 100 centers, 100 backspaces per second. Until eventually, I became like this. Sorry, that's a different story and different workout routine like this, where code became a drug to me and coffee as well. I liked the dopamine spike when I finished basically any task, any feature that was presented to me. And ideally, before the deadline, that was great. And over time, this feeling of expertise that was coming to me actually was recognized by others as well. And I became a team leader. That was a great moment, because everything that I worked so hard for was finally done. It felt great. The dream come true. But me being me, I didn't stop at that. In fact, I continued to work even harder. And eventually, I became an engineering manager. And I almost went bold for real this time. Why is it? Well, up until now, this story was quite common. Nothing special about it. It's a pretty standard journey. Well, let me first introduce my wonderful personality and the mindset that I had at the time. So I am competitive. And to be a leader who is competitive, that immediately meant to me that I had to be better than everyone else, basically at whatever they do. Meaning I had to stay constantly at the edge, ahead of the curve, learning new trends, new technologies. Me being obsessively hardworking, well, I just, to be a good leader, I just had to work harder than everybody else, because that's what leaders do. So I would always strive to go one step further. Well, as I'm a risk taker, that one step would sometimes be really painful. But I adapt and I overcome. That's what leaders do. I'm also a reformer, and I have this constant urge of changing things, because if things aren't changing, they aren't improving, right? So I would catalyze the change. I'm also demanding. Well, that means setting direction and goals. Luckily, I'm also supportive. So it's like completely dictatorship. It also means motivating others to achieve those goals. And most importantly, I'm ambitious. And being an ambitious leader, I had to achieve what others find extraordinary beyond their reach. So I would like to believe that not all of what I just presented, not all of the points, were completely wrong. Nevertheless, becoming a manager had an unexpected effect on me. And that started when my hard skills, the textiles, text skills started to plunge like a rock, like completely obliterated over time. And in turn, I lost the ability to compete with others, because I would compete with them on the technical level, right? No more able to do that. And my personal feeling of recognition, the one that I had up until then for my technical skills, that just, you know, done zero nada. And along with that, motivation completely annihilated. But I was an engineering manager. Everything is fine, except it wasn't, because I felt paralyzed by my own need of achievement and recognition. So one day I was sitting in a kitchen, drinking coffee and watching the rain just hitting the windows. And then nothing happened. And this became a pattern that repeated for a couple of days, weeks, sometimes even months. And I felt burned out. And that is when it happened. And what happened was nothing again, except this nothing is now important. I could now stand here and tell you a story that is completely made up. I could just come up with an imaginary figure that just entered my life and magically changed the direction of things, changed my perception, changed the meaning. Well, that would be a complete lie, because there is no plot twist, no dynamic point in my story, and likely there won't be one in yours either, let's be honest. The only one that can add it there is you. And you can do that by changing your mindset. So you have to realize you now have multiple playing fields. Inevitably you're gonna lose on some of these. So pick wisely, make peace with the fact that you no longer will be the one who is the most technically savvy person in the room. And don't strive to be one. You don't have to instead identify the talent in the room and let them outgrow you. Even better, help them outgrow you. Are you competitive, like me? Well, good, but don't compete with others. Compete with yourself. Are you obsessive and hardworking? Well, work smarter, not harder. With our, we all heard that million of times, but to me, perhaps I needed to hear it millions of times. And I still didn't get it until now. Do you know what it is about? It's not about efficiently doing the tasks that you work on. It's about efficiently picking the tasks to work on. And that's how of a, hell of a change. Now, are we a bold risk taker? First of all, stop making bold statements, please. And second, don't risk, strategize. Risk is a calculated leap of faith. Strategy is a carefully, carefully considered, well thought through long-term plan. And as a leader, leadership is a long-term game. Well, are you a reformer, the constant need of change, the urge? Well, instead of catalyzing change, try to catalyze growth. Are you demanding? Well, don't set direction, establish one and help others establish goals for themselves. And instead of motivating, inspire. Because motivation is in your head. Inspiration comes from your heart. So find a way to inspire others. Don't seek recognition in that. Don't do that. No external validation because you're likely not gonna get one. Other people's achievements are yours as well from now on. Think about it this way. And their success is your recognition because how I see leading now is the responsibility to see to the rise of others around you. And that perception helped me greatly to reach my motivation. And maybe this talk will be the plot twist in your story. Maybe this will be the dynamic point that you need. And maybe not. But if at least one person in here finds it useful, well, it was worth it for me because guess what? Your success is my recognition. Thank you. Time for questions. Oh, there are some. Okay. My responsibility as an engineering leader, I tend to view it as I just described it. I really just want, first of all, to identify the talent and get that talent in my team. That's first thing. Second, help this talent to grow alongside of you. And they will help you as well. But focus on others. That's like the mantra that's always, I've always find it very helpful when in a need, just reach out. And I was trying to teach this to the people that I work with to establish sort of a dynamic team. And I call it an environment of trust. And as a leader, one of the responsibilities should be to support these environments, to create an environment of psychological safety, if you wish, in your team. And eventually, I would like to say that as a leader, you should always strive to be replaceable. So it's kind of a paradox, but I believe that you should be aiming for others to be able to replace you. That's like the utmost responsibility that you can have. Okay, so you mean my day-to-day activities that I do for my company? Okay, yes. I think there are quite a lot of them. I don't think that it's in the scope of this talk to actually go into day-to-day activities. I wouldn't even call it a leader at this point, because the things that you do for your customers are not the things that make you a leader. And those day-to-day activities that make your company run continuously, I don't see them as the one, anybody can do them with the right amount of training. I don't think these are the responsibilities of a leader. These are the responsibilities of an engineering manager, and these are out of the scope of this talk, if that is okay for you. How do I deal with imposters in the team? Also, not imposters, was it introverts? How do I deal with introverts in the team? Okay. Good light talk question. All right, so my 10 seconds answer would be focus not on those introverted people, because it's gonna be, you can't even do that. You can't push these people to be more outreaching. Instead, try to focus on the rest of the team that is not introverted to pull those people inside. Because you can't really change what these people are inside and you can't force them to be more outgoing, to be more easygoing about them publicly speaking, stuff like that. You can support this, but the first thing to do is sort of get them to the basic level of communication. So if you're talking about really introverts at this point that have troubles communicating with the team, then get the team, find a way to communicate with them. It's not your direct responsibility to address that individual. It's your, at least, as I view it, responsibility to address the capability of the team to talk among them. So address the rest of the team would be my advice. Yes? Multiple phases. First, I work with them personally. Then I have, I call it the culture core of the team. Those are the individuals that can effectively spread the culture of the team. Those are the true core members of the team. And I usually ask them to onboard this person. Usually they, for example, since I have two teams, one in Bernal and one in Prague, it's kind of difficult and tricky to maintain the culture across multiple cities. And the core of the team is here in Bernal. So I ask them to come often to Prague to the new team member to sort of dump the culture on them, to get them soaked in the culture by just being around those people. That's enough. I don't really have a specific targeted approach that would be somewhat methodic. I just fully trust in the capabilities of those core members to basically transfer the culture to them. And then, of course, I pick people that I believe are able to fit in the culture. You just can't transfer it to anybody you want to. Last question, then we're out of time or we're out of time right now? We're out of time. Sorry, thank you for questions. If you want to talk to me outside, feel free to do so.