In every engineering team, there are individuals with strong technical capabilities who have the potential to step up as leaders. However, becoming a leader is not just about being technically proficient; it’s about thinking strategically, fostering collaboration, guiding others, and creating an environment where success is repeatable. As a software engineering manager, one of the most rewarding and impactful things you can do is to help those engineers transition into leadership roles. So, how do we foster and develop leaders within our teams?
1. Create Opportunities for Ownership
Leaders need to experience ownership beyond their personal tasks. Assign projects where engineers are responsible not only for the technical delivery but also for the overall strategy, team coordination, and stakeholder management. Ownership helps them understand the bigger picture, make decisions that affect more than just their code, and build confidence in taking responsibility for outcomes.
Encourage them to lead discussions, run sprint reviews, and facilitate retrospectives. By stepping into these roles, engineers begin to develop a sense of accountability for their team’s success, not just their own.
2. Mentorship and Coaching
A strong mentor-mentee relationship can be crucial to an engineer’s growth as a leader. Provide them with the support of experienced leaders within or outside your organization. That may involve asking them if they have considered who within the team or external to the team that they would like the opportunity to get to know better. Mentorship should go beyond technical guidance—it should focus on developing soft skills, decision-making, conflict resolution, and fostering team collaboration.
As a manager, coach them on leadership practices. Ask guiding questions that challenge their assumptions and push them to think critically about team dynamics, project direction, and long-term goals. Rather than giving answers, focus on helping them develop their problem-solving capabilities.
3. Encourage Decision-Making
Leaders need to be comfortable making decisions—often with incomplete information. Encourage engineers to make decisions, even if the risk is small, so they can learn how to weigh trade-offs, deal with uncertainty, and live with the consequences. This doesn’t mean throwing them into the deep end, but rather allowing them to take controlled risks and giving them the freedom to learn from mistakes.
Follow up with feedback sessions to discuss the reasoning behind their decisions, what went well, and what could be improved. This reflection process is key to building sound judgment and resilience.
4. Promote Cross-Team Collaboration
Engineering leaders should not operate in silos. A key aspect of leadership is the ability to collaborate and communicate across teams and functions. Assign them to cross-functional projects or ask them to work closely with product managers, designers, and other stakeholders. This helps them develop empathy for other roles, understand broader business objectives, and hone their communication skills. Gaining and developing this bigger picture thinking is helpful in the context of thinking beyond the immediate team.
Encourage them to speak up in meetings and to bridge gaps between technical and non-technical team members. Effective leaders know how to translate complex technical challenges into terms the business can understand, and cross-team collaboration is the perfect training ground for this skill.
5. Foster a Growth Mindset
Leadership is not static; it requires continuous learning. Foster a culture where your potential leaders feel encouraged to seek feedback, try new approaches, and learn from their peers. Create a safe space where they can reflect on their leadership journey, discuss their challenges, and share lessons learned without fear of judgment.
Provide opportunities for them to attend leadership training, read books, or participate in workshops and conferences. Highlighting continuous improvement sets the foundation for lifelong leadership growth.
6. Model Leadership
Engineers learn a great deal from observing the behavior of their managers and senior leaders. Model the kind of leadership you want to see and the kind of leader you'd want them to be. Whether it's in how you run meetings, handle difficult conversations, or approach decision-making, your actions set the tone for what leadership looks like in your organization.
Invite potential leaders to shadow you in meetings or project planning sessions. Let them see how you navigate complex situations and manage relationships. By watching how you lead, they will pick up on the nuances of leadership beyond technical competence.
7. Empower Them to Influence
Leadership is about influence, not authority. Encourage engineers to practice influencing others through ideas, knowledge sharing, and collaboration rather than relying on formal titles. Give them platforms to present their ideas in team meetings, run knowledge-sharing sessions, or lead initiatives that benefit the broader organization. As an example, we run a bi-weekly session on our engineering teams where team members have the opportunity to present to the broader engineering organization on a topic and train, educate, and teach others. This is a chance to build and present, in turn creating influence.
When team members see their peers as influential, they are more likely to seek guidance and follow their direction, which helps build leadership credibility from the ground up.
8. Set Clear Expectations
Be explicit about what leadership entails in your organization. Many engineers may not realize that leadership involves much more than solving technical problems. Clearly communicate that leadership means guiding a team, fostering collaboration, managing conflicts, and aligning with broader business objectives.
Set clear goals for your potential leaders. Whether it’s improving communication, handling project management tasks, or mentoring others, having concrete expectations will help them understand what skills to develop and give them measurable milestones for growth.
Additionally, explore what kind of leadership that they want to follow. Do they want to stay more technically oriented or would they like to explore people management? When you can discern this, then you can set some expectations about what leadership looks like in those aspects.
9. Recognize and Reward Leadership Behaviors
Finally, recognize and reward leadership behaviors when you see them. Call out examples where an engineer has demonstrated leadership qualities, whether it’s facilitating a team discussion, mentoring a junior colleague, or making a difficult decision that positively impacted the project.
Public recognition not only reinforces leadership behaviors but also signals to others on the team that leadership isn’t tied to a title—it’s a mindset and set of actions that anyone can practice.
Conclusion
Developing leaders in your engineering team requires a combination of mentorship, opportunities for growth, and a culture that values leadership at every level. By focusing on ownership, decision-making, collaboration, and continuous learning, you can foster leadership qualities in technically talented engineers and help them grow into the leaders your team and organization need. Leadership development isn’t a one-size-fits-all process, but by cultivating these practices, you can guide your engineers toward becoming confident, capable leaders who elevate their teams and deliver lasting impact.