What have you done to develop your leadership skills?

Early on, I realized I was treating leadership as something for more senior people, but my manager pointed out that even on a small project I could lead through preparation and communication. On a feature I built with another engineer, I noticed I often kept questions to myself and only shared issues once I was stuck. I wanted to improve that, so I started preparing questions before our syncs, sending short updates when I hit risks, and asking a senior teammate to give me feedback on how I was communicating. Over a few weeks, I became much clearer in meetings and better at surfacing blockers early. My lead later told me they trusted me more because they didn't have to pull status out of me, and a teammate started coming to me for context on the part I owned. That experience changed my view of leadership from 'having authority' to 'helping the work move smoothly for other people.'

I’ve worked on building leadership skills by volunteering for the parts of a project that keep everyone aligned, even when I wasn’t the most senior person on the team. In my last role at a small nonprofit, I helped maintain our donation website, and I started taking ownership of the weekly check-in notes and follow-ups because people kept missing small action items. I also made a point to ask quieter teammates for their input before meetings so we weren’t just hearing from the loudest voices. Over time, I got better at turning a vague task into clear next steps, and that made our team much more consistent about finishing work on time. What I learned is that leadership for me is less about directing people and more about creating enough structure and trust that other people can do their best work.