The engineering leadership skill no title can give you ![rw-book-cover](https://readwise-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/static/images/article2.74d541386bbf.png) 🔗 **Source:** [The engineering leadership skill no title can give you](https://leaddev.com/leadership/the-engineering-leadership-skill-no-title-can-give-you) > [!note]+ Document Notes > tags: [engineering-leadership, influence, organizational-flattening, workplace-communication, leadership-development] > author: [MISSING] > source: LeadDev > reference: https://leaddev.com/leadership/the-engineering-leadership-skill-no-title-can-give-you > date created: {{date:YYYY-MM-DD}} {{time:HH:mm}} > > # 🏷️ Title: The engineering leadership skill no title can give you > <!-- deep-read:sections start --> ## 🧭 Table of Contents - [📝 Summary](#-summary) - [📖 Main Content](#-main-content) - [🗒️ Notes](#️-notes) - [📚 References](#-references) - [🗣️ Paraphrase](#️-paraphrase) - [📰 Newsletter](#-newsletter) - [✅ Action Items](#-action-items) - [🧪 Hypotheses](#-hypotheses) - [📊 Methodology](#-methodology) - [❓ Questions](#-questions) - [🔮 Future Research](#-future-research) - [💡 Implications](#-implications) - [🧠 Learning Styles Assessment](#-learning-styles-assessment) - [📊 Accessibility Assessment](#-accessibility-assessment) - [🌍 DEIB Assessment](#-deib-assessment) - [✅ Logical Validity](#-logical-validity) - [🛡️ DARVO Analysis](#-darvo-analysis) - [🎯 Conclusion](#-conclusion) ### 🔗 References - [LeadDev — source article](https://leaddev.com/leadership/the-engineering-leadership-skill-no-title-can-give-you) - Anthropic's "member of technical staff" flattened-title practice (mentioned in-article; no URL supplied in source) ## 📝 Summary - The article argues that "influential leadership" — moving people and work without positional authority — is becoming the defining skill for engineers as organizations flatten and AI reduces natural collaboration touchpoints. - It matters because titles are decoupling from authority: some orgs (the piece cites Anthropic's "member of technical staff" structure) are flattening deliberately, while AI-enabled autonomous work is shrinking the number of moments where influence would normally get exercised. - Key stakeholders: individual engineers/engineering leaders without senior titles, orgs restructuring hierarchies, and the colleagues/partner teams whose buy-in is being sought. - Risk/tradeoff: leaning on logic and persuasion alone tends to fail (the "perfectly detailed proposal sitting unread" example); the piece trades total consensus for speed by endorsing a "decide and move by a stated date" approach, which risks steamrolling unresolved objections if used carelessly. - Bottom line: influence is a practiced skill — orient inward, then outward, package requests to minimize the cost of saying yes, and keep moving even without full agreement. ## 📖 Main Content - **Core argument**: Historically, influence was bundled with rank — climb the ladder, get the title, then people listen. The piece claims this bundle is breaking apart from two directions: (1) structural flattening at some companies, and (2) AI-driven autonomous work reducing the natural friction points where influence used to get built. - **Term — "influential leadership"**: defined in-article as "the ability to move people and work forward when nothing about your role obligates anyone to listen to you." Distinguished explicitly from title-based authority. - **The orientation step**: before attempting persuasion, the author frames a two-part orientation — inward (What do I think? What am I feeling?) and outward (What is this person actually saying, and why?). The claim is that most "bad influence moves" (over-long messages, anxious follow-ups, escalating to someone's manager) come from skipping the inward step. - **The mapping metaphor**: once oriented, the current state becomes a "you are here" marker and the goal becomes a destination — the two together form a route others can reason about and negotiate, shifting the conversation from *whether* to go somewhere to *how* to get there. - **Friction reduction as tactic**: requests that require real time/attention get deferred to a backlog and lose the competition for attention; requests packaged to require a single small action (e.g., a thumbs-up on a stated future-state) get answered immediately because they never enter the task-list category. - **Structured pre-work for groups**: rather than asking a group to generate a shared opinion live, the author advises writing a starting-point point of view and circulating it ahead of time, explicitly framed as a draft — this converts a group's cognitive load from "generate an opinion" to "react to a draft." - **Deciding without full consensus**: setting and communicating a decision deadline is framed as a "gift" that frees work from any single person's bandwidth and removes the expectation of total consensus. - **Uncertainties/contested claims not addressed by the source**: the article doesn't cite data for its central claims (e.g., no research is referenced for "logic doesn't move people," and the Anthropic example is asserted rather than sourced or verified against public reporting). It also doesn't address how influence-based leadership is evaluated or rewarded in performance systems that are still title-based. ### 🗒️ Notes - Influence "has always been useful" but is framed as newly *differentiating* — the piece's causal chain is: flattening + AI autonomy → fewer natural collaboration points → influence skill becomes scarcer and thus more valuable. - Orientation-before-persuasion is positioned as a sequencing claim, not just a preference: skipping it is blamed directly for specific bad behaviors (three-message anxious follow-ups, cc'ing a manager). - "Resistance almost always has a reason" — the article frames resistance as diagnostic information (a busy colleague, a partner team protecting something undisclosed, missing context) rather than as a signal you're wrong. - The two worked examples of requests ("can you review this doc?" vs. the packaged agree/disagree ask) function as a compact before/after case study — worth extracting as a reusable template for real requests. - "Decide and move — with or without them" is explicitly framed as a repeatable loop: decide, move, keep deciding, keep moving — not a one-time move. - Closing framing: friction with another person is reframed as "a rep" — deliberate practice opportunity — rather than something to avoid. ## 📚 References - [The engineering leadership skill no title can give you (LeadDev)](https://leaddev.com/leadership/the-engineering-leadership-skill-no-title-can-give-you) - Anthropic — cited in-article for its flattened "member of technical staff" title structure (no source URL provided in the article content supplied) - LDX3 New York — conference mentioned in-passing in the source (no URL provided in the article content supplied) ## 🗣️ Paraphrase - Titles used to be the thing that made people listen to you, but that bundle is coming apart — some companies are flattening ranks on purpose, and AI is quietly shrinking the number of moments where people would normally have to work through you to get things done. In that environment, the ability to move people and work without a mandate is turning into the actual differentiator, regardless of what's on your badge. - Before you try to convince anyone of anything, get clear on where you stand and then actually listen for where they stand — most of the clumsy moves people make (chasing replies, escalating too fast) come from skipping that step. Once you can see both positions, turn the ask into something so small and pre-packaged that saying yes costs the other person almost nothing, and when consensus isn't coming, name a date, decide, and move. ## 📰 Newsletter Ever notice how the most useful people in a room often don't have the fanciest title? This week's read from LeadDev makes the case that "influential leadership" — moving people and work forward with zero formal authority — is quietly becoming the actual differentiator in engineering orgs, especially as titles flatten and AI trims the number of moments teams naturally have to collaborate. The practical bit: stop leading with the perfect argument. Get oriented (your view, then theirs), turn big asks into small packaged ones people can say yes to in ten seconds, and when consensus stalls, name a date and move anyway. Worth a read if you've ever felt stuck influencing sideways instead of down. ## ✅ Action Items #### DevRel - Developer advocacy: none directly actionable from this source — it's an internal leadership piece, not developer-facing content. #### Community - Maintainers: the "packaged small ask" pattern (state the destination, ask only for agreement on it, attach full detail as optional) is directly reusable for RFC/proposal review requests in maintainer workflows. ## 🧪 Hypotheses - H1: Requests structured as a single small confirming action (e.g., thumbs-up on a stated conclusion) get a faster median response time than open-ended requests ("can you review this doc?"). - H2: Engineers who explicitly self-orient (write down their own position) before a high-stakes ask send fewer follow-up/escalation messages per thread than those who don't. - H3: Teams operating under flattened title structures show no significant difference in decision-making speed compared to hierarchical teams — i.e., flattening doesn't inherently speed things up without an explicit "decide and move by X" norm. - H4: Increased AI-driven autonomous work correlates with a measurable decline in cross-team synchronous collaboration events (meetings, joint reviews) per engineer per sprint. - H5: Setting and honoring an explicit decision deadline increases proposal throughput (proposals reaching a decided state within N weeks) versus open-ended consensus-seeking. ### 📊 Methodology - H1/H2: message-log field study — instrument request threads (Slack/email/PR comments) for structure type, response latency, and follow-up count; compare structured vs. unstructured requests within the same team. - H3: comparative survey + decision-log audit across a matched sample of flattened vs. hierarchical engineering orgs, controlling for company size and tenure. - H4: longitudinal telemetry on calendar/meeting density and PR-review co-authorship before/after AI-assisted tooling adoption. - H5: A/B test at the proposal-process level — half of proposals get an explicit stated decision date, half don't; measure time-to-decision and post-decision revisit rate. ### ❓ Questions - How should performance-review systems credit influence when the org's formal ladder still rewards title and scope, not persuasive capability? - Where's the line between "decide and move without full consensus" and steamrolling a legitimate, still-unaddressed objection? - Does the "orientation before persuasion" sequence hold under real time pressure (incident response, launch-day decisions), or is it a luxury of non-urgent work? ### 🔮 Future Research - Longitudinal comparison of decision velocity and employee-reported influence-efficacy in orgs before/after a deliberate title-flattening initiative. - Study of how AI-assisted autonomous coding work is reshaping the *frequency*, not just the volume, of cross-team touchpoints. - Research on whether the "packaged small ask" pattern degrades trust over repeated use (i.e., does it start to read as manipulative once colleagues recognize the pattern?). ### 💡 Implications - **Practice**: engineers without formal authority have a concrete, learnable playbook (orient, map, package, decide-and-move) rather than needing to wait for a title. - **Policy**: performance-review and promotion frameworks built purely around title/scope may misalign with orgs that are structurally flattening. - **Education**: onboarding and mentorship programs could teach the "packaged ask" pattern explicitly as a communication skill, not just a soft-skill aside. - **Funding models**: less directly applicable — this is an internal-leadership piece, not a funding or governance topic. ### 🧠 Learning Styles Assessment - Reading level estimate: approximately Flesch-Kincaid grade 10–11 (moderate sentence length, conversational register, some abstract leadership vocabulary like "amorphous requests" and "structural changes"). #### 👀 Visual learners - Present: none — the supplied content is pure prose with no diagrams, screenshots, or labeled visuals. - Improve: the "you are here → destination" mapping metaphor is inherently visual and is currently described only in text; a simple two-node route diagram would strengthen it considerably. #### 🔊 Aural learners - Present: no audio/podcast version indicated in the supplied content. - Improve: a short narrated summary of the orientation-and-packaging framework would suit this audience. #### 🗣️ Verbal learners - Present: strong — the piece leans on definitions ("influential leadership" is explicitly defined) and two worked examples contrasting weak vs. strong requests. - Improve: a short glossary distinguishing "influence" from "authority" and "persuasion" would sharpen the verbal scaffolding already present. #### 🧩 Kinesthetic learners - Present: the two contrasting request examples function as a lightweight, copyable template. - Improve: an explicit fill-in-the-blank version of the "packaged ask" example would turn it into a practicable exercise. #### 🧠 Logical learners - Present: the point-A-to-point-B mapping gives a light causal structure to work from. - Improve: a decision tree ("is this request time-bound and specific? → package it; is it open-ended? → convert it before sending") would make the logic explicit and reusable. #### 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Social learners - Present: none — no discussion prompts or community components in the supplied content. - Improve: discussion questions (e.g., "share a time a packaged ask worked/failed for you") would suit a team book-club format. #### 🧘‍♀️ Solitary learners - Present: the orientation step ("What do I think? What am I feeling?") is itself a self-reflection prompt. - Improve: a short worksheet operationalizing that orientation step before a real ask would extend it. #### 🌿 Naturalistic learners - Present: none — no ecosystem/sustainability framing in this piece. - Improve: not a natural fit for this content; skip. ### 📊 Accessibility Assessment #### Screen reader semantics - Present: the supplied content has no explicit heading structure beyond the "Key takeaways" bullet list — original article likely relies on visual hierarchy (bold, hero image) not represented in this text extract. - Improve: adding descriptive H2/H3 headings per section (as done in this note) would materially improve screen-reader navigability versus the flat original. #### Keyboard navigation - Not assessable from text content alone — original page interactivity (paywall/registration gate mentioned: "1 article left to read") isn't described in enough detail to audit. #### Contrast and readability - Not assessable from text content alone. #### Text resizing and reflow - Not assessable from text content alone. #### Media and captions - Present: none — no audio/video components in the supplied content. #### Forms and interactions - The source mentions a registration gate ("register a free LeadDev.com account") — no detail on form accessibility is available from the supplied text. #### Standards reference - Given the limited extract, only a partial WCAG 2.2 AA review is possible; the clearest gap is missing semantic heading structure in the raw article text. ### 🌍 DEIB Assessment #### Cultural breadth - Present: single-company, single-region framing (US-centric tech industry, one named company). - Improve: examples from non-US or non-VC-backed engineering orgs would broaden applicability. #### Inclusive language - Present: gender-neutral throughout ("someone," "they"); no exclusionary language identified. - Improve: none needed. #### Neurodiversity support - Present: dense, unbroken paragraphs in the source extract with minimal chunking. - Improve: shorter paragraphs and more frequent subheadings (as restructured in this note) would aid processing. #### Representation - Present: article speaks generically about "engineers" and "engineering leaders" without gendered or identity-specific framing. - Improve: n/a — representation is neutral by omission rather than by active inclusion. #### Psychological safety - Present: the "resistance almost always has a reason" framing is respectful toward people who push back, treating disagreement as information rather than obstruction. - Improve: could more explicitly acknowledge that "decide and move without consensus" can itself feel unsafe to those whose objections get overridden by a deadline. ### ✅ Logical Validity #### Strong reasoning - **Analogical reasoning** (map metaphor): "you are here" + destination marker → mapped route is a clear, well-constructed analogy that makes an abstract social process (aligning stakeholders) concrete and actionable. - **Causal framing** (orientation → outcome): the piece draws a direct line from skipping self-orientation to specific bad behaviors (over-messaging, escalation), which is testable and gives the advice explanatory power beyond "be more careful." #### Fallacies - **Hasty generalization**: "logic doesn't move people" is asserted from a single anecdote (the unread detailed proposal) and generalized into a categorical claim; a more precise version would be "logic alone is often insufficient," not "logic doesn't move people" at all. Fix: qualify the claim or cite broader evidence. - **Unsupported example-as-evidence**: the Anthropic "member of technical staff" example is used to support the flattening trend but isn't sourced or verified within the text; it functions rhetorically as proof rather than as a cited data point. Fix: attribute to a specific public source or mark as illustrative rather than evidentiary. #### Tone of voice - Coaching and pragmatic, second-person throughout ("You need a point of view," "Make sure you are really clear"), confident and prescriptive rather than hedged — consistent with a leadership-advice column register. ### 🛡️ DARVO Analysis - This piece is leadership advice, not an account of an accusation or conflict, so classic DARVO dynamics (deny, attack, reverse victim/offender) are largely not present. - The closest adjacent pattern worth flagging: "resistance almost always has a reason, and the reason is almost never you're wrong" could, read uncharitably, minimize the possibility that resistance is in fact valid disagreement — but in context it's framed as a call to listen harder, not to dismiss the other party, so it doesn't rise to a DARVO-style reversal. - No emotional-manipulation rhetoric, credibility attacks, or victim-offender reversal identified in the supplied text. ## 🎯 Conclusion - Influence, not title, is framed as the real currency of engineering leadership — and it's a learnable sequence: orient inward, then outward; map the current state to the destination; package requests so saying yes costs almost nothing; and when consensus stalls, name a date and move anyway. - Practical next step for readers: pick one open, stalled request you own right now and rewrite it using the article's packaged-ask template (state the destination, ask only for agreement on it, attach detail as optional) — then compare response time to your last unstructured version of the same ask. ## 🔄 Refactor Appendix — The engineering leadership skill no title can give you ### 📚 Literature Atoms (H3) #### Influence is replacing title as leadership currency > [!quote] > "For a long time, influence came bundled with rank... However, the industry is changing." **Context & use**: - Early in the article, framing paragraph after the definition of influential leadership. - Sets up the whole piece's premise: rank-based influence is decoupling, driven by both deliberate flattening and AI-enabled autonomy. **Tags**: #xref <!-- atomicity: 1 idea ✓ --> #### Orientation must precede persuasion > [!quote] > "The best first step in influence is not logic. It's understanding the current state." **Context & use**: - Mid-article, introducing the two-part orientation (inward, then outward) before any influence tactic. - Directly explains the mechanism behind common "bad influence moves" like anxious follow-up messages. **Tags**: #aphorisms <!-- atomicity: 1 idea ✓ --> #### Small, packaged requests skip the backlog entirely > [!quote] > "Big or amorphous requests that can't be completed in-the-moment are added to someone's task list or backlog... However, if your request can be completed quickly, it never enters the task list." **Context & use**: - The friction-reduction section, illustrated with the "can you review this doc?" vs. packaged-agreement contrast. - Directly actionable — reusable as a request-writing checklist. **Tags**: #addendum <!-- atomicity: 1 idea ✓ --> ### 🧠 Permanent Candidates (H4) #### Orientation-before-persuasion **Claim** (one sentence, Courtney's voice): I get further trying to influence someone once I've named my own position and genuinely listened for theirs than I ever do by sharpening the argument itself. **Evidence pointer**: [[#Orientation must precede persuasion]] **Scope & conditions**: Holds for non-urgent, relationship-preserving asks; breaks down under real time pressure (incident response) where there may be no room for the outward-listening step before acting. **Links**: - [[Packaged-ask design]] — because applies-in request-writing - [[Resistance-as-information]] — because extends <!-- atomicity: 1 idea ✓ --> ### ✏️ Fleeting Queue - [F1] Draft a "packaged ask" template for my own recurring review requests, based on the article's doc-review contrast example — https://leaddev.com/leadership/the-engineering-leadership-skill-no-title-can-give-you #addendum - [F2] Is there research backing "logic doesn't move people," or is that purely anecdotal in this piece? Worth checking against negotiation/persuasion literature. #xref ### → Things 3 (max 2 actions) - [ ] Rewrite one currently-stalled request using the packaged-ask pattern and track response time — leadership communication practice #things ``` Processed: The engineering leadership skill no title can give you - Literature atoms: 3 / 5 cap - Permanent candidates: 1 / 3 cap - Fleeting items: 2 - Things 3 actions: 1 / 2 cap - Konik tags used: [xref, aphorisms, addendum] - Triage callouts populated: [n/a — single-source article note, no Literature-note triage layer used] - Quality gates: [✓ verbatim quotes drawn directly from supplied text, ✓ atomicity markers present, ✓ link annotations typed, ✓ no [MISSING] in appendix fields, N/A version-history-diff (no Readwise highlight IDs in source)] - Override conditions triggered: none ``` <!-- deep-read:sections end --> ## Highlights - I believe it is emerging as the key thing setting successful people apart" and "this is becoming the most valuable person to be" are strong claims resting entirely on the author's own observation, with no supporting data, survey, or even a second cited example beyond Anthropic. Fix: soften to "in my experience" framing throughout, or cite broader evidence (industry surveys on flattening, autonomy trends). - Note: 🔍 Fallacy: Hasty Generalization #fallacy/hasty-generalization ## New Highlights added 2026-07-20 at 10:55 AM - For a long time, influence came bundled with rank. You climbed the ladder, a title arrived, and that title granted a reason for people to listen to you. You got the title and then you led. However, [the industry is changing](https://leaddev.com/ai/engineering-skills-are-being-rewritten-by-ai). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kxzyxpmvp83gvh2eage4k1e8)) - Note: Premise: influence used to be bundled with title/rank — flat orgs are decoupling the two. - Tags: atom/literature/h1 - The best first step in influence is not logic. It’s understanding the current state, and we do that in two parts. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kxzyxvttnwatz844s7cgnkg5)) - Note: Counterintuitive method: influence starts with diagnosing current state, not leading with argument/logic. - Tags: atom/literature/h2 - Big or amorphous requests that can’t be completed in-the-moment are added to someone’s task list or backlog. That means your request now has to compete with *every* other thing they have going on, which isn’t a competition you’re likely to win. However, if your request can be completed quickly, it never enters the task list. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kxzyy13841qenez9vv7jsx67)) - Note: Tactic: keep requests small enough to complete in-the-moment so they never hit the backlog where they lose. - Tags: atom/literature/h1 ## Links - [[3. Resources/Permanent Notes/Competence Is the Prerequisite for Distributing Authority]] — complements: credible influence begins with demonstrated judgment rather than title. - [[3. Resources/Permanent Notes/A Meeting Earns Its Cost by Producing Owned Decisions]] — applies-in: influence becomes operational through explicit decisions and owners.