My VP of Engineering is brilliant at writing code but completely failing at leading and managing his growing team. He refuses to delegate and insists on solving every technical problem himself. How do we break this bottleneck?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

You are dealing with a classic example of a leader who GWC's the technical work but does not GWC the leadership seat. As your company grows, the requirements of the seat change from doing the work to leading, managing, and creating accountability.

To break this bottleneck, you must have a candid conversation about the Accountability Chart. Look at the five roles of any leadership seat, which include leading and managing their team. Ask your VP of Engineering if they actually want to spend their days managing people, conducting reviews, and resolving team issues, or if they would be happier and more effective focusing purely on high-level technical architecture.

Often, technical leaders are relieved when you give them permission to step down from a management role they never really wanted in the first place. If they agree that they do not want to manage people, you need to create a senior individual contributor seat for them. This keeps their brilliant technical mind in the company while allowing you to hire a true leader to run the engineering department.

If they insist they want to remain in the leadership seat, you must give them a clear timeline to delegate their technical tasks and focus on building their team. Set specific Rocks around delegation and management training. If they fail to hit these milestones and continue to act as a bottleneck, you must make a hard decision. A business cannot scale when its leaders are hiding in the weeds of execution.