‘Enabling ICs to Move into Management Roles’ with Ashik Uzzaman, Director of Engineering at Twin Health

Kovid Batra: Hi everyone! This is Kovid, your host at Beyond the Code by Typo. I’m back with another episode and a special guest who is a curious soul, passionate about reading and writing, has 23+ years of engineering and leadership experience, currently working as a Director of Engineering at Treatment Platform Group. On top of that, he’s author of Leadership Whiteboard, which is a YouTube channel and a blogging website that talks about engineering leadership. So, a really good source of learning for our audience there. Welcome to the show, Ashik. Happy to have you here.

Ashik Uzzaman: Thank you. Thank you. I am humbled and honored to be with you here, Kovid. Thank you.

Kovid Batra: Thank you. Thank you so much. So, Ashik, we’ll start with a quick fireside chat, wherein I’ll be asking you two to three questions which would be more around your personal life. And from there, I think our audience and I would love to know more about you.

Ashik Uzzaman: Definitely.

Kovid Batra: Are you ready?

Ashik Uzzaman: Yeah, sure.

Kovid Batra: Perfect! Alright, there you go. We’ll start with some sports, okay? So, which is your favorite indoor, outdoor sport that you really love to play?

Ashik Uzzaman: Yeah. So, my indoor sport is actually chess. And, me and my son, we have been playing competitive chess. But outdoor sport, I’m, I’m a little bit lazy person. I’m more of an audience rather than actually player. I like soccer a lot. Yeah.

Kovid Batra: So, you watch soccer a lot?

Ashik Uzzaman: Yeah. I watch soccer a lot. Yeah.

Kovid Batra: Perfect, perfect. That’s nice. Okay, moving on to the next one. What do you think, as a leader, as a manager, is the best way to learn for people? Or, if I should ask, how do you learn your leadership style? So, when you were a manager, how did you come up with those thoughts that this is how you should manage it, manage your teams?

Ashik Uzzaman: Yeah. So, definitely learning management and leadership, the first thing will come is the hands-on experience. As you work, as you get into situations, there is no alternate of getting through situations to learn, how you manage team, you may be making mistakes and so on. But, it has to be their hands-on experience, I should say is the number one thing. I think the number two thing is the actually reading. You can read a lot. There are a lot of literatures, articles or even just watching videos, like I started a channel as I was talking about where I talk about these theories. Another thing, I think along with hands-on experience and reading is actually collecting feedback from your team members.

So, these three, if you can properly utilize together, I think will be the right way to move forward to learning leadership and management.

Kovid Batra: That’s nice. So, I think it’s hands-on experience, learning, reading, and then taking feedback from your peers. I think that’s really amazing. Yeah. I hope this has really helped you in general to improve in your life. And I really appreciate this thought. Usually people are not very comfortable with the feedback kind of thing when they themselves are managers. Feedback coming in from the team, they usually don’t take it the right way. But, I think this is a good message where even if you’re a manager or a leader, taking feedback from the people whom you’re working with, your team, your devs, I think could actually make you learn things because when, when you operate, that’s what I have also felt, like we think that we are doing it right. And almost everyone does the same way, but when feedback comes in, there is a reality check for sure.

Ashik Uzzaman: Yeah. Like you don’t watch yourself very well. Other people watch you well. So, if you can know from others, then you know where to adjust your style.

Kovid Batra: Absolutely. Absolutely. Great! All right. So, what’s your mantra for success?

Ashik Uzzaman: Yeah. So, one thing I follow a lot is that I stay hungry for knowledge, and remain humble in success. So, stay hungry for knowledge and remain humble in success. I actually have been trying, and this is my mantra all throughout my life. I don’t know if you can ever perfect the art or not, but if you are not hungry, if you are not curious, you know, you will not grow. After a certain point you’ll get satisfied, you will not grow any further. So, you have to be hungry. On the other hand, once you start getting some results, if you don’t show humility, you are going to slip from there. So, you’ll be downhill also. So, that’s my mantra.

Kovid Batra: You have to feel it, you have to feel it from within actually, like gratitude, being grateful and being thankful makes you humble. I think it’s a very good point. I think Steve Jobs had already been saying this. And curiosity, I still feel that comes very naturally to people and they develop also over a period of time. Humbleness is something, I feel is not a natural trait for people. Like, we want to be alphas, like we want to be like there, right? So, I think, yes, you’re right there. It’s an art of, like learning this and ever growing, because you’re killing your primitive feelings and subconscious there, and then coming up with a new thought process. So, it’s really nice. But, I think that what really helps is, like in general, if you feel that you’re really grateful and thankful to people, family, friends, your peers around you, I think that really makes you humble. So, when you achieve something, the first thought that comes to you is that, okay, I did something there, but this would not have been possible if everyone was not involved. So, I think, great. I think I really appreciate that thought. Very well said.

Ashik Uzzaman: Yeah, thank you.

Kovid Batra: Perfect. All right. So, that was cool. It was great knowing you there. Now, I think what our audience eagerly waits for is the learning from engineering leaders like you who have seen success failures, and past so many years of hands-on experience. So, in this section, we’ll talk about more from your experiences.

I have, I am also a curious soul, so I’ll have some questions there. So can we get started there?

Ashik Uzzaman: Yeah, definitely. Please go ahead.

Kovid Batra: Okay. All right. So, this is a very common question, but I think a lot of people find it difficult to make that move in life, which is moving from an IC role or from an, like a developer role, or let’s say senior software engineering role, into engineering management. That’s the first step towards leadership.

So, when do you think people should move there, and what should be the thought process behind it?

Ashik Uzzaman: Yeah. This is a very good question actually. Like, I have moved many engineers, individual contributors to engineering management in my last few jobs as part of, I mean, a manager of manager roles. I had to go through this a lot. So, I would say the first thing that should come into anyone’s mind, like if you want to move someone from IC to manager, or someone wants to go from IC to management role is, “Why?” “What’s the motive?” “Why do you want to become a manager?” So, there are many different reasons, but financial reason should not be the reason why you should be moving into management. Some good typical reasons that can be very reasonable is if you want to desire, or amplify your impact on project or organization. If you feel very good or happy when you see someone else being successful, rather than the product being consumed by a customer, and then, If you see that you are pretty good at strategic thinking, or maybe you have a tendency to drive organizational changes. These kinds of tendencies when you see in yourself, or if I see as a manager in someone else, these are good reason why you think this person may, you want to give them a try to get into management.

On the other hand, there is a “When?” So, the ‘why’ is the first thing you have to answer. The second thing is, you have to make sure that the individual contributor whom you are thinking to move into a leadership position, management position, are they willing to actually do it? Is there mentorship opportunities? Like, if they get into this new role, they will need help. If you are the direct manager, you have to continue to coach them. Are they ready, receptive of that? Do you have the capacity or bandwidth to do it? If not, then you should wait until you have that bandwidth. Or, if you want to wait until they gain a certain technical expertise or experience, after which you want to move into management. So, you have to think there and take a balance between that ‘why’ you want to move, which is to serve others, and ‘when’ you want to move. Is that person ready to take the challenge now, these two things, right?

Kovid Batra: I think that’s very well said, and that I think clarifies a lot of people’s doubt when they are stepping into that management role, that until and unless it is coming from within as a natural motivation. Like, one of my friends who is right now a senior engineering manager, he told me that he wanted to move into this direction because he thought that he wants the visibility of the back that he’s creating, like he want to see end-to-end what’s going on. So, I think what you are saying is also in line with that. There was a natural curiosity and motivation to see that impact, create that impact, and that’s, that’s a perfect ‘why’ you should actually step into that role.

Ashik Uzzaman: In fact, there is a book by a management guru called Patrick Lencioni. The name of the book is ‘The Motive’. And through a business fable, he explained why someone should consider moving into management or leadership role. There, he shows that you can move because of reward-centric reasons, like, you know, financial benefit and so on, or responsibility-centric reason, like you want to serve, you want to make impact and so on.

Kovid Batra: Yeah. Perfect. Yeah, I think that would be a good read to really understand the depth of this belief. I think that’s cool.

Perfect. Let’s move on to the next question, Ashik. So again, as a leader, it becomes important, and even as a manager, it becomes important to enable the team. So, when you’re a leader, you have to enable probably the engineering managers. And then, if you’re a manager, you need to enable the ICs skill up, right? What do you do to actually enable these people? Like, from a different perspective, from an engineering leader perspective and from, let’s say, a manager perspective, but what all you should be doing or what all you have done in the past to enable people who are working with you?

Ashik Uzzaman: Yeah. That’s a very good question. Thank you, Kovid. So, there are a couple of ways we can think of. It is one, enabling a team. So, you are a leader, you are an engineering manager, you’re responsible for the team, how you empower the team. Another is developing a particular person within that team who reports to you. So, maybe you want to grow them as a technical leader, you want to grow them into management position. So, when it comes to enabling the team, the way I consider is that management is at three level. Either you are a line-level manager, let’s say Engineering Manager or Tech Lead or Senior Engineering Manager, or you are a mid-level management, like Director or Senior Director, you are in a manager of manager roles, or you are an Executive.

So, for frontline managers, I think what’s very important is to see the team that you are managing, what’s their maturity stage, what’s their experience, what kind of people are there, the structure or composition. You want to enable them based on their experience, as much as they can take, and because you are a frontline manager, definitely you have to be involved in the day-to-day process.

On the other hand, when you are trying to enable or empower an individual, you’ll have to figure out what their, you have to identify the potential of that person. You have to have open conversations. You have to provide mentorship to that person. You have to offer training. There are so many trainings or materials. You can do personally, as well as they can get it online from resources, and so on. You have to try out that person by rotating roles. So, let’s say there is an engineer who is writing a code, but you see, they are also very good mentor. They write well, they communicate well. Maybe you move them into a Tech Lead role where they manage the team or share the responsibility of running a project with you or with the manager 50/50, so they get a playing ground and you can test them how, where are their strengths and weaknesses.

So, this is how you have to see, and then you have to clarify, “Okay, you have been doing good in this area. There are certain other areas I want you to focus on particularly soft skills.” That’s how we’ll have to try out the, uh, an individual to grow them in leadership roles.

Kovid Batra: I think that’s actually really nice. And the last part was very good. I think the best way to test someone is, like put them on the field, be there to support them. But, I think that’s a very nice way on day-to-day in your team, if you identify those gems in your team, I should say, then yes, giving them a playground and then seeing how do they do, how we can help them improve.

Perfect, Ashik. I think that was really nice advice.

Ashik Uzzaman: Thank you.

Kovid Batra: Moving on to the next bit. I’m really impressed with the thoughts that you are sharing here. You must have seen a lot of people who were leading you in your career, right? What were those best leadership styles? What did you learn? How did you implement them? Just talk about those experiences.

Ashik Uzzaman: Yeah, yeah, This is an interesting question. The leadership style, there are a lot of debate is actually how many different type of leadership styles are there. So, the way I think of some of the possible styles before I tell which one I like is let’s say transformational leadership, servant leadership, situational leadership, democratic or participative leadership, autocratic leadership, transactional leadership, charismatic leadership, coaching leadership. So, there are different types of styles.

Kovid Batra: Oh, okay. This, this was something really new. Yeah.

Ashik Uzzaman: So, yeah, depending on like which book you pick up or which personal leadership guru you’re talking to, you’ll see these words are coming out mostly. But, one thing you will see very common for particularly two, you will see very common. One is the servant leadership and another is situational leadership. So, my favorite leadership style is servant leadership actually, so much so that some management consultants think that this is the only type of valid leadership, which is servant leadership. So, maybe that’s a little bit too much extreme, but servant leadership focuses on the person, the team, the people who we want to develop. If you follow this style, what you do is you’ll identify the right people in the team and put them in the right place. For example, maybe a person is a good engineer, but you have put them as a Product Manager. So, they are in the right team, but in the wrong role. The servant leader will figure out not only the right person for the team, but they’ll find the right seat or the role for that team.

So, my style, I believe is that. Why it goes very well with why you should be a manager or leader in the first place is to actually serve others to grow others, and servant leadership really goes very well with me.

Kovid Batra: Perfect. And what about the participant leadership? Can you just throw some light there?

Ashik Uzzaman: Yeah, so participative leadership, it’s another name is democratic leadership, where the leader actually tries to lead the team based on consensus. So, they say, “Okay, what’s the majority seeing?”, and so on, versus in a servant leadership or in a situational leadership, often the leader will actually make the choices. They will still take the input, but they are not going to run the team by consensus, not by majority. Participative or democratic leadership, leaders actually go by majority most of the time instead of they making the decision often.

Kovid Batra: Makes sense. Makes sense. But then, in, in participant leadership, I have this feeling that it becomes difficult to lead, right? Like, every time getting consensus on everything, of course, critical decisions, you will take a consensus. But, maybe it’s just me, I’m feeling that, but what’s your thought on that? Like, isn’t it?

Ashik Uzzaman: Yeah, that’s the case. So, basically what happens is that the participant leader or democratic leader is so much conscious about taking consensus from others that they will often not take the right hard decision for the team. First of all, they will slow down the team because they have to take consensus.

And then, as a leader, you know, sometimes we don’t become leader to become popular, right? We become leaders so that we can make the right impact on the team. And sometimes the right impact of the team is actually a hard thing to do. It’s an unpopular thing to do. When you run the team by consensus, you are not going to get those unpopular decisions from the team, right? So, you’ll often not be taking the right steps for the team. So, that’s why this is not one of the leadership style that goes well with me. In certain type of team, in certain type of industry, this may work out. Yeah.

Kovid Batra: Understood. Okay. So, I think it’s more like these leadership styles are in general suitable for different scenarios, different kinds of teams.

Ashik Uzzaman: Right.

Kovid Batra: Got it. Got it. Got it. I think this is an interesting topic where I think we can have a podcast dedicated to this itself.

Ashik Uzzaman: Yeah. Yeah, definitely.

Kovid Batra: It’s enlightening actually, because we got to know that, okay, these things exist. It was something that you don’t know what you don’t know, kind of a thing for me.

Perfect! Let’s move on to the last question of this discussion. So, when you’re leading teams, you have your leadership style in place, you have a clear thought process whom to enable and then how to enable, but when teams are operating at this scale, how do you make sure that overall team performance or overall team well-being is in place? How do you define that success for your engineering team?

Ashik Uzzaman: Yeah. So, this is a tricky one because it actually involves a lot of things as a leader, you’ll have to do. So, maybe I can touch base on some of the items.

Kovid Batra: Sure!

Ashik Uzzaman: Like, the first thing is that you have to set clear objectives and expectations for the team. Like, this team is part of a larger organization. The organization has a mission, vision, value, strategy or objectives. And then, there are deliverables, and usually the deliverables are divided in quarter or yearly outcome and so on. So, you have to make sure that the team members know why they are working in the team, what’s the objective and what’s the expectation out of them.

Now, setting the expectation is not good enough. That’s the first step, but you have to do regular check-ins. There is a thing called ‘trust, but verify’ in our leadership. It’s like, you trust your team member, but you also verify. You make sure they are on the right track. As a manager, this is actually your responsibility to keep on check. It doesn’t mean that you don’t trust the team members. It’s just that you have to be there to help them when they’re going wrong. There has to be good feedback mechanism within the team. Like, metrics is one of the ways, or 360 degree feedback, or the trust between the team members for each other, so that they are vulnerable to each other. They hold the peer to peer accountability. You have to keep those process in place. The communication channels has to be open. Anyone should be able to, free to come to your leader. They should not be scared or they should not be hesitating or they should not be silent when they see something is not working.

And definitely, you’ll have to prioritize the professional development, not just deliver the project or product. Like, you know, particularly in startups, people are so busy, go to market, go to market. They often forget about the work-life balance, or their well-being or health, or are they growing as a professional, not just in terms of coding, what about are they growing as a communicator, for example, or as a mentor and so on.

Those are some of the things I think. You know, another thing is the reward. You’ll have to recognize and you have to appreciate when people are, the team is doing good and when they are not, you have to give feedback. These are some of the things I think you have to accommodate as a leader for the team, otherwise, they will become a dysfunctional team.

Kovid Batra: One interesting point you raised here, like with the thoughts that you have just mentioned, we can definitely establish that bed for the team from where they can jump and like fly, right? So, creating that psychological safety, creating a culture where people can be vulnerable, probably leading by example. These kind of things. And then, aligning them towards the mission, strategy, the goals, the objectives that you set for the team, right? So, that’s absolutely perfect. I think once that is in place, 80% job is done, or let’s say 60% job is done, to be very fair. But then, on day-to-day basis, things change, right? Like, as humans, if we have some long-term plans, we definitely want to achieve the goals based on those. But, when you operate on daily basis, there are so many things going around, there are so many emotions coming into play. And, to have things right on track on daily basis, not to make situations stressful, but to keep things on track, we need that objectivity. And as you mentioned, that you have to trust your team, but then you have to validate, right? So, validating comes in with some, probably engineering metrics in place, looking at certain, like developer experience points to ensure that there the people are happy, right? So, how do you do that? Or, what kind of metrics do you use to do that?

Ashik Uzzaman: Yeah, definitely very interesting question. So, you know, the, in many different companies, they track those metrics with different names. Like, some companies call those KPIs, like ‘key performance indicator’. Some other places say KIs, ‘key initiatives’, and so on. But, the idea is that there has to be data available to the leaders who’s running the team or to everyone in the team to see on a day-to-day basis, in a weekly basis, in a quarterly basis, how the team is doing. There are already some tools or frameworks available, like commercial, as well as free that you can use.

Kovid Batra: You’re talking about these DORA metrics, SPACE framework.

Ashik Uzzaman: Right. Yes, exactly.

And then in our company, the company I’m working on is a AI health tech startup. We are using different tools provided by Atlassian, like, let’s say starting with Jira. So, Jira is one.

Kovid Batra: Got it.

Ashik Uzzaman: Or all the other Atlassian product, the Bitbucket, or they are pull request, how much is going. We have developed CI/CD pipeline, as well as workflows to make sure that everything runs smooth.

Kovid Batra: Right.

Ashik Uzzaman: But, this is pretty basic level. I think you can actually use framework or tools like DORA kind of tools on top of it. That makes the life of an engineering manager or leader very easy, if you want to track it at a day-to-day level.

Kovid Batra: How critical do you feel it is for a team to operate with these frameworks or tools in place? How critical do you think it is?

Ashik Uzzaman: Right. I think this is very critical because we believe one thing is that ‘measure what matters’. If you don’t measure something, you are not going to make improvement on that area. So, we must measure. And these tools are there so that you are able to measure and verify and decide the next step, you can plan. Without these, you’ll be kind of running blind, or you’ll be running the team based on gaze or gut feeling and so on. So, that will not work.

Kovid Batra: Perfect. I think that’s really, I would say a hands-on experience advice that I, that I’m listening here. So..

Ashik Uzzaman: Thank you.

Kovid Batra: Great! I think that brings us to the end of this show. If there is any parting advice for our audience, please feel free.

Ashik Uzzaman: Yeah, definitely. Yeah. The one thing is actually study. Mix with people, network with people. It can be virtual, it can be face to face, but the more you talk to people, particularly your peers, your fellow industry peers, the more you will see. There are so much to learn. There are so many areas where you can focus yourself. So, I would say network, study.

Kovid Batra: Thank you, Ashik. Thank you so much for such insightful hands-on advices that you have shared with us. We would love to have you on the show again. I would definitely want to learn about those leadership styles and spend more time on that. Yeah.

Ashik Uzzaman: Yeah. Thank you so much. I’m so happy to be in your, this podcast. Thank you, Kovid, for inviting me and definitely we’ll stay in touch. Thank you everyone.

Kovid Batra: Pleasure. Thank you. Thank you so much.