Qi Ke, a long-time friend, is the engineering director for Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS). As she manages hundreds of engineers, Qi had a lot of experience growing leaders.
Qi told us about a couple of differences between a leader and others.
- A leader drives projects end-to-end. Once a leader takes on a project, you can count on them to deliver.
- During an emergency, most people only respond to it if they are on-call or directly responsible for the area of work. However, despite not being on-call, an engineer with leadership still jumps in and helps resolving the issue.
How does Qi help people grow leadership in her team members? Here are some key points
- Who: Ownership is the key to leadership. Ownership includes driving projects, and going above and beyond one's own duty to handle emergencies. If people have a strong sense of ownership, they can always learn techniques to address an individual situation from other experienced people.
- When: People can grow. Some engineers joined the team, and only after a couple of years to they start to show strong ownership. Some other engineers immediately show maturity and ownership when they start on a project.
- How: Qi continuously evaluates team members, and provides advice to the team members to drive projects, influence others and handle difficult situations.
Azure Kubernetes Services team has had the highest growth among all Azure groups in the past couple of years. If you have experience in Kubernetes and are interested in joining AKS, we can refer you to Qi and her teams.
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