Share your work
You are doing great work, and there is a lot of value in sharing it, especially outside your team. Sharing can be daunting or feel like it is distracting from solving problems. At least, that’s how I used to feel about it. I only grasped the effects sharing has when I became a manager.
Isn’t my manager supposed to share the team’s work?
As a manager, I ensure my team is doing work that matches the organization’s priorities. This process involves conversations with other teams. I share what we work on, how it might affect them, and if there are any actions to take.
Sharing context and building relationships need a lot of work. When my reports post their work on slack, present, or write blog articles, the shared context travels through the organization. This results in less time explaining what we do and how it might affect them. Often, teams affected by my team’s work will reach out themselves, saving even more time.
Even though there are different roles in a team, everybody works towards the same outcome. It is a collaborative process, making lines of responsibility murky in places. You would pair, mentor, or pick up tasks from your team members to achieve team goals. Your manager is the same.
Why can’t my manager keep up with my work?
I used to believe my work should speak for itself. Instead of indulging in it, I could spend more time solving problems. But this isn’t realistic. Everybody relies on someone else to catch their attention. Your work needs to be approachable so people understand its value. Especially your manager.
As a manager, I need help to keep up with my team. If I have six reports, each working 40 hours a week, that’s 240 hours to stay on top of. The only way to keep up is for my reports to help me understand what they’re doing.
What if sharing my work feels sleazy?
I struggled to share my work because I thought I was selling it. It felt sleazy. But I realized that it is more like celebrating an achievement. Overcoming a challenge is worth feeling good about and celebrating. The work doesn’t have to be finished either. Hitting a milestone, de-risking a project with a prototype, or learning something new are all worth sharing.
Sometimes it can feel awkward to be in the limelight, especially when it is a team effort. But when you share the team's work, you lift everyone up. It creates more awareness of their achievements, and if you share publicly, your team members can reference it in their resume.
What if I only want to code?
The more important question is how much impact you want to have. Most problems worth solving are a team effort. You increase your impact by working through your team, which requires sharing your work. Other people can learn from you and take a similar approach, which is part of technical leadership.
You will also build a reputation for solving problems. And as a consequence, build trust to address more impactful problems. Which also makes it easier for me to promote you and raise your salary.
Another aspect to consider is avoiding micro-management. The most impactful teams I’ve worked on were self-organizing. We built trust with our manager by producing good work and advocating for it across the organization. They only stepped in when things weren't working as expected, and we needed coaching.
What if I'm not comfortable sharing?
It’s normal to feel awkward when learning something new. The trick is finding a way to talk yourself into it. Everybody is a bit different and needs their own narrative. The one that clicked for me was when a company I worked for went through a round of layoffs. I realized if I didn’t share what my team shipped, nobody would know why our work mattered, and we would be laid off. The pressure from big challenges and preventing downside risks motivate me. Some people get paralyzed by pressure and need a positive narrative. Others get motivated by how they affect other people.
I also like asking my team members for their thoughts when I’m unsure about something I want to share. Their feedback helps me make a decision. And they can help me through the creation process. I like sharing drafts and presentations early to rapidly iterate on them, which makes it much faster to produce and less daunting to share.
Who should I share with?
Generally, the broader the audience, the less detail is needed. I can share much more detail within my team than with people outside it. For them, more detail is better because your team members can apply it. But if I share my work with my department, I will share what I shipped, how it would affect them, and what they can learn from it.
Creating awareness of what goes into our work across the organization is a powerful tool. For example, it is valuable for the marketing team to know that an app will need downtime for maintenance. They don’t need to know the details. It is enough for them to be aware of the constraints affecting them. This helps coordinate when campaigns happen and when downtime is scheduled.
A great way to get your point across faster is to cut down on jargon. For example, someone with a background in marketing will understand "we want to improve our newsletter's CTR with a better CTA design" to mean "we want to increase the rate of how many people sign up for our newsletter, and we believe tweaking the signup form will help". But people outside their domain need the more explicit version. Likewise, people outside your team won't understand your jargon.
On the flip side, it helps to adopt your audience's language. I like reading through my audience's writing and presentations to integrate their concepts into my content. This approach makes it easier for my audience to understand me.
Wrapping up
Sharing your work creates awareness across the organization. It helps your manager coordinate with other teams and gives you more autonomy. You will be trusted to solve more impactful problems, which makes it easier for your manager to promote you. It can be uncomfortable to share. You can get help from your team to find interesting topics and progressively increase the audience. People are interested in your work, but you have to try to meet them where they are.
I would love to hear your thoughts on the topic. Feel free to message me on Twitter and if you want to hear more from me, make sure to follow.