. Welcome to my talk about what 1 experienced when I gradually, but suddenly became a leader. - This talk is about my path into leadership roles - I don't have any formal leadership training - Lessons I have learned and mistakes I've made - What I have discovered to be important in leadership - I'm Nicolai, married, two children and a cat - Developer based in Bergen - CTO in Lyll, which is a digital marketing startup - Consultant at Nicode, which is my own company

- Landed my dream job in 2019 - Finally a proper developer, until this point I worked with IT services and then some white collar consulting - I don't know why I felt that I was less of a person because I wasn't a developer - Looking forward to spending all my time with development - Being one of the cool guys

- This is a portrait of me in 2019 - I was happy and enthusiastic about my new job - I was a sponge to new tasks and responsibilities - Saying yes to everything - People didn't even have to ask me to do stuff, I did what I thought was necessary - Gradually I became tech lead or even de-facto CTO and I loved it - I felt important

- This is a portrait of me in the end of 2020 - I was at this point not productive at all - Trying to do everything, accomplishing nothing - It cost me my sleep, health - Ended up crying in a doctors office

- What happened between me being super enthusiastic and then broken - I didn't say no, I was too enthusiastic - I didn't know my limitations - I took on too much tasks and responsibilities - Tried to do all tasks as a developer in addition to new roles - The only person thinking about your well being is yourself - My identity and capabilities wasn't aligned with the expectations, responsibilities and compensation

- My identity was still a developer - What I should have done was to reckognize that my role was shifting, and my identity was stuck - When you have a gradual shift towards leadership, it's hard for the identity to follow - It's better to not have a fixed identity - Instead of: I'm a developer / designer / DevOps - Use: I'm a problem solver / team member - A flexible identity is easier to shift

- Be quick to say no - Take a long time to say yes - Saying yes all the times increase expectations to say yes the next time - Be sure that you can deliver on the expectations

- In a leading role no one usually tells you in detail how to spend your day - You cannot do everything, so you have to prioritize - Be sure that this is the right thing to do - Decide what not to do. Should it be done or delegated?

- A developer becoming a CTO is a cheap CTO - Companies love when they get more work for the money - No one is giving you a raise unless you negotiate - It can hurt when you sacrifice a lot for the company and get nothing in return but empty promises - It's hard to negotiate salary increase when leadership is small increments - Have continuous communication about your responsibilities - Have clear agreements on when and how compensation should be adjusted - Be clear about your expectations

- The ideal situation is when everything is aligned - Your identity fits the responsibilities - The responsibilities fits the expectations - The expectations fits the compensation - There is no strain

- Focus on the well-being and sucess of your team - Your team is now your task - Focus on serving them before other tasks and requests - See things from a larger perspective and time frame - Example: You are not doing the right thing if you try to solve a bug by yourself instead of helping the entire team

- Focus on the outcome, not the output of the team - Output is short perspective, and the result of your work - Outcome is long perspective, and the impact of your work - Impact on the customers and users, are what you are producing to the better for them? - Impact on the team and business, are we working in a sustainable way and is this the best for the company?