And I just want to, like, share that I'm really excited to be here because this topic is really personal to me.And, also, like, for a very long time in my career, I measured my success, as an individual output that, like, you know, how many issues that I resolved and how quickly I delivered and what were, like you know, how dependable I was and how impact I personally created. But transitioning into leadership has completely changed that definition of success, and I realized that leadership is, you know, not about being the persons that being the person that has all the odds answer that have been, like, figured out, but about creating an environment for people to succeed.

And, honestly, that transition was really harder than I than I expect. And that's what, like, journey I want to share with everyone. And I want to share, like, the reality from moving from an individual contributor to a manager? And what was the mindset shift, and what were the different challenges and the stories along the way? So what is the reality of this transition? So I still remember, like, the initial week and initial days when I transitioned to a manager, and I was in the same team there I was, like, working early with my peers, and then I was their manager. And, you know, when and I was working on the same task. I was working on the same project, And there were some of the challenges that came into, and my first instinct was to just, like, jump into that and write it to fix the problem.

But, you know, then I really realized that that will not always the solution, and my team would never grow. And those are the first moment where I realized that leadership is less about doing good things by myself, but about enabling and coaching and empowering my team. So in tech world, usually or, like, sometime it happens that an individual contributor that, you know, it's mostly when they contribute into maintain and they succeed that, you know, you're promoted, and they don't automatically prepare you for the leadership. And you're a very strong individual contributor. You are very reliable. You deliver results, and you have solved many difficult problem. You are the smartest person in the room. You have the skill set, but that does not directly translate to the leadership. As an IT, you always focus on execution. Like, you're always controlling your output, but your success is measurable and. But as a manager, there is a lot of ambiguity.

Your influence actually is like an outcome through the people, and your success become less visible in the long run, and the result comes in a very longer time. So what was my individual life contributor identity? So most of my tech experience, I was quality assurance tester. I was an audition tester. So I was working on many products. I was, like, improving processes. I was delivering many products. I was, like, trying to make the products better. I was very detail oriented. I was building many automation technical frameworks. I was, like, really the go to person. People, like, dependent on me. I was, like, building, like, building lot of credibility, reliability, and my success was measured on okay. So these are the releases that I completed. This was the framework that I built, the production issue, which I avoided, the project that I delivered, and these are very, you know, satisfying in the sense of ownership.

So as an individual contributor, there is a lot of, like, in a sense of ownership, execution, focus, and I was always the problem solver. But as soon as I moved into leadership, suddenly my focus changed. And that was really hard. Now I could have focused more on my team health, my team performance, and my team growth. And now I have to see, like, how I align my team work based on the team goals that I have and based on the organization goal. And that would need a lot of clarity to my end from the team end, and that requires clarity, communication, and lot of trust among all the team members and the manager. So how did, like, that mindset shift happen? And that was, like, the biggest transformation from me, like, from doing the things and then enabling the things.

As I mentioned that, you know, in initial weeks, it was very challenging for me. I was doing the same work, and then I started managing the same team. And as soon as solve the challenges scheme or defects team, the first instinct was actually jumping, and I tried to resolve problem on my own phone. And sometimes I felt it would have been, like, faster if I do this thing, if I solve this problem. But that was not the right thing. Yeah. Of course, in a short short click, he had a short course. It would have been, like, easier, faster for me to solve the problem, but that would not help my team in the longer term to learn and succeed. So instead of, like, being the hands on solving problem by myself, I had to learn how to delegate, how to trust my people, how to coach them, and how to ask the right questions.

And so what I what I had to do is, you know, it's I have to see that, you know, how do I go about and identify what are the strengths of my team, what are the challenges that my team is facing, how do I map based on the expectations of the role, map those with our team goals, map those with the goals of the organization, and see how we can work together, identify those gaps, work on those goals, and coach them so that we can set it together.

So one of the early struggle, and I said, like, the delegation have been, like, really uncomfortable. How do I lead them? And the difficult conversation that I always had. And most of the difficult the most difficult conversation was where I felt like the low performance. So one of the most important things that I learned was being impacted, but also being really direct and also being, like, really clear and have the early communication being with the team. So, of course, I was managing the peers, which felt really awkward, but addressing the issues early, having that con having that, you know, conversation with the team, being really clear about that that, you know, I totally understand and address that, you know, understand that that's there is a power shift.

And, you know, how do we go about and manage that? But, you know, we can work together. These are the goals and how I address that, and these are the expectations. And let's work together in making three separate. The things that really worked and as I covered many of the things. As we set the goals and communicate early, another important things is listening how they feel about the transition. And it's not about, you know, if they're if they have any challenges in terms of solving the critical issue. Though you feel, you know, as a technical person and an individual contributor that you were in the past life, probably you know a better solution.

But as you're working along them, coaching them, you have to be patient, ask the right questions, and see that, you know, listen them and understand them and try to see, like, empower them how we can work together and understand how we can, you know, deliver a particular org, have, like, a better decision making across the team so that, you know, we provide them a better psychological safety, be better believe in you, and that's how we build the trust initially.

So it becomes really important to have that conversation, regular conversation between the team members so that we we they are assured that you are really supportive of their growth, and then you really understand what they want and what their goals are. And then you are working with them, and then you are providing them their safety. And then you also understand that there is an awkwardness, and you feel that and then be consistent throughout that conversation. So I would say that, you know, key takeaways to all this journey that I feel that, you know, there'll always be a learning process. There'll always be a mindset shift you will as an individual contributor moving to this role, there'll be mistakes that you will be making. But, you know, to have that clarity, you always have to have, like, you know, more communication, open communication so that, like, you know, he would feel safe to raise any concerns, any blockers, any issues.

And, you know, you don't have to always become a completely different person to become a leader, but you simply have to evolve your strengths in a different direction. So and I would say that leadership is always learnable, and you just have to, like, work towards it if this is something that you love to do and this is something that you aspire to coach people and help people and work towards it. Thank you. Now open the call.