When you see something broken, you fix it. That's the engineer's instinct — and it's exactly what trips you up in a leadership role.

Because the thing you see as "broken" might be someone else's creation. They built it. They're proud of it. They invested weeks. Maybe they even got recognized for it company-wide. And maybe you even got the role because of that instinct — because you can see what's wrong and you know how to make it right.

Walk in and start fixing without bringing them along, and you've already lost. You're not leading. You're just a more experienced builder with authority — and that's a dangerous thing to be.

build the village

Every growing organization has mavericks — creative people who see a problem and build a solution before anyone asks for one. They show up with a tool they made over the weekend that half the company uses by Thursday.

This is good. Initiative, curiosity, the instinct to solve — rare and valuable.

But when everyone builds in isolation, you get fragmented tools, unreliable data, and nobody who owns any of it long-term. The maverick moves on. The tool stays. And slowly, it becomes everyone's problem.

The answer isn't to crush the maverick energy. It's to build a village.

Think of every tool someone creates as a kid. The creator brought it into the world. Named it. Has feelings about it. But the village needs to raise it — because the creator has other responsibilities, and the kid needs more care than one person can give.

The job isn't to take someone's baby. It's to say: this is an incredible start. The village is going to give it the support it needs to thrive. Then make sure the creator still has a seat at the table. Still gets to share what they envisioned.

If you're taking something from someone, give something at the same time. Recognition. Involvement. An invitation to stay close to the work. That's the only way it lands without bruising egos.

lead with the endgame

When you need to communicate change, there's a right order and a wrong order.

Wrong order: facts first. We're changing things around here. Here's the new process. Here's who owns what now. People hear "change" and tense up. Defense mode before you've said anything worth hearing.

Right order: the vision. Your creativity has been incredibly valuable. We're building structure so the best ideas get full support — proper ownership, proper development, proper rollout. Your initiative started something great. Now we're giving it a real home.

Then — and only then — the details.

People get behind a vision. They resist being managed.

pause, pause, then move

This might be the hardest shift for anyone who's built things for a living.

Engineers move fast. See it, build it, ship it. When you've done it long enough, that speed becomes your identity. You're the person who gets things done.

But leadership runs at a different tempo. Listen. Assess. Choose. Then move. It's slower. It feels inefficient. Every instinct screams to skip the first three steps and go straight to the action. But when you skip them, you make changes people didn't ask for, to things they feel ownership over, without ever bringing them along.

The engineer fixes everything. The leader listens first.