PS: This content is generated with the help of AI to document my thought process and future reference.
Measuring success as a leader, especially in engineering, requires a mix of quantitative outcomes and qualitative signals across people, product, and process. You’re successful not just when things ship, but when your team thrives, your org scales, and your vision sustains without micromanagement.
🧭 1. Success in People Leadership
✅ Indicators:
Retention & Engagement: Low regrettable attrition, high eNPS/survey scores.
Growth & Promotions: Team members getting promoted or stretching into larger roles.
Team Health: Psychological safety, collaboration, visible trust and accountability.
Feedback Culture: You give and receive feedback regularly, and it changes behavior.
🔍 How to Measure:
1:1s with action follow-through
Engagement survey results (e.g., CultureAmp)
Promotion readiness conversations
Peer and upward feedback
🏗️ 2. Success in Product & Technical Outcomes
✅ Indicators:
Shipping Value: Team consistently delivers customer-impactful features.
Technical Quality: Tech debt is manageable, incidents are rare and well-handled.
Innovation: Team takes initiative and experiments where appropriate.
🔍 How to Measure:
DORA metrics (lead time, deployment frequency, MTTR, etc.)
OKR achievement rates
Roadmap delivery and tradeoff communication quality
Customer/PM feedback
🔄 3. Success in Process and Execution
✅ Indicators:
Predictability: Your team delivers what they commit to.
Simplicity: Processes reduce friction instead of adding it.
Velocity with Quality: You ship often without creating rework or burnout.
🔍 How to Measure:
Sprint/scope completion trends
Cycle time / PR metrics
Incident response quality and trendlines
Team feedback on process effectiveness
🌱 4. Success in Strategic Impact and Influence
✅ Indicators:
Cross-functional Trust: PMs, designers, other teams rely on you and your team.
Org Impact: You influence beyond your immediate team (e.g., hiring, architecture).
Delegation & Scaling: Your team operates effectively even when you’re not involved.
🔍 How to Measure:
Number of dependencies handled effectively
Invitations to strategic planning or company-level discussions
Number of problems solved without escalation
Mentoring impact across the org
🧠 5. Success in Self-Awareness and Growth
✅ Indicators:
Self-regulation: You model calm, deliberate thinking under pressure.
Learning Orientation: You seek feedback and evolve.
Vision: Your leadership has a point of view that’s consistent and inspires.
🔍 How to Measure:
Manager/mentor feedback
How your perspective influences others
Your ability to grow successors
📊 Optional: Leadership Scorecard
Domain
Key Metric
Example
Team health
eNPS or attrition
>85% retention rate
Delivery
OKR completion
>70% of KRs met
Quality
Incidents or bugs
MTTR < 1hr, bug reopen rate < 5%
Influence
Strategic contributions
Led 2+ org-wide initiatives
Growth
Promotions from team
2 engineers promoted in last 12 months
Ultimately, the real test is: Does your team get better over time, even without you in the room?
Would you like a Notion/Google Doc version of this to track your own leadership performance over time?
Example of Scorecard
Here’s a practical Leadership Scorecard template you can track over time using Notion (or Google Docs/Sheets, if you prefer). It’s structured around key leadership dimensions, with space to track metrics, outcomes, and reflection over each quarter.
