I think most people in positions of leadership have some insecurity about their authority, at least at some level. I definitely did, and the way I cemented my authority, at least in my own eyes, was to push to understand my teammates’ jobs as well as they did. I tried to win authority through technical credibility. I was able to think of the problems and the solutions to the problems my people were working on right alongside them, which seemed to put them at ease. It also meant that the team meetings had a great deal of intellectual back-and-forth as I encouraged everyone to think about one
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