Leading with Conviction

Building conviction isn't a one-time exercise. Mine gets tested almost weekly. Last month, our biggest client threatened to walk if we didn't prioritize their feature request over our planned security upgrades. The old me would have caved immediately. Instead, I explained our reasoning, offered a compromise timeline, and held firm on not sacrificing security.

They stayed.

I've learned this approach the hard way. Five years into my role as a Senior Engineering leader at a movie startup, our team was bleeding talent and missing deadlines. During a particularly tense retrospective, one of our senior devs, someone who rarely spoke up, finally said what everyone was thinking: "We don't know what we're fighting for anymore!."

That hit me like a bucket of cold water.