Garner Health Leadership & Management

What are the best practices you follow to cultivate ownership on your team? Where did you learn these practices?

While there are nuances to this answer that vary based on the current state of an organization, two of the most important ways to cultivate ownership are to play to passions and provide an autonomous environment for individuals to work within.

As to where I learned these lessons, I’d offer it’s a combination of my experiences in team sports and the managerial training I was fortunate enough to have had in prior roles. Those disparate arenas and the lessons each offered — coupled with personal experiences of mine as an engineering individual contributor — have really shaped me as a leader, allowed me to embrace having tough conversations and, at the same time, deepened my empathy.

How has a culture of ownership positively impacted the work your team produces? 

I’ve been blessed to lead some really talented people and deliver meaningful value to the places I’ve been employed. From improving the reliability of Microsoft’s global domain name system offerings to delivering an extract, transform and load solution that enabled my crypto startup to cash out, to having multiple engineers follow me as my journey took me to mission-oriented startups like Altana and Garner Health — ownership has been behind the impact generated in every instance. Working at a startup requires a real belief in the product you are developing and being mission-first. The only way to make a product you truly believe in is to own your part in making the vision a reality.

What advice would you give to other engineering leaders interested in fostering ownership on their own teams?

Start with yourself. Be accountable to your own mistakes as a leader, discuss them openly and use them as opportunities for growth not for only yourself, but the team surrounding you in the end. This will help build what hopefully becomes a supportive community in good times, but more importantly in tougher ones.

Finally, I believe that you’re only truly ready to lead when the idea of servant leader resonates. A true leader makes those around them stronger, no matter the circumstances, through the realization that they can only go as far as the team allows them to. Build the team, build a shared success story. My career is living proof.