In the tech world, leadership is often confused with authority — who has the biggest title, who knows the most languages, who’s been coding since they were twelve. But in my experience, the best leaders aren’t the ones obsessed with control. They’re the ones obsessed with service. That’s the heart of what’s called servant leadership, and it’s the approach I bring to every team I work with.
Servant leadership flips the traditional leadership pyramid upside down. It’s not about being the smartest person in the room or barking orders from above. It’s about clearing the path for your team, removing blockers, advocating for their needs, and ensuring they have everything they need to succeed.
What drew me to this approach is simple — some of the best developers I’ve ever worked with didn’t follow the usual pipeline. They didn’t have computer science degrees. They didn’t start coding in middle school. Many of them came from careers in retail, construction, food service, healthcare — places where the stakes were high, the work was tough, and the feedback was brutally honest.
They brought grit, humility, creative problem-solving, and a work ethic you can’t teach. What they needed — and what I try to provide — is a leader who believes in them even when they don’t fully believe in themselves yet. Someone who doesn’t care where they came from, only where they want to go. That’s what servant leadership is at its core — giving people the trust, respect, and support they need to grow, regardless of their resume.
This isn’t just a theory I believe in — it’s how I show up every day. It’s why my 1:1s aren’t just status updates about work. I ask what people want to learn next, what skills they want to build, and where they want to take their careers. I make sure they know mistakes are part of the job, and I share my own openly so they know they don’t have to pretend to be perfect.
It also means protecting my team when necessary — pushing back on unrealistic deadlines, fighting for clear requirements, and keeping unnecessary noise off their plates. It means giving direct feedback that helps people level up, not knocks them down. And it definitely means advocating for the people who often get overlooked — the quiet developers, the career changers, the ones who aren’t the loudest in the room but who show up every day and do the work.
I care about this so much because I’ve lived it. I didn’t take the traditional route into tech either. I had to fight my way in, prove myself again and again, and rely on the few leaders who looked past my nontraditional background and saw the potential underneath.
That’s why I have zero tolerance for gatekeeping. We’ve all seen the toxic version of leadership — the senior dev who flexes their knowledge to make others feel small, the manager who thinks leadership is about control instead of support, the lead who hoards information to stay valuable instead of sharing it to lift others up. That’s not leadership — that’s insecurity with a fancy title.
The kind of leadership I believe in builds people up so they feel safe enough to ask, learn, and grow. A team full of people who feel safe to struggle out loud will always outperform a team that’s afraid to look dumb.
The beautiful part about servant leadership is that it creates a ripple effect. When you lead this way, you’re not just building better developers — you’re building future leaders who understand that leadership isn’t about authority, it’s about service. Some of the developers I’ve mentored — especially those who came through unconventional paths — are now mentors and leaders themselves, carrying that same mindset forward. That’s the legacy I want to leave behind.
For me, servant leadership isn’t just a style — it’s part of my core belief that people always come before code. If you invest in people, the code takes care of itself. Whether I’m mentoring a brand new bootcamp grad or helping a senior developer step into leadership for the first time, my goal is always to help them believe they belong, help them believe they can grow, and help them see they are more than the code they write.
Because at the end of the day, great code doesn’t build great teams. Great teams build great code. And great teams start with leaders who put people first.