Episode
#171 | Tech Leadership Q&A: Am I Actually Good at This… or Did I Just Get Lucky?
- Published
- Jun 23, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 956
- Processing state
not_requested
Actions
POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/leman-tech-leadership-podcast-7045357/episodes/171-tech-leadership-q-a-am-i-actually-good-at-this-or-did-i-just-get-lucky/transcription-requests
Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/leman-tech-leadership-podcast-7045357/171-tech-leadership-q-a-am-i-actually-good-at-this-or-did-i-just-get-lucky.md
Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.
Summary
▶︎ #171 | Tech Leadership Q&A: Am I Actually Good at This… or Did I Just Get Lucky? In this solo episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, host Aleksandra Lemańska kicks off a new Q&A series, where she answers the questions tech leaders keep asking her in workshops, keynotes, and one-on-one conversations - the questions that often go unspoken. Today she tackles two that show up constantly with newer leaders: "Am I actually good at this leadership thing, or did I just get lucky?" and "Why do I miss writing code so much?" On the first question, Alex is direct: feeling unprepared as a new leader is not a sign that you don't belong, it is a sign that you are doing a completely different job than the one you were promoted for. She shares a bold claim from her years of working with tech leaders: roughly 90% of leaders were never properly prepared for leadership, and that is a systemic failure, not a personal one. Most people get promoted into leadership as a reward for being great individual contributors, with no real training in the new skill set, mindset, and tool set that the role actually demands. The second question - why leaders miss writing code, building, or doing the hands-on work they used to be great at - gets reframed too. According to Alex, this isn't nostalgia. It's a contracting problem, both with yourself and with your organization, because nobody has defined what "winning" looks like in your new role. Alex closes with a concrete exercise: write down everything you were great at and got promoted for, and next to it, write down what your role actually requires of you today. Compare the two lists - they will look very different, and that difference is the real shift you are navigating. If either question hit home, share the episode with a tech leade…