| Skill | TL Effort | EM Effort | Bias |
|---|---|---|---|
| Communication & influence | High | High | Both |
| Clear, actionable feedback | Medium | High | Both |
| Identifying & unblocking bottlenecks | High | Medium | Both |
| Delegating effectively | Medium | High | Both |
| Understanding people’s strengths & motivations | Low | High | EM |
| Technical credibility | High | Low | TL |
| Navigating ambiguity & setting direction | High | High | Both |
| Cross-team coordination & alignment | High | High | Both |
Communication & influence
L1: Writing a design doc that shifts team consensus, or getting buy-in from a skeptical senior engineer without escalating.
L2: Proactively shaping technical direction before a decision point arrives. Others reference your writing when onboarding or making decisions months later.
Clear, actionable feedback
L1: Telling someone exactly which decision was wrong, why, and what you’d do instead. Every point backed by a concrete example.
L2: Feedback that changes how someone thinks permanently. They start catching the same issues themselves and pass the standard on to others.
Identifying & unblocking bottlenecks
L1: Noticing the PR queue is backing up and proposing a rotation or review SLA. Spotting systemic drag before it becomes a complaint.
L2: Tracing the bottleneck to root cause and proposing a structural fix — not just a band-aid process change.
Delegating effectively
L1: Breaking down a complex task into something a junior can own, then resisting the urge to take it back when they do it differently than you would.
L2: Delegating the outcome, not the task. They own the problem end-to-end, make calls you’d have made differently, and still ship something you’re proud to have sponsored.
Understanding people’s strengths & motivations
L1: Pattern recognition over time — noticing what lights someone up, where they drag their feet, what they avoid volunteering for.
L2: Knowing what someone needs to grow before they do — proactively putting them in situations that stretch them in the right direction.
Technical credibility
L1: Being the person teams consult before making an architectural decision, even when you’re not on their team.
L2: Other teams adjust their roadmap or architecture based on your input. You’re brought in early, not as a reviewer at the end.
Navigating ambiguity
L1: Being handed a vague problem and scoping it yourself — deciding what success looks like and driving it without being told how.
L2: Defining success criteria, getting stakeholder alignment on them, and delivering without check-ins. Others use your approach as a template.
Cross-team coordination & alignment
L1: Getting two teams with competing priorities to agree on a shared interface or timeline without a manager forcing it.
L2: Identifying misalignment before it becomes a conflict and resolving it at the working level — so it never needs to escalate to managers at all.
Key takeaways
- TL and EM share most of the same underlying skills — divergence is about where you spend your time, not what you’re capable of.
- Hardest to develop without explicit opportunity: navigating ambiguity and cross-team alignment — push for broader scope to build these.
- L2 across the board = your standard is repeatable and teachable without you being present.