Guardiola, Haaland and the Fullstack Leader

As a leader, have you ever felt lost within a department or area because of a lack of knowledge in that area? Do you hear technical terms from members of a department and don't quite know what they mean?

Today I tell you what a fullstack leader is and why you should aspire to be one.

Become Guardiola, forget about scoring goals like Haaland.

Haaland is a very good striker, he is one of the best goal scorers these days. He dribbles like an antelope, he heads like a hawk when he goes for his prey, I would say there is no better striker in the Premier League today, one of the best in the world.

Do you know what will happen the day Haaland finishes his career and wants to be a coach? Those skills won't be enough and he will have to learn how to balance the team or move the back line forward when he wants to put pressure on the opposition in a semifinals of a Champions League.

Simplifying all of the above, Haaland will have to stop being Haaland and become Guardiola. You may be asking, "Why?". Well, Guardiola knows how to marshal the defense, tell the midfield how to balance the game, instruct the wingers to run the ball out wide, strategise multiple corners to turn them into goals, put pressure in the midfield, etc…?

BUT he also knows which player to buy or sell, how to talk with the press, how to manage the pressure, help with the finances of the club, managing the relationships with other clubs, set expectations with the directors and so on.

That's why Guardiola is the coach and a fullstack leader. By the way, do you know a very important characteristic of a fullstack leader? Knowing how to control the egos of their players but that is a topic? we will talk about in a future post ;)

In my experience I would always advise everyone to be T-shape, be fullstack, be versatile rather than a one-dimensional specialist.

When I started my career, I did it as a programmer, Backend and PHP, Symfony and then Vanilla JS the first years. Then I moved on to develop Android mobile applications with Java and iOS applications with Objective C, later Swift.

Then I went back to develop more backend in PHP and started to expand with more languages, Java, Spring Boot during a few years. Data and Python, some Django. Angular and ReactJS… In the next jump I learned Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, CICD, proper DevOps that led me to learn in depth architectures in AWS and Google Cloud.

What I want to say with all this is that in a technological profile, the more horizontal I was, the more different knowledge I had, the better vision I had and that led me to apply better and more pragmatic solutions.

At that time I came across the term fullstack. To be a fullstack is to have knowledge in many areas, to be horizontal and versatile, to be the striker but if you need a right back, there you go and play where nobody wants to play to help the team.?

You may not be number 1 in anything specific but you can be the number 1 in everything together, and you will be able to understand and help in all positions, so when I started leading, I wanted to do the same. I didnt wanna be like Haaland, I became Guardiola.

The fullstack leader

When I started in leadership positions to manage bigger teams, everything was much less operational, although there were moments that helped to build trust with the team, and you start talking to other leaders from other departments, product, marketing, sales, finance, operations, human resources, …

With those talks I realised one thing, just like when I was on the technology side, I could do with a bit of knowledge in all these areas, so what did I do? I started studying macro and micro economics, delivery, UX/UI design, sales, product, operations, even a bit of legal!

How does all this knowledge help me? Now I am able to move around organizations much better, I can understand, help and empathise with other leaders, with people in other departments.

Advantages of being a fullstack leader

Similar to when I belonged to the technology area, at the leadership level I can decently manage to move around all departments of a company, to communicate effectively through different departments that may seem unrelated, so I decided to become a fullstack leader, because versatility is an amazing skill when working in an environment of many teams in many areas.

To summarise, at the beginning of my career I became a fullstack programmer, and since I started a leading position my obsession was to become a fullstack leader, which I achieved a few years ago and I continue to evolve, and I can't describe to you how glad I am about it.

Did you know the fullstack concept applied to leadership? Do you consider yourself a fullstack leader? I would like to know your opinion and discuss it. If you liked it, please share this post with your network or with anyone you think would find it useful.

Lead with heart, lead with purpose