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Leadership for Technical Experts: Expert to Leader
775 students
Leadership for Technical Experts: Expert to Leader
technical leadership | engineering management | new manager training | first time manager | tech team lead | delegation
Last updated 9/2026
English
English [Auto],
What you'll learn
- Decide what a technical leader owns and what stays with the engineers
- Delegate a task you could do faster yourself, and not take it back
- Run a one-to-one that produces something rather than filling a slot
- Choose and develop a deputy so the team survives your absence
- Handle the brilliant, difficult expert on your team
- Set goals with OKR and connect them to what the team actually does
- Ask a question instead of giving the answer, using GROW
- Set up a mentoring pair and close it properly when it has done its work
- Control quality without turning into the person everyone routes around
- Learn alongside Mike's 1.6 million students from 185 countries
Explore related topics
Course content
15 sections • 40 lectures • 19h 50m total length
Requirements
- Deep expertise in a technical or specialist field
- A team, or a promotion to one arriving shortly
- No management education required. This starts at the beginning
- English at intermediate level or above, since all lessons are in English
- Willingness to be worse at something than you are at your craft
Description
This course contains the use of artificial intelligence.
You were promoted for being the best at the work. Then you were asked to stop doing it. Nobody explained that those were the same conversation.
What actually breaks
It is never the technical judgement. It is that a task takes your engineer four days and would take you six hours, so you take it back, and now you are the bottleneck and they have learned nothing. It is the one-to-one you keep rescheduling because it feels like a meeting with no output. It is the brilliant difficult person on your team who everyone routes around, including you. It is discovering that the skill that got you here — being right, fast — is close to useless in a conversation where the point is that someone else works it out.
What this course covers
Thirty-eight lessons. The technical leadership frame first: what the role owns, technology strategy and architecture, organising engineering teams, prioritising against legacy, metrics, scaling, and innovation. Then the thing that breaks first — delegation: why experts specifically do not do it, SMART and the Eisenhower matrix, RACI, feedback that does not demotivate, delegation used deliberately as development through GROW, and buying back your own time. Then the management spine across twelve lessons: who to hire and where, training experienced people and inexperienced ones, one-to-ones that produce something, choosing and growing a deputy, motivating someone who has stopped caring, handling the difficult expert, pay and market rates, bonuses, retention and counter-offers, strategy and selling it to the team, OKR, conflict, and control that does not become surveillance. Then the mode switch: coaching instead of answering, with GROW, nine principles, powerful questions, listening, the language of the person opposite you, and building the culture. Finally mentoring: matching a pair, preparing the mentor, the first meeting, closing it, and the scenarios you will actually hit.
A note on what is and is not technical here
Six of the thirty-eight lessons are technical — the leadership block at the start. The other thirty-two are about people. That is not an oversight, it is the finding. Nothing about managing people is technical, which is exactly why strong engineers struggle with it: there is no correct answer to derive. The coaching block was recorded with a people-function framing and one lesson refers to employee engagement, but GROW, the balance wheel, powerful questions and active listening are not specific to any department.
Who is teaching this
I am Mike. I built the people system at Preply as it became a unicorn, and I have worked at Wargaming, iDeals and Alfa-Bank. More than 1.6 million students have enrolled in my courses across 185 countries, and over 150,000 specialists have gone through my programmes. I hold PHRi and SHRM-CP certifications and represent HRCI in more than ten countries.
What is included
Lifetime access to all 38 lessons
Active instructor support in the Q&A section
A Udemy Certificate of Completion
Working models: GROW, RACI, SMART, the Eisenhower matrix, OKR, the balance wheel, the one-to-one outline, the mentoring agreement
Direct treatment of the situations experts actually get stuck on
Where to start
Name one task you took back from someone this month because it was faster to do it yourself. That decision cost more than the hours it saved, and lesson seven is about why. Enrol now and start today.
Who this course is for:
- Senior engineers who were just made a lead and are quietly panicking
- Technical specialists deciding whether the management track is for them
- Team leads still doing the hardest work themselves and wondering why
- Scientists, analysts and designers now responsible for other people
- Founders with a technical background managing their first hires
- Architects and principals with influence but no formal authority
- Anyone promoted for being the best at the work, now paid for other things