Name: Michał Buczko

Title: Competence Lead for Software Quality Assurance

Organisation: Viessmann Climate Solutions

Advocate Quality in Software Products for living spaces for the generations to come.

Supporting the Quality focus of Software Delivery in HVAC, Automotive, e-mobility, Sports, and Climate startups. To combine their Innovations with best Quality management practices.

Thank you to the 2,000 leaders who’ve generously done the 7 Questions on Leadership!

I hope Michal's answers will encourage you in your leadership journey. Enjoy!

Cheers,

Jonno White

1. What have you found most challenging as a leader?

My personal biggest challenge was to fully understand and accept the responsibility for the People. For a long time, I was just focused on the role of Technical Leader, moving the responsibility for the People and their growth and atmosphere to the line management organization. Once I open myself to be responsible not only for the work we do but also for People with their plans, feelings, teamwork, etc. It required me to open myself to a new aspect of the Leader role.

2. How did you become a leader? Can you please briefly tell the story?

I feel it was the team's choice, I worked with them sharing my experience and advising them from a technical perspective, one day in a meeting with my manager I heard that the team trusted me and treated me as a Leader for the work we are all responsible for. I felt honored and decided to try my best to never lose their trust and be there for them to support me whenever they need me.

3. How do you structure your work days from waking up to going to sleep?

I still try to improve that. There is no strict schedule yet predefined. Wake up, enjoy breakfast, and start the work. Most of my work time is meetings, I try to focus on enabling the team to deliver what is required of us in that time and support them. I try to always find the time for training after work and family time in the evening. Weekends are mostly focused on family or sports events.

4. What's a recent leadership lesson you've learned for the first time or been reminded of?

I think the recent lesson that was pointed out to me, was how much my leadership role is not only about the technical realization of the work, or people management but also the enablement of the goals to be achievable and deliverable in a defined time. My job is not only to support my team or deliver the work myself but to concentrate on making the work possible to do and push my team in the delivery of it. To be open and vocal about the challenges, but empower the Team.

5. What's one book that has had a profound impact on your leadership so far? Can you please briefly tell the story of how that book impacted your leadership?

The first one is "Strenghtfinder 2.0" The book and assessment I did on myself helped me to understand better myself my strengths and weaknesses and build a plan for my growth focused on the areas I wanted to improve. Seond one is "Lean Startup" in enabled me to step out from the technical focus that I had from the technical roles I was doing in the past and see better the business perspective. Thanks to that sometimes I was able to push myself and the team to the defined goals to better the business impact of the change not focusing only on the technical impact.

6. If you could only give one piece of advice to a young leader, what would you say to them?

To not be afraid of the responsibility for other people, and not run to focus only on technical aspects. It is very easy for us, people with technical backgrounds to not pursue those people skills, but once we embrace that it gives us another path full of satisfaction and trust. This trust is not a burden to carry but can give You wings and allow Your team to thrive.

7. What is one meaningful story that comes to mind from your time as a leader, so far?

Sometimes there are challenging situations, You might join a team that has a bad leader and not have their trust as a leader. I was in such a situation myself. It is a very hard and long road to gain that trust, but once You achieve it, the Team You just built can move mountains, You will jump into fire for each other, and with such a team You can grow, innovate, fail, learn and keep open communication. There is no better feeling as a leader than working with such a Team.