Maintaining Leadership Relevance in 2026+

How to Stay a 10x Leader in 2026+

To stay relevant as a engineering leader, you need to stay in the trenches. It's the only way to not lose touch.

Get Technical

• Find your minimum effective dose of coding
• Get your hands dirty with the latest dev tools
• Dive deep into the details, dont stay on the surface

Get Involved

• Be an overly active participant in your team’s work
• Do the things that don't scale

Think First

• Adopt a "thinking first" protocol
• Engage your critical thinking before you prompt an AI

Good read by James: Use it or lose it

This article was originally published on https://craftengineer.com/. It was written by a human and polished using grammar tools for clarity.
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