The Quietest Engineer on My Team Ended Up Leading One

I believe everybody has a gift. Something God gave them, something unique to them. And I believe that gift is meant to be shared with the world.

Not because you have to, or because you need it to get by. Sharing your gift isn’t just about making yourself better or getting yourself heard. It’s about helping the people around you, bringing out their gifts too, and building the kind of community that moves the world forward.

Our job, as leaders and as people, is to have the courage to nurture those gifts and help people share them. And sometimes the gift is hiding in the quietest person in the room. It’s not the person who tells you what you want to hear, or the one who speaks the loudest. Sometimes it’s the shy person who has never felt heard, who’s scared to say something or scared to be interrupted. Those quiet people can have wonderful ideas and beautiful gifts to share.

The new manager

I’d been a senior software developer and tech lead at Greenlight for a year or two when our VP of Engineering asked me to lead the team. He saw leadership in me. I was already tech leading, so I said yes. It felt like a good challenge.

That’s when I really met Rachel (not her real name). We’d been on the same team, but she worked on iOS and I was on the back end, so we didn’t talk much outside of standups. She was a Software Engineer I, and she was quiet. Always.

As a manager, I had to get to know everyone in a new way: how they communicate, where they want their careers to go, how they want to grow. And the more I paid attention, the more I noticed how timid and introverted Rachel was. She rarely spoke in standups, and when she did, her answers were short and careful. In our one-on-ones, she wanted to go straight to the ticket she was working on, and that was it. I tried to get more of a conversation going, but I couldn’t find anything that clicked.

Connect first

To help the whole team work better together, I started adding a question of the day and a bit of social conversation to our meetings. One day the question was about food: cooking, favorite dishes, that kind of thing.

Rachel lit up. Whenever food came up, she was open and excited to talk.

So at our next one-on-one, I tried it. “Hey, what did you cook this week?” I asked. “What did your husband and your kid think?”

“Oh, I made this dish,” she said. “It was really good.” And she kept going.

I’m a foodie myself, so I could actually relate. For the first time, we were talking about something besides work, and that built real rapport between us.

That’s the lesson I keep coming back to: you have to connect first, in a real way. I don’t mean learning all of someone’s secrets. I mean finding something about life that you can relate to. There’s always a thread you can pull. As a manager, it’s your job to find it. And even if it’s a hobby you don’t find exciting, be open and curious about it. Learn a little so you can bring something to the conversation. That’s how you get closer to the people you lead.

Seeing the gift

Once we were really talking, I started to see how she worked. I learned about all the things she was doing behind the scenes that nobody was reporting on. In our one-on-ones, she was great at working through problems, and her ideas for solving them could have helped the whole team.

That’s when it clicked. Rachel had leadership in her. Nobody had seen it before. Not the company, not even her previous managers.

A different kind of mentor

I could mentor her as her manager, but I realized she needed something else too: someone who had already walked the path she was on.

So I paired her with Dana (also not her real name), a senior iOS engineer I’d known for a couple of years and really admired. Dana was on her way to staff engineer. Managing her was easy. I’d share what we needed to get done and the vision behind it, then step back and trust her. And she’d deliver. She knew who to talk to and what needed to happen.

Dana was thoughtful. She took time with every question, approached problems in a smart way, and never rushed. She made the effort to understand the customer. I saw in her the leadership Rachel could grow into if she just had the chance to practice.

I set goals for both of them. Dana’s included mentoring Rachel, and Rachel’s lined up with what we were working on together.

Making space

Then I watched Dana do something brilliant. In standups, whenever someone asked an iOS question, Dana would turn to Rachel. “Rachel, what do you think?”

And then she’d wait.

We all knew Dana could answer right away. But Rachel needed the space. So I encouraged everyone to wait with her, and we did. Rachel took her time, and she answered. Each time, a little more confidence came through. Before long, she was answering more questions on her own.

Watching her grow

Not long after, I promoted Rachel to Software Engineer II. Then company changes moved her to another team, and she took the mentorship with her.

Six months to a year later, I ran into her new manager. “How’s Rachel doing?” I asked.

“Dude, she’s one of our top contributors,” he said. “She’s literally leading the team. She’s mentoring our junior engineers now. She’s ready for senior.”

Honestly, I wasn’t surprised. I was excited, and I was proud of her. We’d listened, we’d seen her gift, and we’d encouraged it. Now she was on the path to senior, and other people could see her gift clearly too.

It was a moment of pure pride.

What I took from it

• Connect before you coach. Asking more questions didn’t get me anywhere until there was trust. A shared love of food built it. Be curious about what people love, even if it isn’t your thing.
• Look for the gift in what people do quietly. Rachel’s showed up in the work she did behind the scenes and the ideas she only shared one-on-one. Even her previous managers missed it.
• Find a mentor who’s walked their path. You can’t be everything for someone. Pair them with someone who’s already been where they’re going, and make the mentoring a real goal, not a favor.
• Make space, as a team. Sometimes the most helpful thing a mentor can do is ask “What do you think?” and wait. It works best when the whole room waits too.

Everybody has a gift. As leaders, our job isn’t to create followers. It’s to nurture those gifts until people are ready to share them, and then watch them help someone else find theirs. Today, Rachel is mentoring junior engineers. That’s how a community moves forward.

Try this

Start your next one-on-one with one light, personal question, like “What did you cook this week?” Be curious about the answer, even if it isn’t your thing. Then, the next time your quietest teammate gets a question in a meeting, don’t jump in. Ask, “What do you think?” and wait.

If you want to go further

• Read: The Manager’s Path by Camille Fournier, on growing people as an engineering manager.
• Read: Drive by Daniel Pink, on what really motivates people to grow.