This is usually where the advice and problems come from when promoting experienced engineers to leadership. And it’s a common problem. Fundamentally at heart, they are still individual contributors, and as such they take the burden on themselves to solve all problems, especially the technical ones.

It’s easy for them to do that, because they know how, but it’s even easier because they see it not being done. In reality this is the worst action they can take, because as you’ve found out, it actually creates the expectation that you will always solve those problems.

The advice I have found works best is that:

As a new Tech Lead assume you will do no work. Do not lead a project, do not design a technical solution, do not set up a meeting with other teams to collaborate.

That is to assume for the process of estimation, delivery, and support that you aren’t going to participate in any of those, and your team will have to solve them. Can they do it? Do they lack the ability to deliver? Will they struggle? Will they know when to collaborate, when to communicate?

Once you start to think about your team and leave the notions of being an individual contributor behind, your team can start to struggle and grow to solve those challenges.

Enter the Tech Lead role. Your job is to help them grow to no longer be blocked by obstacles and flourish beyond what you could have done by yourself. Finding the opportunities to help is both easy, as you know what needs to be done, and difficult because you have to figure out how to help them help themselves, rather than deliver the solution.

Being able to make the leap from individual contributor requires the realization that the team’s success is more important than the number of things that are delivered, or how fast the next feature is released. While those are leading indicators for success, the real job of the Tech Lead is to find ways to make the team successful without you.

There are more things to consider here but I won’t go into them other than pointing out:

As an engineer and individual contributor you had tons of tools to help you deliver — git, git server, wip tracking tools, retrospectives, etc…

As a leader there are far fewer and more difficult recognize that you need them, but also what they are. Do you know how your team is doing, if they feel supported, if they are unblocked, if they aligned with the goals of the team, of the organization? And more importantly Do they know how they are doing? More often then not, a team may say we use _____ tool, eNPS, corporate alignment survey or whatever, but the truth is very few see the results, and almost none of them get the feedback on how to improve. Finding a companion tool to help you grow a leader and help your team improve is one of the best strategies for success.