This is a new series of blog posts where I share the lessons I learned from the course IT2900 AY2025/26 Semester 1. This course is about technical management and leadership. Every week, we need to write a reflection to answer the prompt given by the teaching team, which is meant to help us strengthen our critical thinking and understand ourselves better as a person and as a leader.

I had the idea of writing this blog post also because I haven’t posted a new blog for a while. Since this course forces me to write more, I will just share what I learned in the course here on my website. Sometimes, I may even expand further beyond what I actually submitted in class. After all, it helps me understand myself better anyway. Note that the theme of this week is about the qualities that a good leader should have. Everyone in the class basically gave unique answers, which was quite interesting. Everyone values different things, and likely we cannot satisfy them all.

What is one thing that you took away from the lecture today? Explain.

As the title suggested, I think my biggest takeaway from this week’s lecture was about self-awareness, both internally and externally, and the fact that one should understand their own purposes and core values first to utilize them and create an effective leadership style. Personally, I was really intrigued by the question that was raised earlier in the lecture: “What superpowers do I wanna have?” I think it is something that shifts the perspective towards thinking about an imaginary world, and what you wanna bring there is probably related to your values and purposes. It could be something that you want but have always missed, or your missions and goals. I think answering this question has guided me towards understanding myself more, and how I, as an individual, will utilize it to the best of my advantage. After all, the first step of being a good leader is to know yourself really well. I am happy that IT2900, aside from teaching leadership, will also allow me to reflect on myself and help me (re)discover my purposes more and more.

Aside from what I shared, I think the superpower I chose was teleportation, and soon I realized that the reason behind it was quite obvious. For the past 10 years, I have changed the people around me every 3 years, mainly because I went to different schools across Thailand. I have met good friends along the way, but it has been really difficult to meet them again because of transportation and time barriers.

I believe this reflects that I deeply value good relationships and often think back to the memories we shared along the way.

Based on pre-readings and lecture, Identify three qualities of a good leader that you most value. Explain.

Awareness

• What makes me value: I couldn’t resist mentioning more and more about this. By awareness, I mean both self-awareness on what I am doing well or badly, and also external awareness of the current status of the team and what they are probably concerned about. It is important to take action in a timely manner, and awareness can help with that.
• How can leaders showcase this quality: The leader who has good self-awareness would demonstrate timely actions after any interaction between the team happens. For instance, the leader might learn that he or she doesn’t know something really well and start learning more. On the side of external awareness, the leader should check in with the team often when aware that something critical may happen to see how everything is going.

Integrity

• What makes me value: Although only a few people (excluding me) mentioned this when asked in the lecture, I think it should be a “norm” that every person, whether or not they are leaders, should be “good” and “do the right thing.” For leaders, I think this quality is even more important as you are representing the team or a group of people. Having strong morals to guide the team in doing the right thing is really important.
• How can leaders showcase this quality: It is quite obvious during presentations and situations that require public-facing work to see if the leader would do something in the right way or not. For instance, when unable to finish something before a tight deadline, it can be shown that the leader would decide to include the incomplete part with the deliverables or do the right thing, which may include but is not limited to negotiating a deadline extension or asking to implement that later on.

Growth Mindset

• What makes me value: In fact, I wanted to put competency and the ability to learn and grow in one of these pointers. However, I believe they can be easily combined as growth mindset. A leader may not initially know everything or be highly skilled in the project or domain they are leading, but as long as they are able to learn and don’t undervalue themselves, I think it helps fill the competency gap. I agree that the person becoming a leader should have a certain level of competency, but the competency to learn is probably one of them.
• How can leaders showcase this quality: Many times, the team that the leader is leading could have some smart individuals who know more than them, or the leader may have worked in other parts of the team before leading another team where they don’t know much about what is going on. Instead of just asking to assign them to others, leaders with growth mindsets should be able to adapt to the situation and learn about what they are doing instead.

What is one specific situation / scenario in which the three qualities you have identified support you in being an effective technology leader?

One day, I will likely be leading a team of new software engineers in building IT solutions for non-profit organizations providing social services including active aging centers and hospitals, and firstly, I think doing the right thing and having some moral in mind is important in guiding the team to deliver a good product that is complete, since it can affect so many lives out there. On the team side, I think I need to have awareness of where the team might be struggling or when some members are exploring parts of the codebase that I have also never explored before. These situations point out to me when I should be aware that I need to extend some help, and make me aware that I should be learning more about what I don’t know to be able to guide them better, which links external awareness and a growth mindset.

And that wraps up this week’s lessons. The three questions really did force my brain to think hard. I think it is similar to journaling, where I can share my day. See you next week!