Episode 41: From chaos to clarity and how to lead with confidence with Eric Weiss, Executive Coach, and ex-CTO

Teams at Work by BUNCH

In this week’s episode, our co-founders Darja and Anthony chatted with Eric Weiss, ex-CTO at Rock My World, Angel Investor, CEO, and Podcast Host at Chaos To Clarity, and an Executive Coach working with technical founders and executives to help them overcome the challenges of growth. Eric shared his two guiding leadership philosophies that helped him throughout his career, and his key learnings on the pillars you have to oversee and manage as an engineering leader, and how to balance them all. Eric also shared how was passionate about technology alone at first, but after beginning his engineering career, he discovered his love for working with people and leading teams, how much he enjoyed understanding the motivations of each team member, how to best work and collaborate with them, and leverage their own motivations to achieve the shared team goals, which ultimately led him to become an engineering leader and coach.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why the role of the CTO is the most complicated C-level role and is it even possible to truly excel in it at all

• Why executives sometimes make bad decisions and how to prevent it - spoiler alert: Eric does a live exercise for that in the podcast!

• Why understanding the product-building methodologies and being customer-centric is more important than being a good coder

• BONUS: top learnings from 40 Teams at Work episodes from our co-founders Anthony and Darja

Timecodes:

• 2:11 - where Eric’s passion for leadership and technology came from

• 5:15 - why the role of the CTO is the most complicated C-level role

• 9:15 - the pillars you have to oversee and manage as an engineering leader, and how to balance it all

• 13:13 - why is it important for engineers to be customer-centric

• 21:30 - understanding the product-building methodologies is more important than being a good coder

• 25:15 - Eric’s two guiding leadership philosophies

• 36:00 - what are the most common challenges executives and founders are facing today, and how Eric helps them navigate this chaos

• 39:17 - you should be leading out of confidence, not out of fear

• 42:00 - feeling scared as a leader? Do this exercise

• 46:00 - Eric’s advice to his younger self

Connect with Eric:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/realEricWeiss

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericmweiss/

• Podcast: https://linktr.ee/chaos2clarity

Connect with Anthony:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthonyreo/

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/anthonyareo

Follow Bunch:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/bunchai/

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/bunch_HQ

Become a better leader in 2 minutes a day with BUNCH, the AI Leadership Coach. Download it for FREE on the App Store