I had an interesting conversation with a new friend Aaron Armstrong this week about staying technical while in a management role. He observed that the guidance to not always lead by example may come at the cost of losing touch with the technical work we manage. I loved the question and the discussion. I want to share some of my observations on how I’ve tackled this problem.

First I suppose I should caveat all of this with the statement that I love writing code. I have always loved writing code since I discovered Basic on my Commodore 64. As my job changed and I became responsible for people and project management, I had to reprogram myself and measure my success based on something other than writing good code. I have never had to find outside motivation to dive into the technical details.

My typical day in a senior management role held that time spent on the technical details was at the expense of my actual job. Four hours of writing code instead of meeting with my team and providing feedback would have been negligence of my responsibility. At the same time I need to be close enough to the technology to be helpful, keep things on track, provide guidance and dive in when necessary.

It’s worth reflecting on what balance you want to strike as “technical enough.” This balance will be different depending on your role and the organization. A small organization where you manage a small team and must be hands on likely means you need to be more technical. If you manage a large organization and your day is filled with people and project challenges, it is likely that you are further removed from the technology.

In the end, a key level of competence for anyone managing technical staff is to know what’s possible and what the best teams around are producing. Stay armed with the ability to detect when your organization isn’t performing up to par, and dive in to make sense of why.

Talk with people more technical than you are in your organization. Your job is about people and relationships, so use that to focus on learning about the technology. Spending time with people is a key component of building relationships. One great way to get people talking is to ask them what they’re working on and the details behind the technologies. Your staff loves to share what they’re doing and what technology they chose.

Attend an innovation event like a hackathon. These types of events are more and more common in cities around the world. The opportunity to show up and participate (or even just watch) as a group of developers works on what interests them is a great way to understand trends in technology. If you have the ability within your organization, I highly recommend hosting your own hackathon to spark a culture of innovation.

Attend a meet up locally in a technology that interests you. I recall going to a series of events focused on Amazon’s AWS platform here in Chicago this year. I got exposure not just to what Amazon was selling, but also to the representative solutions that others had built. It was a fast way to learn what was possible with the technology. You can do something similar around any technology that interests you.

Read or attend an online class. As new technologies become available, there is no shortcut to having to read what other people are writing. Plan for time each week to sharpen your saw and learn about something new. Push beyond the buzzwords like “machine learning” and “functional programming” and force yourself to be able to explain what these things mean. If you can’t explain it you probably don’t understand it.

When I do most of these things regularly, I come away with moments of enlightenment. It sparks my curiosity to understand how it is done. As I learn, I push myself to be able to explain it to others and share my new found revelation. This is a virtuous cycle of continuous learning.

The best technical leaders stay technical.