Understand what the major factors are that drive people – that’s what a good leader taps into. Those factors usually involve the desire for meaningful work. your role should be to seek goodness for your team, and goodness is within anyone’s reach. Remember that you’re going to be judged on how well your team performs. The key is knowing how to lead them well. How well other people perform forms the basis for how you will be evaluated. It’s an important function of the team leader to stand up for their people, to fight the junk in the organization that gets in the way of them doing great things. The lack of career success that some engineers experience has nothing to do with their technical knowledge or technical skills – it’s about the relationships they’ve developed.