Side Quest Unlocked Community Glue Work and the Future of Tech

This session features Melinda Secington as she explores the concept of 'glue work' in the tech industry, discussing its significance for team dynamics and community health. She differentiates between team glue work and community glue work, emphasizing that both forms are essential for fostering collaboration and leadership skills within engineering teams. Melinda argues that glue work, which includes mentoring, documenting, and organizing, is often undervalued despite its crucial role in team success and cultural development. She invites leaders to recognize and support these efforts to enhance team resilience and growth, asserting that glue work is not merely optional but vital for high-performing teams.

Hi everyone, welcome back. We had an amazing start to day two. Dr. uh Kolak led us through some incredible leadership lessons, a personal journey. Uh we talked about enterprise LLMs and uh the new world of uh Agentic AI. So really this is what I love about CTO craft is that we get to see the whole gamut um of what CTO's and engineering leaders are dealing with. So,

let's get into our next few sessions of the morning. Um, we are going to jump into our community showcase featuring Melinda Secington from Learn, Build, and Share. So, Melinda Secondington's a leadership trainer and consultant. Now, her session might reframe some things that you've been undervaluing in yourself and in your teams, the mentoring, the knowledge sharing, and community building. Melinda's going to talk about the work that looks

optional, and she's going to make the case that it isn't. So, please join me in welcoming Melinda Sackington. >> Okay, good. >> Yeah, I've got it here. Okay. Hi, everyone. So, welcome traveler. Your quest awaits. You find yourself in a small town, the kind of town every hero starts from. The cobblestones are warm from the morning sun and shopkeepers are just beginning to open their stalls. This

is where all great adventures begin. Beyond the gates lies a vast world waiting for you to explore. And your main quest is clear. You need to venture out of your small town, face the challenges waiting out there, and reach that final end boss. Right now, you're at the start of your journey, and you have choices here. Do you wander the market and talk to the locals? Do

you stock up on potions or go straight to the guild hall to see what's posted on the notice board? There's no wrong answer because every choice builds your story. And the truth is, you don't walk into the world and immediately fight the In every great quest, there are the main missions, but there are also the side quests, the ones that don't look as shiny, but build the

skills you need to survive the challenges ahead. The side quests are where you learn to negotiate with villagers, discover hidden allies, and grow strong enough to lead a party through the toughest battles. And while this may sound like the start of a role playing game, it's also the story of our work in tech. Because just like those side quests, there's work we do every day that doesn't

make the road map, but makes everything else possible. And that's what we'll I'll be talking about today. So, hi everyone. As mentioned in the intro, my name is Melinda Sekington and I've been an engineer and senior engineering manager. So I know what it feels like to work on the main quest shipping features and keeping teams moving. Nowadays I work with engineering teams and leaders on things that

often sit between the technical work and the people side. So things like communication, collaboration and building better cultures. I'm also a regular conference speaker, blogger and event organizer including my own meetup group called Tech Ladies Dinner Round Table. And all of this means that I've been both the player working at the main quest and the person designing the side quests that help other people level up. So

before we continue, can I ask if the um timer can move to the left hand side because it's covering part of my speaker notes which wasn't happening before. I'm not sure if that's possible or not. Yeah, put it put it there on the left. That's great. Okay, cool. That's easier. So, one question I've always been interested in is what makes people actually grow? Is it just the

main quest or is it all those moments where we step sideways, take a chance, and go off script? So, side quest work is where we build the skills that teams need to survive the challenges ahead. They're multipliers. Side quests aren't distractions from the main quest. They're how people grow stronger, your teams become more resilient, and your companies build the kind of culture that lasts. And this is

where leaders come in. Because when leaders encourage these side quests, that's where the magic happens. So before we can talk about what leaders can do to help this, we're going to take a closer look at these side quests themselves. So my lovely audience, we're going to go on a journey. You are the heroes today about to go on your quest. And every quest starts with a map.

So to begin, we need to explore ours. How do we define these side quests? To me, the side quest work is what we often refer to as glue work. the work that holds the team together. So today I'm going to talk about two types of glue work. Team glue work, how originally the phrase was used, what you find internally inside your teams, and community glue work, which

is something you might not have heard of before, but it's the glue work externally within our tech community. So first, team glue work. So the phrase glue work was coined in 2019 by Tanya Riley in her talk being glue. She describes it as the less glamorous and often less promotable work that needs to happen to make a team successful. And a lot of things fall under glue

work. It's mentoring a junior engineer so they onboard faster and feel supported. It's facilitating the meeting that unblocks a team. It's coaching, documenting, organizing, and these aren't just nice to haves. They create real return on investment. So, a few examples, faster onboarding shortens ramp ramp up time and boosts retention. Good docu documentation saves hours of duplicated effort and makes scaling possible. Effective facilitation clears blockers faster, which

means higher velocity and less wasted time. It's the kind of work that acts like glue. All the work that holds a team together. And sometimes these things are embedded in certain roles, but that's not always the case. Glue work is essential but undervalued. And it often falls disproportionately on women or people who naturally step up to support others. Now Tanya Riley's framing focused on the individual. If

you're doing glue work, realize that you're doing it and advocate for yourself or step back if it's holding back your career. And that framing helped a lot of people to realize that that's what they were doing. But here's where I want to take the idea further. Glue work can't be left to the natural helpers. When it's left to chance, it always falls on the same people. It's

usually the people who have been socialized to pick it up or who have been volunteered into doing it or the ones who care so deeply that they can't bear to see it not done. That's not sustainable and it's not fair. So the problem isn't actually the glue work itself. The problem is leadership systems that fail to recognize, distribute and reward it. But systems can change. So enabling

glue work is a leadership responsibility. Not because leaders need to do all the glue work themselves, but because they make it possible for everyone to contribute. Great teams are resilient and high performing because glue work is intentionally part of how they operate. So here's the definition that I propose. Glue work is the work that keeps the team healthy and makes technical work land, scale, and last. It's

a practice of strengthening the team's communication, collaboration, coaching, and culture building skills. So in great teams, everyone contributes to glue work. Glue work is what turns a collection of individuals into a team. It's the stuff that gets seen as side quests, but it's what makes the main quest possible. Glue work teaches valuable communication and leadership skills. Facilitating teaches people to guide a group. Mentoring teaches people to

coach and listen. Writing documentation sharpens their ability to communicate easily and clearly. So these are the very skills that the next generation of leaders need. And glue work is the training ground. Especially with AI changing how engineering teams work. It's the human skills that will matter the most. And that's not new. This is from an old survey from 2016. So keep inflation in mind here. In a

survey of 400 companies with 100,000 employees each, they each cited an average loss per company of 62.4 4 million per year because of inadequate communication to and between employees. So bad communication costs companies money. The glue work improves organizations in different ways. Now at the individual level, people are more proactive, gain confidence, visibility, and new opportunities. At the team level, ownership is shared, skills are spread, and

there's more collaboration and resilience. And at the company level, you get improved retention, a leadership pipeline, and a reputation as a place that will help people grow. So, Gl isn't just helpful. It multiplies value at every level of the system. And this is where you come in. the quest that I'm setting for all of you here. How do we embed glue work into the system? How do

we help people learn these skills? How do we design for glue work? Because we have the responsibility to design for it, to make it visible, to spread it across the team, and to create opportunities for people to practice it. Because if we don't, no one will. And when I look at the teams that I've worked in and my own experience, I realized we don't need to start

completely from scratch. So team glue work is only half of the map. So to unlock the full picture, we need to connect it with community glue work. So glue work isn't just inside our teams within our companies. Glue work is also within our tech community. Think about meetups, hackathons, open source projects, blog posts, conferences. These are the spaces where knowledge is shared and leadership is grown. So

just like with team glue work, here's my definition for community glue work. Community glue work is the work that keeps the tech community healthy and alive and makes our tech community grow, scale, and last. is a practice of strengthening the community's mentorship, and culture. So, it's mentoring, speaking, blogging, organizing, connecting people. It's all glue work, too. And yet, just like inside our companies, it's often unrecognized and

undervalued. Community glue work is how our community evolves. It's how the next generation finds their way in. It's where leadership skills are shared, networks form, and new opportunities begin. But it's also bigger than that. Without community glue work, our technical industry stalls. Meetups and conferences spread new ideas before they're written into books or courses. That's why you're all here, to learn from each other and to discuss

these topics. Next to that we have things like open source projects that form the backbone of the tools and frameworks that we all depend on. Now when these grassroots efforts falter we all feel the impact. There's no slower knowledge transfer. There's higher barriers to entry. There are fewer pathways for new leaders to emerge. So if glue work keeps a team functioning, community glue work is what keeps

the entire industry alive. And companies benefit too. Organizations that support community initiatives build reputation. They attract and retain talent. They have stronger engineering cultures. And they show that they're serious about the future of tech. And just like with team glue work, community glue work builds leaders. So I got my first management role because I had experience coordinating volunteers and staff at a huge 500 person hackathon that

I organized. It taught me crisis management and logistics under pressure way more than anything I was doing previously in the product team I was in. So these type of initiatives they are leadership accelerators. You learn faster and sometimes more intensely in community spaces than inside companies. And here's the missed opportunity. When organizations don't support their people in contributing externally, they're cutting off a major way to grow

these skills. So this is where the internal and external worlds connect. The skills we build inside teams can contribute to the community. And what we do in externally strengthens our teams. So these two forms of glue work contribute to each other. When you give someone space to practice glue work inside the team, they build confidence and skills that they can carry outward. And when they contribute to

the community, share knowledge, mentor or organize, they bring back those new skills and fresh ideas and that makes the whole team stronger. So here's an example. Someone who contributes documentation to open source builds those skills needed to improve on boarding docs inside a company. So it's a flywheel. Each side fuels the other. And as leaders, it's our job to help that wheel spin. So the more that

we recognize, support, and encourage both internal and community glue work, the faster that momentum grows, and the more strategic value it delivers for our teams and organizations. So think about it like an XP multiplier. If you play games, the more you invest in your side quests, the faster your level, your heroes level up. So glue work is an optional. It's essential. Every high performing team finds ways

to build these skills. So some do it inside the company through team glue work. Others grow it outside it through those community glue work initiatives. So great leaders don't leave it to chance. They create the conditions for it to happen. So next we're going to look at exactly what you can do to support that. So you've explored your map and the next step for you my heroes

is to take some quests. So if you want to encourage blue work within our teams, we need to start with shaping the environment and culture to make this embedded within the team. So I'm going to share several ways that you can do this. So I'll walk you through six main themes, each one with practical examples of things that you can do inside your teams and then things

that you can do with the wider community. And as we go through these, I want you to think about which of these could you try with your team next week, next month, what are the types of activities would work for your team specifically. So one thing I want to highlight before we dive into these themes is that people get good at something through two ways. First by

being exposed regularly to what good looks like what we call perpetual exposure. Now the first three themes are all about that. Then we have deliberate practice and this is all about creating opportunities for people to put their skills into practice. So we're going to dive into the first level. So the first level is recognize and celebrate. People need to see that glue work isn't visible but valued.

So this sets the tone for everyone that glue work matters as much as shipping code. But every time we highlight glue work, we're showing others what good looks like. And that does and that does two things. First, it validates the people already doing this work. And second, it signals to everyone else that this is something worth paying attention to. So this first level is really about making

the invisible visible. So inside your teams, you can start small. Share what someone has done in a company all hands. Call out great mentoring in a retro or highlight someone's documentation in a team update. And importantly, include these contributions in performance conversations. Because when recognition becomes part of the rhythm of the team, glue work stops feeling invisible. Externally, recognition helps people see that sharing knowledge and contributing

to the wider community matters too. So, talk about their blog posts and talks, amplify their open source work, and nominate people for community awards. When others see that their peers are celebrated, it signals that this is valued, that this is important. So, the second theme is building shared knowledge. So once people see what's valued, the next step is showing them how it works. So glue work can

feel mysterious when people first encounter it. Like how do you run a good retrospective? How do you mentor someone? So exposure to the what makes it easier for them to learn and repeat. So the second level is about making that knowledge visible and repeatable. So, playbooks for mentoring or onboarding, guides for running retrospectives or facilitating discussions, uh templates for making decisions or sharing project updates. Embedding blue

work in promotion criteria and career frameworks reinforces again that this is career critical and promotable work. So, the more that we can codify blue work, the easier it is for others to understand and adopt. Now externally leaders can expose engineers to strong examples of community glwork. So they share talks or blog posts that demonstrate knowledge sharing. They expose teams to voices in the industry. So this gives

engineers a picture of what good community leadership actually looks like. Now the third step is connecting people. Exposure here is about the who. who to turn to, who to learn from. Glue work multiplies when you bring people together and leaders are the ones who can create those bridges because networks provide role models, mentors and peers who show them what's possible. So inside teams, this means deliberately connecting

people and allowing them to see glue work in practice. So you can encourage pairing across projects or departments, invite engineers into stakeholder meetings or enable crossunctional discussions. Every new relationship builds perspective and unblocks silos. Now externally you can extend those networks even further. Introduce them to peers and other companies, sponsor them to attend roundts, encourage networking at conferences and connect them with mentors in the industry. So

exposure to a broader community again accelerates growth. Every new connection they make, they bring back fresh perspectives and solutions. Now once people have exposure and connections, the next step is practice. And the best way to learn glue work is to actually do it yourself. And this is where leaders make the biggest difference because most engineers won't naturally volunteer to meetings, facilitate discussions or coordinate work across teams.

Leaders need to create opportunities for them to try and delegate this stuff. Those small leadership moments are where glue work skills really develop. So inside teams that might mean asking someone to facilitate something or leading a working group around a specific topic or coordinate coordinating work between two teams on a feature. So these might seem like small responsibilities but they develop skills that are central to glue

work and the more opportunities people have to practice the more confident they become. Now externally it could be supporting your people to speak at conferences or write technical blog posts or leading contributions in open source projects. Every time that people do something they sharpen their communication and their leadership skills and they bring those skills back to the team. Now once someone starts practicing glue work the next

level is teaching it because teaching forces us to organize what we know. We have to explain our thinking, share lessons from experience. And when that happens, glue work starts to multiply. So internally, you can put structures in place, encourage peer mentoring, introduce on boarding buddy programs or set up internal peer-led learning in initiatives. So give people the opportunity to teach and share what they know with others.

Externally, teaching can reach even further. Mentoring, facilitating, moderating. These activities build while also contributing back to the wider industry. Now, the final level is learning by leading. Now, this is where engineers move beyond participating in glue work and start creating environments where others can collaborate and learn. So they run communities, they organize events, they lead initiatives that bring people together. And when that happens, glue work stops

be being something that individuals do and it becomes part of how the whole system works. So internally, learning by leading means creating environments where other people can collaborate and grow. Leaders can give engineers opportunities to run communities of practice, organize internal conferences, or facilitate cross team working groups. When engineers take ownership of these type of initiatives, they're not just sharing knowledge. They're designing the environment where learning

happens. Externally, learning by leading often means stepping into roles that shape the community itself. So that might be organizing meetups, helping run a conference program, or leading initiatives within a professional community. So these take effort and resources, but they build loyalty, reputation, and pipelines in ways that nothing else does. And when people bring those skills back into their organizations, they often become the people who build stronger,

more connected teams. So those are the six themes, six ways to make glue work visible and stronger within your teams. So great leaders shape the environment, give people space to try and celebrate what they do. And when they do, their whole team levels up and unlocks new So glue work is essential. Exposure feeds practice and practice feeds more exposure. And the loop keeps spinning, building stronger leaders,

stronger teams, stronger communities. So, our journey doesn't end here. Now, it's your turn to pick up the sword. Because the real magic is when these adventures don't just stay in slides, but they come alive in the way that we work together. So, as you return to your own adventures, reflect for a moment. What's the one small quest that you could start today? Because even the tiniest side

quest can lead to the greatest treasure. Every great engineering story, every legendary team, every breakthrough product, they all rest on glue work. So don't wait for someone else to do it. Don't leave it invisible. Step forward, make it visible, and unlock the magic it brings. The quest is yours. So, thank you all for listening. If you want to follow me, click on the link. Uh the slides

are not there yet, but it will be. Thank you, Belinda.