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LeadershipEngineering · 5 min read
Documentation as a sign of leadership
Show me what a leader writes: designs, post-mortems, internal memos, and I’ll tell you more about them than any 360 review would.
Every leader leaves a paper trail. Design docs, post-mortems, planning notes, internal memos. The quality, frequency, and clarity of what they write tells you more about how they think than any meeting will.
What strong leadership writing looks like
- Clear about what’s known vs assumed.
- Lists alternatives that were considered and rejected.
- Names the people involved and the decisions made.
- Honest about what could go wrong, not just what’s promised.
What weak writing looks like
Vague optimism. Hidden assumptions. Decisions framed as inevitable rather than chosen. Anything that reads like it’s protecting the writer from being wrong later, rather than helping the reader understand what’s happening.
How a leader writes is how they think. Hire and promote accordingly.