How to create a culture of ownership in your engineering team

Ownership doesn’t happen by chance -> it’s built through deliberate actions that leaders often overlook!

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Let’s get back to this week’s thought!

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Intro

A lot of leaders expect ownership from the team and it's people and yet often neglect how important their specific actions are.

As a leader, you need to create the right environment and culture and people will gladly take ownership.

The actions of a leader either inspire or discourage ownership.

But how do we create such an environment and culture?

Luckily for us, we have

Taha Hussain

, joining us as a guest author. Taha is a former engineering executive at Microsoft, Yahoo, Walmart Labs, Startups and now a dedicated Engineering Career coach for Engineers and Leaders.

In today’s article, He is sharing lessons learned from his time at Yahoo, where he transformed his way of thinking → from discouraging ownership to inspiring!

P.S. This is our second collab. If you’re interested in reading the first one, you can read it here: Why your job search is failing as an engineer or a manager (and how to fix it).

Taha, over to you!

I was unaware that others were frustrated with me

In 2013, I was a Principal Engineer at Yahoo, blissfully unaware of the mutiny brewing around me.

I overheard whispers about a farewell party for Nilo, a scrum master I’d been supporting across four teams. I strolled into the conference room, expecting the usual cake and awkward goodbyes.

Instead, I got silence. Conversations died. Eyes bore into me. I'd walked into a goddamn minefield.

I froze. Then, Nilo appeared. She walked toward me, calm and deliberate. She gently held my elbows, looked me in the eye, and said:

“Taha, be nice to people.”

Be nice? What the hell had just happened?

Later, my boss gave me the truth: over 200 engineers and managers were frustrated with me. I’d been relentless → pushing for code quality, on technical debt, on deadlines. And the team? They pushed back with excuses, lowered standards, and enough tension to choke the room.

Normally, I would’ve shrugged it off. But this time, I didn’t.

I was curious:

Why was ownership so damn hard to find? And how could I unlock it?

This search transformed my career. By 2019, I was leading 250+ engineers and managers, fostering a culture of accountability and growth.

Understand the Elephant. Guide the Rider.

My transformation started with a deceptively simple idea: Jonathan Haidt’s Elephant and Rider metaphor from The Happiness Hypothesis.

Imagine your brain as two distinct entities:

1. The Rider, who plans and directs.

2. The Elephant, who provides the power to act.

The Rider believes it’s calling the shots, but the Elephant has its own agenda. When they disagree, the Rider turns into a lawyer, defending the Elephant’s nonsense instead of guiding it.

The Rider rationalizes. The Elephant decides.

You can’t force the Elephant. You can’t drag it. You can’t yell at it. You have to understand it, guide it, and motivate it.

This was my “aha” moment. My problem wasn’t technical standards or deadlines. It was my inability to connect with the Elephants on my team.

I’d been barking orders at Riders, while their Elephants—overwhelmed by fear, doubt, and resistance—stood firmly in place.

If I wanted my team to step up, I needed to speak to both the Rider and the Elephant.

Lesson #1: The Elephant craves safety

When Marissa Mayer announced that all software development would move to Sunnyvale, chaos erupted. Remote teams were given two options: relocate or accept a severance package.

One of my teams was in India. I joined their weekly stand-up expecting business as usual. But this time, only six faces appeared on the screen—down from twenty.

“What’s going on?” I asked. Silence.

Then one engineer admitted: "Taha, we’re screwed. Half the team's gone. Managers have checked out. It's just us."

Their anxiety was understandable. They'd chosen to relocate, but their visas were pending. They felt adrift, uncertain about the future.

And I remembered something critical:

The Elephant doesn’t move when it’s scared. It freezes.

"Let's start small," I said. "If everything was normal, what would you be doing?"

"Daily stand-ups, sprint planning, working through our backlog," one of them replied.

“Then let’s focus on that,” I said.

I spent the next week diving into their backlog, connecting with stakeholders, identifying key deliverables. Together, we created a plan. A simple, achievable plan to keep them moving forward. Within six weeks, they were executing confidently, turning their anxiety into action.

A week before the team arrived in the US, my manager asked me to lead them.

Takeaway: Fear paralyzes progress. Safety unlocks it. If you want to move people, start by building a bridge over their fears.

Lesson #2: The Elephant is chained to beliefs

One of those engineers, Saikumar, became the linchpin of a crazy project: migrating our legacy systems to Apache Tez. When I first mentioned it, he looked like he'd swallowed a lemon.

"Big Data? Me?" he asked, his voice barely a whisper.

He reminded me of those circus elephants tied to a tiny stake.

Baby elephants are tethered to stakes they can't budge. They grow up, strong enough to uproot trees, but they never try. They've been conditioned to believe they're powerless.

Sai's stake? A belief that he wasn't good enough.

If I wanted him to step up, I had to do two things:

1. Empower his Rider with a clear, logical path.

2. Convince his Elephant he was stronger than he thought.

“Your Java skills are rock solid,” I told him. “MapReduce is built on Java. Your team needs a Big Data expert, and I can’t think of anyone better.”

Over the next three months, Sai didn't just learn Big Data; he owned it. He refactored two years of legacy garbage faster than anyone thought possible.

How? By speaking to both the Rider and the Elephant:

1. The Elephant requires a moral purpose: Sai saw his work as saving his team, not just a tech project. Fear took a backseat.

2. The Rider requires clarity: MapReduce → Java → Sai's existing skills. The path was clear.

3. Momentum: Small wins are crack for the Elephant. Sai started owning bigger and bigger chunks of the project.

Takeaway: People don’t break limiting beliefs with words. They break them with momentum, one small win at a time.

Lesson #3: Elephant works on trust

None of this would've happened without trust.

Nilo's words – "Taha, be nice to people" – echoed in my head. But it was more than that.

Her delivery, calm, compassionate, a gentle touch on the elbow – that was a trust-building masterclass, even in a room thick with hostility.

Here's a secret:

Intention is the bedrock of trust. It's not about empty words; it's about showing up, consistently.

A warm handshake. A clap on the back. Showing up when your team needs you most. These little moments tell people: You’re safe with me. I’ve got your back.

Takeaway: Trust shortcuts fear, unlocks ownership, and turns hesitation into action.

Ownership starts with the Elephant

Leading people is about understanding the Elephant in the brain.

You can’t force the Elephant to move. You can’t drag it. And you definitely can’t yell at it.

But if you make the Elephant feel safe? If you speak to its fears, build its confidence, and trust it to move? It will take you further than you ever imagined.

The next time you see someone hesitate, don’t push harder. Instead, stop and ask:

What’s holding their Elephant back?

Last words

Special thanks to

Taha Hussain

for sharing his lessons with us! Make sure to follow him on LinkedIn. And also subscribe to his newsletter

The Conscious Leader

.

In addition, Taha has kindly made his lesson How to Create Ownership FREE for Engineering Leadership readers for a limited time!

It’s over 1.5 hours long and it’s filled with value. I highly recommend it and you can watch it here (by clicking watch now and inputting your email).

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