When I worked as a lead most often I would: * sit in a lot of meetings with management/other departments * try to filter company politics from my team (thus a

When I worked as a lead most often I would: * sit in a lot of meetings with management/other departments * try to filter company politics from my team (thus absorbing it myself) * would try to find what work would be most suitable and rewarding (considering interest & future growth) for each of my developers, thus in practice ending up with the most boring bug-fix & other maintenance tasks myself * participating in a lot of project-management as well as people-management of my direct reports (weekly one on ones, conflict resolution, planning career growth, etc) In practice I found the role of Principle Developer much more rewarding.