I've generally followed a single piece of advice. "Work the people, then the problem." > Avoid becoming the bottleneck that everything has to go through. Th

I've generally followed a single piece of advice. "Work the people, then the problem." > Avoid becoming the bottleneck that everything has to go through. The problem with this is that it's inevitable with any talented individual. People will look to you for answers to their questions. To help get things done because you have a track record of doing so. There becomes a point where it doesn't scale and you need to now delegate and empower individuals to find answers on their own or make decisions without always seeking approval. > Your job is not to make managers happy. It is to make the team’s work impact the business. The biggest challenge here is playing the TPM/EM role when your engineering counterparts are not empowered. To make them happy, you have to step on toes and stir the pot sometimes when process is tedious, team dynamics / morale is low, or the respective EM does not run the team how the team wants to run. This is a great article for anyone interested in "leading with influence" and applies to all disciplines, not just PM.