The immediate assumption is that people are tools/resources to build the product. That's talking like an engineer.

That's more management-speak than engineer, in my experience. I hate being referred to as a resource.

Don't use your team to work on a project/product. Use the project to work on your team. They're not there to build the product. They're there to gain some personal fulfillment. Use the development of the product to grow them.

This is extremely well said and something I’ve been dancing around in my head and couldn’t quite articulate. THANK YOU.

My job is to empower my reports to do their best work, using empathy and engineering the team as a well-oiled system. Sure, they report to me, but my job is to keep them productive.

To complement this thinking, however, I also expect a leader to align engineers to business priorities. There is a fine line to walk in balancing the growth of engineers with the needs of a business. I expect engineers with certain years of experience to understand that as professionals we are hired to address these needs.

Of course there is also the flip side of this alignment: aligning the business to the real (vs. imagined) capabilities or investment needed.