I have seen both great technically savy developers and great managers fail at
being a Technical Lead on software development projects. It seems of takes a
special personality, skill set, and drive to take ownership of a project in this
special capacity.
A former co-worker of mine sent me the following link to a great article that captures a checklist of some of
the ideals needed to pull off this great balancing act.
I hope he wasn’t suggesting I should study some more :-) Of course I did
review them and ask myself how I was doing.