Taking people with you: 4 things that helped me as a new manager

Preamble

I always had an appetite for accompanying people in their technical projects. To me, the interaction we have with the technical tools is fascinating (much more than the technical tools themselves). So naturally, after strengthening some pure programming abilities, I decided to take on the “Engineering Manager” challenge. Not as a logical promotion after years of service, but as a turning point in my career. And this was a real decision to become an effective one. Learning and working my way up to the proper mindset and skill set.

One of the many books I devoured to improve my understanding of this job was “Taking People With You” by David Novak. And this one stood off!

So much so that I wanted to share what had an impact on my progression as a fresh manager.

#1 Being your best self

Ok, this one is probably not quite exclusive to the Engineering Manager profession. But being your best self, or the best version of yourself is particularly important when it comes to this job.

People will turn to you, either actively or passively. Just look at how you are, and what you do, and it will impact them. After all, you are a manager, and it makes you at least an implicit reference. So you truly need to embody your values, be as sharp as you can be, and live out every piece of wisdom you will ever want to share. Then you can understand what it means, what can be challenging, and where the struggles are while being a doable proof.

So this piece of advice helps to have a positive impact on the team.

#2 People Do Things Even They Didn’t Know They Could Do

This piece of advice resonates a lot with another key concept I hold dear which is “naive optimism”. We don’t necessarily plan to do “amazing things”, we plan to do regular things, and they turn out to be amazing. But for this to truly work, you have to shun all the possibilities it can go wrong, and not focus on the fact you cannot do it. Try and learn. You’ll probably fail, but if you succeed, what a victory! And interestingly, it is exactly how we learn to walk. We have no experience, no muscles, no muscle memory, nothing. On paper, it is a lost cause, and a robotic engineer will say it to you: walking is a marvelous feat. But we get there eventually! After a lot of falls, and more perseverance.

It is hard to have this naive optimism for ourselves. But if we do, and if we manage to help others, it can lead to interesting results, and drastically open up the possibilities.

#3 Being an avid learner

I considered myself pretty solid when it comes to learning and oh boy I was wrong. The way I saw learning was always very academic, structured, planned, and so on.

But here, knowledge is not acquired, it is devoured. There is a certain chaos in that process, which leaves room for unexpected opportunities. Everything is a source of learning, everything and all the time. It fires in all directions, on every topic. And instead of properly framing one topic and learning all its details, you have a learning trend about a concept. The trend brings you more connections, often outside the box (because you get rid of the frame).

And being an avid learner becomes more than a piece of advice, it’s a concept that shapes how you see the world and everything around you.
It is again not tied to this job and is globally handy (especially when you are starting).

#4 Recognition

This incentive straightforwardly echoed my fresh experience. I find it much easier to work around mistakes, failures, and problems. Easier to have the feedback, easier to spot, and easier to address. Whereas it feels tricky to find all the wins, as there are a lot of silent ones. But then the conveyed message is all twisted (focusing on negative things), and it could greatly impact the motivation of the team.

Getting to see the extra mile done here and there, managing to notice the further care given on tasks, and then simply giving some attention and praise about it. I think it is both trickier and more rewarding. Not only do you build a positive feedback loop, but you also reinforce a nice work atmosphere. Oh, and it does feel good for everyone to bring recognition to the table! Which is a good source of energy and motivation for everyone.

To sum it up

While knowing there are a lot more key drives and concepts, I think it’s easier to get on track with these 4 when starting the path of Engineering Manager. If one was to stand out, I would say “being an avid learner” as it could continually impact you at a ground level.