Engineering managers should try not to impress
How to be a leader who "influence" but not try to "impress"
When I became an engineering manager for the first time, I had few thoughts going around.
âHow am I going to perform this role?â
âWhat are my responsibilities?â
âWill people trust me?â
âHow am I going to impress others?â
Bit of imposter syndrome kicks in as well you could assume. One question stood out âHow am I going to impress others?â. After years of experience as an engineering manager, I would like to ask myself whether it is a right question or a mindset to impress others.
One would tend to think impressing others is always a good trait. But how could this turn into a curse for your team? - Trying to impress everyone is one of the biggest mistakes đźâđš that most new engineering managers make. I was not an exception either when I started with the management role years back. I had to go through the hard realization that impressing others will not work an in fact can work against me and my own team.
In this post, I would like to share my thoughts and experience on why impressing others as an engineering manager doesnât work well.
Unrealistic đ€Ż deadlines
You became an engineering manager recently and now do you want to impress your stakeholders? - itâs pretty easy. Commit to an unrealistic deadline without knowing the real effort involved and the team's opinion.
As a new engineering manager, you might think âwhat if I quote a longer timeline for delivering a project? Will I come across as an incompetent engineering manager in front of my stakeholders?â âWhat would my executive think who has asked to complete a project in a week, which for sure will take at least a couple of weeks?â
But have you thought about the consequences if you over-commit to impress others and commitments werenât met? How will your team feel about it? What impact will it create to your business and stakeholders?
Instead of trying to impress your stakeholders, try to be transparent about the timeline and feasibility of achieving a target. Most importantly, communicate statuses at regular intervals as the project progresses and communicate whatâs possible and not to achieve. On the other hand, be aware that it will create unnecessary pressure on your teams which will lead to low-quality deliverables, burnout and lack of motivation.
Hiding đ«Ł the truth
Have you hidden facts about the technical state of your systems or status of a project or about your team's performance to impress others? Let me get this straight - It will cause absolute havoc to you, your team and organization.
Show the state of your technical systems like a mirror. If it has quite some technical problems, show it and explain why itâs happening and when to prioritize them. Obviously it will not impress others but give them a clear picture of challenges and road ahead. Build automated monitoring for your technical systems which shows the real state of it and improvements to be planned.
Being not critical about your teamâs performance will portray you as a nice person for your team and it could impress them but it will ultimately destroy your team and organization and you will not be able to deliver impactful results. Be genuine in your 1-1, team retro sessions to be critical about how your team is performing, what to be improved and lead a blameless root cause analysis and plan action items to improve performance.
In terms of how youâre progressing with a project, the more you make it transparent and vulnerable, the easier you will get a buy-in from others. Being true about things thatâs not going well will let others help you and your team to get to a better state by prioritizing them and getting you necessary resources, time and expertise. If you leave it unattended, it will get far worse to a place where it will take ages to recover.
Say âYesâ â â â to everything
Are you saying yes to everything even if that is impossible to achieve in terms of timeline and feasibility, to please your stakeholders?
Practice saying NO if you want to do your job right. It may not impress others but thatâs how prioritization works (Saying âyesâ to the important priorities and ânoâ to others) as your team canât work on too many different topics at the same time and be overloaded.
Over-perfection đŻ
You recently have transitioned from an individual contributor to an engineering manager and you believe doing things perfectly and technically correct can only impress others? - youâre wrong. You canât get everything perfect and in fact your stakeholders and even business prefers to get things done rather than taking quite a long time looking for perfection.
You need to learn how to prioritize progress over perfection by working in iterations and planning follow up technical initiatives for future iterations.
Doing everything yourself đ€
When you were an engineer, you used to be hands-on and do things on your own. If you think you can impress others by doing everything yourself and bear the credit even after you become a manager, you need 25 hours a day.
Instead of impressing others by doing everything yourself, influence them through delegation and establish shared accountability as a team.
Being nice đ to your direct reports
Are you trying to impress your direct reports by being nice to them in 1-1 and retrospectives? - It will not help the cause of building a high performing team.
If youâre tolerating bad behaviors and poor performance and hesitant to share critical feedback to impress them, youâre letting them and your team down by sending a signal that everything is normal and acceptable in every situation. Instead, be transparent about their performance and behavior, explain to them clearly with specific situations, how it could impact them and the team.
Your team will appreciate you for being authentic and transparent to them instead of just being nice.
Short exercise đ€Ÿââïž
Iâll leave you with a short exercise to try out to evaluate whether youâre trying to impress or influence as an engineering manager. Explicitly say what you will do to not to impress in those situations but to influence as a leader:
What will you do if an executive comes up to you and say, âHey, we have got a new business prospect. Can we complete the project X in Y days?â What will be your reaction and next steps would be?
Youâre observing a poor performance from one of your direct report. How would you approach this situation so that you are not in a mindset to impress them by being nice most of the time but to influence?
Your technical system is in a super bad state and you want to be transparent about it instead of trying to impress others by not being open about it. How can you be authentic and practical about the situation? What are the next steps?
When was the last time you said âNOâ to someone in your org, so not to impress but be transparent?
Influence, instead of impressing by being:
Authentic
Vulnerable
Presenting your true self
Influence or impress - whatâs your take?