How to fly a plane? ✈️
Flying Plane lesson for Engineering Managers
Being an Engineering Manager is like flying a plane.
I haven’t flown a plane myself but on reading the book, “3 feet to the left” written by Captain Korry Franke on his life as a captain - I felt it.
I felt, you, Engineering Managers, are the captain piloting the plane - which is your team. People will be all around the axis: your manager, your stakeholders, your peer EMs and last but not the least, your crew - your teammates.
You should manage and balance all the axes to fly your plane smoothly to set it in the right direction and reach your destination safely and on time, which is nothing but reaching your team goals within the runway available.
Runway - A term that doesn't need an introduction for planes, has become significant in tech startups circles as well. For the latter, it means the amount of time until your startup runs out of money. Needless to say, time, money and people has become scarce resource in recent years and it’s a high time to manage them efficiently.
You may be in the driver seat - but you can’t drive alone without others' help. People around you influence how you steer your team towards goals. If you’re not listening to them and couldn’t establish trust and rapport, driving your team will be a daunting task. As a new engineering manager, your first and foremost goal is to gain credibility and trust from people that you’ll work closely with.
Talk about self management. You have to keep yourself calm and composed in challenging situations that test your ability as a leader. You need to observe yourself on how you handle situations and what you could have done better. Pilots are classical examples on how they handle situations with changing weather conditions, air traffic and technical issues.
Decision making and adaptability to various situations is the key here. You have to make crucial and timely decisions navigating through challenges in projects, team dynamics and organizational goals and communicate to people around you clearly so that they understand and be part of it. Like a pilot who has to communicate their decisions clearly to air traffic control, crew members and passengers.
Regulating your own emotions, continuous learning and maintaining your focus will set you up for long term success. You need to be smart enough to know where to focus and take lead yourself and what can be delegated to your people. This will make you an energy efficient engineering manager who knows where to focus, what to delegate and when to say NO.
To build a high performing team, investing in your people is your best bet. You need to understand their motivation and career aspirations to connect with the purpose of your team’s existence and organization’s goals. They see a mentor in you to guide them through difficult situations at work and for you to share regular feedback on how they are performing and areas of improvement. After all, career without a clear goal and direction is like flying a plane ✈ without a proper navigation system.
Managing performance in engineering teams is a hard nut to crack but not impossible. Adopting the right mindset and practices on managing an individual's performance and being transparent about it with them will enable them to become a better engineer. But there will be times where their performance doesn’t show signs of improvement over an extended period and actively collaborating with them to drive improvements yield no positive outcomes, you have to make tough decisions.
Do you know that pilots do pre-flight briefings, ongoing communication during the flight and post flight briefings to discuss performance? - Yes, Pilots make sure there’s a continuous feedback loop, emphasizing communication and effective collaboration among people involved.
You need tools and frameworks starting from managing yourself to build trust and rapport with your people from day 1 and effectively manage them to go on to build a champion team.
Self Management: A framework called “SELF” to manage yourself and be mindful of how you handle situations, emotions, learning and focus.
Building trust and rapport: Building trust and rapport from the ground up, when trust breaks and how to rebuild.
Conducting mindful 1-1s: Conduct mindful 1–1s with your direct reports more effectively by showing “care” and one meeting that both of you really care about.
Managing people’s performance: Understanding factors affecting people’s performance, team dynamics, setting goals and expectations, performance criteria and calibration, writing a performance review and the conversation, mastering difficult conversations and setting your people up for promotion.
Managing your manager: What it takes to manage your manager and how you can enhance the relationship with your manager.
Are you all set to learn how to fly a plane? - I mean, to manage your people? Buckle up, you’re in for a ride!
That’s all for now - Next up let’s unravel the SELF management for you, managers.