L in SELF Management - Keep up your learning
Learning - A never ending and loving tale for Engineering Managers
Youâre reading a series of self management techniques for Engineering Managers. In the first edition, Iâve written about S in SELF management, managing challenging and diverse situations as a leader. You can check it out below.
Iâm taking some time to finish writing E in SELF management, which is managing your emotions mindfully being an Engineering Manager.
In the meantime, Iâm publishing this edition, L in SELF management, which is taking care of your learnings and how you can become a better manager every day.
Without further ado, letâs go.
Learning
Youâre settled in your new role as an engineering manager. Itâs been around a year now and youâre flowing like a stream. Nothing wrong about it except that you have lost track of your course. How often have you thought about your own career and learning aspirations from the time you became the manager? - More often than not, managers forget about their own learnings or never get the time that they deserve.
There were times where you used to learn something almost everyday being an individual contributor. Isnât that true for Engineering Managers? Well, it depends on what you call learning.
Reflect on these questions, and consider how you can seamlessly integrate your managerial responsibilities with ongoing personal development. After all, effective leadership encompasses not just managing others but also nurturing your own continuous growth.
Comfort Circle
Letâs start with a quick 3-minute exercise. Mention engineering manager responsibilities that youâre comfortable at - inside the circle and one that youâre not comfortable at - outside the circle.
Below is a sample list of responsibilities / skills for you to mark it in the comfort circle:
Your time starts now.
âŠ
âŠ
Beeeep, time is up.
Great, once you are done plotting the comfort circle, you should recognize skills and responsibilities that youâre comfortable with and not. At the end of this section, Iâll show what my comfort circle looked like.
What to learn?
There are tons of learning opportunities out there to learn as an engineering manager. Let it be people management, prioritization, evolving processes, negotiation skills, how to do a fair performance review etc. How do you know what to learn?
Understand where your team needs you the most: Is your team struggling with too many interruptions? - Learn how to define processes to streamline requests to your team and learn negotiation with your stakeholders. Are they not delivering impact through their work for over months? - Learn to work closer with product managers and stakeholders to prioritize the most impactful work for the business. Do they need someone to guide them in their career? - Learn how to be a good mentor and to assist them in defining goals.
Get inputs from your manager: Your manager should show direction on what you could learn and where the organization needed you the most. Learn the business perspective or how the strategic decisions are being made.
Find your area of interest: What do you want to learn next as an engineering manager? - Do you love public speaking? Find your interest and look for learning opportunities.
How to learn?
Real scenario: Thereâs no other best way to learn than from the real scenario that you face as an Engineering Manager in your day to day responsibilities. Let it be having a difficult conversation with your direct report, when presenting your teamâs success to the senior leadership. Those are your real learning opportunities. Best thing that you can do is, learn by doing.
Books / Magazines: There are a handful of books out there for engineering managers and Iâm writing one that is slated to published early 2025. Engineering Management books that Iâve read and highly recommend are: Become an Effective Software Engineering Manager by James Stanier and The Managerâs Path by Camille Fournier. Keep your skills sharp and stay abreast of modern management trends by subscribing to reputable magazines such as HBR, Forbes, and MIT and be ahead of the curve.
Learn from your peer EM: Itâs the shortcut to fast track your learning. You donât have all the time in the world to experience all the challenging situations and scenarios by yourself. Connect with your peer EM every now and then to share learnings and experiences on challenging situations that you both have come across and learn how it could have been handled differently.
Build your network: Relying on your network to learn from is a great strategy. Go for that meetup or conference happening in your locality on engineering management, build connections in the professional social network platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn. Itâs totally worth it.
Newsletters on Management and Leadership: Newsletters in the platforms like Medium, Substack are gaining momentum. Subscribe to the renowned writers on engineering management and leadership to understand insider stories from their organizations and learn from their experience. Some reputed writers in the substack are: James Stanierâs The Engineering Manager, Lucca Rossiâs Refactoring and one another newsletter that youâre reading now!
I promised to show what my comfort circle looked like when I started my engineering management career. Not for a moment did it slip my mind - First image is when I started my engineering management career and the second one is after a few years. Does it mean I mastered all the skills and I call myself an expert? - Not exactly.
I constantly had to learn and put in the hard yards through day-to-day experience and through other forms of learning. And the journey doesnât end here as learning is a continuous process. I may need to strengthen some of the aspects, learn new leadership skills, unlearn and relearn some based on the team, context and organization.
Thatâs all for now. What are you learning as an Engineering Manager and how you are seeking out time to learn in the midst of a lot going around? Let me know in the comments.
Next up, Iâll go back and heads-down write about how you can regulate your own emotions as part of this SELF management series for Engineering Managers.
Stay tuned!