Engineering Manager's Handbook by Morgan Evans

Author:Morgan Evans
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Packt
Published: 2023-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Personal commitments

Treat commitments you make to your engineering team with care. Personal commitments are a particular kind of communication you will have frequently with your engineers. Recognize that every commitment you make to your team is under scrutiny. Failure to keep even very small commitments harms your relationships and reputation.

As engineering managers, we are asked for things constantly. It may be for help, permission, consideration, advice, feedback, information, or support. With so many requests coming in, it can be easy for some to fall through the cracks and escape your attention. Your may be asked by one of your engineers in passing, “Hey, could you take a look at this when you get a chance?” If you say yes, but then fail to remember to follow through on the commitment, that may be a big disappointment for the person who asked you, who is then sat in a holding pattern waiting to hear back. You may figure that if it is important, they will remind you, but asking your manager for help can be hard to do already, so if they don’t get a response, they are just as likely to think to themselves, “I guess my manager is too busy to help me,” and move on. These little disappointments add up to cracks in the foundation of relationships with your engineering team.

Avoid simple mistakes and forgetfulness by making it a point to keep a running list of everything you have committed to. Find a system for this that works for you. If you are often on the go, you can use a voice assistant to log commitments or you may jot them down in a notepad. Get in the habit of immediately cataloging every commitment you make.

Just as important as communication with our teams, communication with executives and senior leadership is an opportunity to help our engineering teams through advocacy. Let’s take a look at how to do that.

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