The engineering manager chronicles: Autonomy
In a series of a few posts I would like to share some of the insights I gathered in the last few years as an engineering manager, and some of the philosophies and methodologies that arose from them.
Autonomy
The one thing we all aspire to. Our team-members (here, when I am talking about a “team member”, if you are a team-lead, its one of your individual contributors, or if you lead managers, it would be one of the managers reporting to you).
Everyone want autonomy, the ability to make decisions and move the needle in things they believe they are well capable of doing, in things they believe they know best about, and have the space to err and fix things.
You want it for them too — they become an extension of you, they learn how to do what you do, can think like you would, inform you only when needed and involve you when necessary.
But how do we achieve that? How do we provide that kind of space to our team, without compromising on our values, our responsibilities and our beliefs?
Provide context, produce alignment
First, for people to be able and do their work well, they must be able to understand what is expected of them and what they should focus on. This produces alignment between the team-members. Explain why you reached the decision, in what context it was received, what data the decision makers had before them when deciding on a certain path and what the end-goal is.
More often than not, we think that our team-members understand what we mean when they don’t. Sometimes we forget they weren’t necessarily in the room where it happened, and so they don’t have all the data and the entire context.
Take time in making sure they have it, delegate often so they get exposed to the discussion and mentor your team-members so you can achieve the goal together as a team.
Rules of engagement
One of the terms I came across and liked very much was “rules of engagement”. As we want to provide that space we should make sure we define and communicate our guide-lines — on what, how and when we want our team-members looping us in.
To trust you I need visibility, higher-management needs visibility. It is my responsibility, I’m accountable and I need to report back, but I still want you to have your space to do what you do best.
Each manager should map what the important things they need to be in the know of so they can trust their team that they are aligned and are working on the right things. Once you mapped the what, you should make sure you also define the how — which method of communication would do the trick?
Now its time to define the frequency and the when — a weekly meeting? a daily meeting? two times a day? once an hour? You get it.
Let’s look at two examples, just to get the hang of it —
What — If I, as a manager, feel that in order to trust my managers I need to be in the know on who does what in each feature and their progress, I need to make sure I align with the team-lead on this so they know I expect to be updated.
How — face-to-face
When — during our weekly 1on1
What — in order to trust I need to know that they raise a flag when something arises that may put the dead-line and the deliverables at risk. For alignment I would make sure my team-members know this.
How —It’s best to know about this as early as possible —so our slack channel with the product manager would be best.
When — as soon as we understand this happens. We can then continue the conversation online or offline to discuss further.
This can’t work if your team members don’t feel like you have their back, if they don’t feel they can come to you with real problems for advice without being scolded and that you will mentor them in how to solve them, if they don’t feel like they can occasionally make mistakes or if they don’t feel comfortable asking for help.
It’s important to keep in mind that different team-members might need different rules of engagement. If a member of my team requires some more mentoring and more reassurance — lets meet more than once a week face-to-face, or have a quick daily session (or, if it makes sense in some circumstances — once in the morning and once in end-of-day).
If, on the other hand, I understand that someone requires even less than that — great!
Obviously, the idea is that my own manager has its own rules of engagement in order to stay informed and trust me that I’m aligned with them and focusing on the right things. So some of the things I might require from my team-members might exist so I can inform my manager and follow their rules of engagement.
Try defining your rules of engagement and discuss this with your team-members. Encourage the managers that report to you to define their own rules of engagement, ask your manager what’s theirs, and make sure that the idea is understood by all — to gain both alignment and provide them the autonomy they need in order to achieve the mutual goal.
