How being a mother of three helped me become an Engineering Manager

Published in

Photomath Engineering

10 min readMay 5, 2022

I have loved kids since I was a teenager. I admired their curiosity and sincerity. Everything seemed so easy with kids. Give them some smiles, show them love and they’ll respond in the same way. Keep in mind that you need to talk to them a lot so they can not only learn from you but feel comfortable with sharing their thoughts and feelings. Build up trust, show them good examples, define ground rules and that’s it. You’ll be a great parent.

Easier said than done

The first baby came. Every parent has experienced those overwhelming feelings intercepted with enormous responsibility. I loved her even before she was born and now that she was there, I was more than ready. I had everything that’s needed to enjoy her growing up. Love, smile, lead by example… all set.

I must admit there were some situations when love and smiles helped :) The rest of the time I felt she was thinking: “I know what I want, cut the crap and give it to me!” There was no working method and I felt helpless, totally out of control.

It will be easier with the second one, I thought…

And then she came, child “by the book”. Eat, sleep, repeat. She was positive and easygoing. We learnt something with the first one, I thought.

The third one came to show us that we knew nothing. She was completely different from the first two.

You got the point. We were there with different children who needed our guidance and support to become honest adults. Taking care of the house, work and everything else that life brings need to be handled in parallel. Sounds challenging? It is…

You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink

I changed many teams and managers throughout my career. There was that manager who always listened and used simple words to help. I thought everyone recognised his gift and praised his efforts. I remember that time when I asked him if he won the best grades on the satisfaction questionnaire. He smiled and said there is no way to achieve such a thing as there is always a certain amount of people that are against something or everything.

That’s when I decided I never wanted to become a manager since there’s no way to win positive feedback, no matter how hard you try.

It was much easier to work with machines.

Mental reversal

I became a mother two years after I was employed. My professional growth was happening in parallel with motherhood evolvement. Six years later I had three children and a solid reputation at the company. During the period of an increasing number of kids and dealing with their diversity, I started to realize that parenting, or rather handling the kids is very similar to people management at work. There are three big differences, though:

Goals at work are concrete while parenting ones are often abstract (especially to kids)
The bottom layer at home is made of love, while at work it consists of material needs
Kids can not be returned

Motherhood taught me many things. The one thing that changed my mind around a management career was facing the fact that there’s no perfect mother, no matter how hard you try and no matter how much love you have. Diversity among kids makes it impossible to satisfy everyone at the same time ( unless you take them to a fast-food restaurant :) ). Even more, we are not able to react properly in all possible situations as we are humans and humans make mistakes, especially when confronted with new challenges.

There’s no perfect manager either. It’s the matter of wins against failures. Sometimes you’ll fail, that’s for sure. But at the end of the day, when you look back and draw the line, having more wins than failures and progression over a longer period of time is what matters, that’s what makes you a good manager.

What you can do both as a parent and as a manager is to learn from past experiences. In other words; you can use feedback to improve. Improve doesn’t necessarily mean to satisfy others, but to find your inner peace and build self-confidence.

The next time I was offered to take over a management role, I accepted it.

Full-time Management

My three kids at home make a solid team. I’m in the role of their supervisor, making sure they have all resources needed to fulfil their growing-up goals. My experience allows me to consider their problems from the bigger picture and show them direction. I’m responsible for making them independent, good people.

A high-level description of being a parent looks pretty similar to being a manager, doesn’t it? Let’s check differences and similarities below the surface.

Multitasking — how else?

One day is 24 hours long. Grown-ups sleep 6–8 hours, spend at least 2 hours in transition, 8 hours at work. That’s (in my case) 18 hours in total which brings 6 hours to live life outside of work.

It means that coming home from work and meeting my wonderful kids who have so much to share happens in parallel with preparing dinner, taking care of laundry and many other activities that these remaining 6 hours are filled with.

Comparing multitasking at work with challenges in that area at home; work sounds great. Rationalisation and handling things in parallel works much better while emotions, such as love, are excluded and someone else handles the chores.

Magnificent diversity

As it was mentioned earlier, my kids are very different. Sometimes I feel the only thing they have in common is their parents. Each of them requires a personalised approach. Ground rules and expectations are common, but it’s impossible to manage them using the same “tools”.

It’s similar at work. People are even more different there and it’s very challenging to find an appropriate approach per each and switch between them several times per day as a manager.

Trust and faith

Children are extremely sensitive to trust and faith in them. Those should always be present and stand out clearly from everything we do. Take crossing the road as an example. You practised this action together with your kid many times, almost since they started walking. Once the child says they are ready to cross the road alone and asks you to step back, do so. Wait for them at home to retell their experience. You’ll see enormous pride in their eyes through which you’ll also feel gratitude for allowing them to make such an accomplishment.

Faith in people is mandatory also at work. The challenges we face are very different from those we have at home with children, but the principle is the same. Once we define a person’s direction, we need to design proper challenges and believe they will gain great results. People feel when they are trusted and it gives them extra energy to master their tasks.

Letting them fail

We all learn better from our experiences than from books we read (that is not to say books hold no place in helping us learn).

The ability to assess the risk and let kids fail is extremely important. Imagine a baby learning how to get off the couch. In case they refuse to cooperate and use their own “methods” instead, the best thing you could do is to let them fail hoping they’ll learn from their mistake. It’s much harder to let teenagers fail since their failures might have significant consequences. Still… They also need to fail sometimes; not only to use a better approach in the future but also to learn how to get up.

Good managers do the same. Although they could use their knowledge and experience to anticipate unwanted outcomes, sometimes it is more beneficial to take the risk and let someone fail. Failures help humans grow.

Active listening

I have mixed feelings when it comes to listening :) Both kids and grown-ups (starting from myself) talk too much sometimes. Let’s focus on those situations that deserve attention. Eg when the child recounts an experience or when they spontaneously engage in a conversation. It’s very important to let the child know that they have our attention and that we listen to them. By asking questions and commenting on their conclusions with appropriate eye contact, we send them appreciation messages showing their opinion matters.

Children’s sincere reactions to inactive listening lifted my awareness of how the same behaviour affects people at work. Communication needs to be prioritized, especially in the role of a manager. Efficiency tends to infinity in case of good communication, while it’s limited in case communication is vague.

Patience and persistence

I noticed very early after I started working that it takes time for people to embrace new things, especially when it comes to changes in way of working. Even if we agree on those together as a team, it will take some time. I accepted this, but I must admit that I didn’t understand why it often takes so long. Back then I thought those people who didn’t immediately accept the agreed way of working were irresponsible.

Being a mother and applying rules is also very tough. It takes time even for the basic things, such as brushing teeth, to become rituals. Some kids take it very easy, while others leave an impression that someone pressed the “reset” button after each iteration so we need to start all over again. Sometimes things become rituals after 10 repetitions, while sometimes it takes 100. You never know how many iterations it will take, but you need to be consistent and patient.

Timing matters

I remember when our oldest kid was still a baby, around 8 months old. We had guests who brought her a laptop toy that was labelled as 3+. She liked it as it contained many colourful keys and it played cool sounds. We decided to let her play with it although there was still some time till she’ll get mature enough to understand and use all of its functionalities.

She used it for some time and then switched to other toys. The laptop was always around, but whenever we offered it to her, she refused to play. Even when she came close to 3 years old, she didn’t have the patience to check its features.

It was a very expensive toy due to the learning features that it had, but we gave it to our kid too early. The same thing would happen if we gave it to her when she was 7, several years above the prescribed age.

This lesson can be applied to people management as well. We need to make sure that rewards are properly dimensioned and landed at the right moment.

Recognition

One of my kids shows talent in art, she makes nice drawings. The second one is very active. The third one doesn’t stop talking. The best thing we could do as their parents is to support them towards activities in which they could use their talents. It would be counterproductive to push any of them in their sister’s direction since their interests differ so much.

It is important to recognize people’s superpowers and support them accordingly at work as well. It’s also important to recognize their weaknesses. What matters the most is that both kids at home and people at work feel good and motivated, which will happen only if they do what they like and what they’re good at. In those conditions, people easily find the strength to work on their weaknesses as well.

Appreciation

Kids use available resources to surprise us. They do drawings, pick flowers or bring us “special” pebbles from the playground.

They also do the housework, take care of their school (at least they should), watch for their siblings…

People at work put effort into accomplishing their tasks. It’s more straightforward than at home, but appreciation matters as much. Not taking things for granted and appreciating someone’s efforts is a way to go. In both directions.

Parents Can Make Great Engineering Managers

Many challenges I face as a mother of three are akin to those managing people. In the same, a certain skill set and approach in solving issues can be applied to both. I believe it would be a shame to pass on the opportunity of reusing the lessons learnt and not applying them to both fields to boost performance.

Got kids? Consider becoming a manager. Already managing people at work? Don’t be afraid of parenthood. Both are stressful, often overwhelming, sometimes discouraging. But a single tear of pride or one look of love overcomes all negativities and gives you the strength to carry on.

I think a lot about my role as a mother. Do I handle my kids well and what could I do better? I often wonder whether some of my actions might impact their lives negatively. At the same time, I’m doing my very best, using all my knowledge and experience to guide them, to be there for them, to show them good examples.

Once upon a time, I was a junior at work. I was very ambitious and eager to learn. I also had my own struggles. I made mistakes, and people managing me made mistakes. Today, I try my best not to repeat them, to be supportive, to be empathetic, to be an example to the people I manage. My ultimate goal is them considering me a good, righteous person who helped them accomplish their professional ambitions. Sounds much alike to motherhood goals? It is.