Managing an entire software engineering team is rarely easy.
There may be times in your career as an engineering manager when you feel like things just aren’t quite going right — even if your team is still hitting those KPIs.
Being able to reflect on your current engineering management style, spot where you can do better, and adjust your behavior accordingly is an excellent indicator of maturity, and doing your job to the best of your abilities.
Let’s check out some managerial style potential problem areas — and how you can fix them — to have you well on your way to becoming the manager of the year.
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1. Your “Technical Help” May Actually be Micromanaging
Do you always find yourself looking at the code of your team’s projects or constantly bringing up design or tool suggestions? Perhaps you’re constantly stepping in to “show them how it’s done” and writing up code.
Coming from an engineering background, it can be very tempting to focus on the technical aspects of a project. After all, you’re probably one of the most experienced members on the team! But, is that what your focus should be on?
As an engineering manager, yes, you should help your team out with technical decision-making, and ensure their technical abilities and output are sound, but that’s just one part of your role. It’s also your job to ensure timelines, delivery, staffing resources, etc. are on track. You’re dedicated to the project first and technical proficiency comes second, so you should avoid micromanaging.
Remember: perfect isn’t always necessary — good enough is good enough. Trust your team to be able to work to requirements. If you’re micromanaging, they won’t have a chance to learn for themselves.
Why do most leaders micromanage? Because they are perfectionists — in a negative sense of the term. Nobody is as good as they are. Consequently, they don’t believe anyone can do the job as well as they can. What’s the solution? The 95-95 rule. If they accept 95% of perfect performance, 95% of the time, they will micromanage 95% less.
— Gaurav Bhalla, Knowledge Kinetics via Forbes
How to change your engineering management style
Let your team take the lead here; you’re the glue, the conductor. Only step in to help out when your team is really struggling — it’s not up to you to design/code.
For example, instead of attending all design meetings, have the meeting leader report back to you with updates and provide advice if necessary. When walking around visiting the team, ask how they’re going and if they have any roadblocks, rather than reading through the code on their screen and making comments.
If you find yourself going through the codebase regularly from your own machine, get other team members to run code reviews instead, as that’s not part of your responsibilities. Anytime you find yourself doing the work, or being too specific in instructions, stop yourself and remember that your team is capable on their own.
Keep yourself in check
Think carefully about your interactions with the team, and what percentage of these are technical in nature as opposed to managerial. You can keep a daily journal and note down all your team interactions across the week, determining whether each was more strongly technical or more strongly managerial.
From here, you have a baseline of your current behavior. The next week, make an effort to have a better managerial to technical ratio. Keep tracking for as long as it takes for your behavior to change.
Read More: How to Implement a Welcoming Software Developer Onboarding Process
2. You’re Not Listening to Your Team
Some engineering managers are so blinded by their management ideals that they may forget to listen to what their team is really saying.
Do you hear gripes that “X task would be so much easier if we used Y,” yet reply with “You guys are smart, I’m sure you can do it even without it!”? Or perhaps a particular team member keeps voicing unpopular opinions so you just tell the rest of the team, “Oh, that’s just Daniel, let him talk.”
Sometimes, it’s even about going beyond what your team is saying. Being able to read people’s vibes and the team’s vibe as a whole will alert you to when things aren’t quite right.
If you aren’t paying attention and listening to what your team is saying, or even taking social cues to hear what they’re not saying, you might find one or more people in the group getting annoyed, upset, or disillusioned at the status quo.
How to change your engineering management style
Read up about active listening, and remember the points when in conversation.
When team members are talking to you, particularly regarding an issue (or benefit) within the group, make sure to pay attention. Think about what they’ve said and imagine the impact on them, and the wider group, if a change was made.
You can also try out solutions like a (potentially anonymous) suggestions form or peer reviews, a weekly forum, or even just reaching out to say “My door is always open.”
Many managers can feel like they’re boxed into not being able to make changes that their staff request — due to pressure from above, be it in the form of scheduling, budgets, or lack of insight into team dynamics.
Being able to effectively communicate with your upper management can impact your team’s perceptions of you as a manager.
Read More: How to Write a Product Requirements Document (PRD) Devs Understand
3. You’re Not Encouraging Your Team to Grow Professionally
Are you helping your developers excel in their careers, or are you solely focused on the job at hand? While professional development for your team can often get pushed to the side in favor of deadlines, it can be to the detriment not only of the individual but your team as a whole.
According to LinkedIn’s 2018 Workplace Learning Report, a staggering 94% of employees would stay at a company longer if it invested in their career development.
When professional development is ignored, it can lead to poor staff retention rates, and employee dissatisfaction with work-life, the team, and the company overall.
How to change your engineering management style
No matter how tight the schedule, you need to ensure that your team is getting their career progression needs met — or they’ll go elsewhere to do it.
This might include:
- opening up avenues for further study
- weekly developer knowledge sharings/workshops
- scheduling chats about career progression
- encouraging side projects, or
- a career mentoring program.
Read More: How to Be an Engineering Manager Your Company & Team Respects
4. You’re Not Encouraging Your Team to Grow Together
How do your team interact in the workplace?
Are they happy and cheerful, dropping by each other’s desks, asking for assistance on problems, and working through obstacles together? Or, do they do a quick hi to each other as they grab a coffee and then settle into their chair for the rest of the day with their headphones on?
As important as it is for staff individually to grow in their own careers, perhaps even more important for you, as their team manager, is to ensure that your team is growing together!
The better your team knows and understands each other, and knows each other’s strengths and weaknesses as part of a team, the better they’ll be able to do their jobs. And the better they’re able to do their jobs, the easier your life will be!
How to change your engineering management style
This isn’t so much about changing your style as it is changing their style.
There are plenty of ways to help your team grow stronger together. Try out team building activities, weekly drinks after work or team lunches, book conferences, get people to do pair programming sessions together, organize fun outings, or even get people to work on hot desks next to each other in the afternoons.
Read More: Managing a Distributed Software Development Team: 5 Lessons Learned
5. Your Ratio of Constructive Criticism to Encouragement is Off
Are you handing out critiques left and right, but saving compliments for grand occasions? Even if you’re not a negative person, if your workplace’s constructive criticism to encouragement ratio is off, you may be perceived as someone who is always discontent — and your developers thinking they’re lousy at their jobs.
In fact, in one study of 60 strategic-business-unit leadership teams at a large information-processing company, they found units with the highest ratio of positive to negative comments (5.6+) far outperformed their peer groups.
If you aren’t used to handing out compliments left, right, and center, then it might be time to start practicing.
How to change your engineering management style
Bite your tongue. If they are small criticisms to make, leave them to the comments section of a document, or simply give them a gentle pointer in the direction of established processes, best practices, and standards.
Always find things you like in your team’s work. If you’re pointing out criticisms in their work because you think the rest of it is amazing, then say it! Point to elegant examples, when they go above and beyond what’s required, even when they organize cake unexpectedly.
There’s always something to praise, you just need to get in that complimenting mindset.
Read More: How to Transition to a Remote Engineering Team: The CTO’s Cheat Sheet
Where to Go From Here
Being a good engineering manager is an ever-evolving process.
Even the best of the best managers still have room to do better. Try to not be so hard on yourself, and put in place measures to start changing unhelpful behaviors.
Seeing for yourself the effects that small changes can make will be like watching the effects of a sprinkle of magic dust over your work.
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