This post is part of my weekly engineering competency review series. At the end of each week, I publish a review of the notes I thought over the past week. My goal is to create a log where I can capture these insights for future me to review.
The competencies below are from CircleCI engineering competency matrix.
Mentoring
The goal is to mentor my team in an open, respectful, flexible, empathetic manner.
What's Good
- Helped my team by helping them reflect on their own past
Since I started in my new role as an engineering manager last month, I observed that when my direct report is having challenges, I tend to give suggestion right away. I would talk about what's helped me before and suggest they try it out and see what happens.
Recently, I came across a post from Adam Grant about giving advice. He suggested asking "What’s helped you before?". He said this is good because reflecting helps people crystallize lessons from their own past resilience—and gain confidence in their ability to overcome current adversity.
After trying this out, I felt really happy after my 1:1 because my report was able to reflect on his past experience and came up with his own action items.
Do Better
- Asking more questions
In my first 1:1 with my direct reports, I prepared a bunch of questions for getting to know them more. I asked about their long term goals, expectations, etc. For my next 1:1s, I think I should prepare at least one question to get to know them at a deeper level on a regular basis.
Action Item
- Update my 1:1 template to have at least one question for getting to know my report better.