This post is part of my weekly engineering manager 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 Square's Software Engineering Career Ladder.
Coaching & Development
The goal is to coach, provide timely, actionable feedback, and invest time in career development of team members; e.g., via 1:1s and aligning employee growth with opportunity.
Challenge
- How to help a direct report without micromanaging?
This quarter, one of our engineering OKRs is to improve our FE hiring questions. I assigned this initiative to one of my reports so they can develop their leadership skills. Recently, we're seeing misalignment on how the team wants to proceed with next steps. Every time we run a meeting about this, the team goes out of topic, causing us not to come up with next steps. I think we can do a better job at making a quick decision but also making sure everyone feels heard. But I'm not sure help my report who owns this without overstepping too much and making it look like I don't trust my them.
Tiny Wins
- Set up a more frequent sync with my report about this initiative
- Asked helped from my manager and a PlatoHQ mentor
- My manager helped with setting clear expectations when this initiative should be done.
- Learned about importance of setting clear expectations.
- Learned about useful phrases for coaching. Instead of "Is there anything I can help with?", try "What can I do for you?"
Next Step
- Continue coaching my report by asking questions and reducing ambiguity