It’s been a little over a year that I have the role of an engineering manager for the first time in my career. Needless to say that I’m still learning. I read the dos and don’ts and try to incorporate them in my everyday work life. Sometimes everything works fine, some others everything goes wrong!
The don’t I keep doing
The one thing that I often find myself doing is providing, immediately, a solution to a problem that was brought to my attention. No “tell me what you think we should do”, no “what approaches have you tried?”, nothing that will spark a dialogue between me and my report. A dialogue that will helps us to figure things out and grow as engineers.
Figuring something on your own, instead of being told about it, has proven to be vital in understanding it better. So, if I want my reports to grow as engineers, I must lead them to a solution rather than give them one. The aforementioned questions must be my first reaction.
The do we can start doing
this part is a message to all my current and future reports
My hope is that writing about this don’t will make me more conscious about this behavior and avoid doing it. But, we are all humans and it will be better to have a safeguard.
So, what I propose is for you to come to me both with a problem and a suggestion as to how we can solve it. This will keep me from offering an answer right away and, most importantly, it will help you grow as an engineer. Forcing yourself to think about a suggestion or to reflect upon the approaches you’ve taken will make you understand the problem and its domain better. That alone will benefit our discussion or, even better, might lead you in a solution without any help!
le0nidas 