Let's assume your engineer is indeed doing great, and you are not involved at all in their day. They plan things themselves, execute, and barely talk to you, all the while succeeding. In this case, the only thing you do is 'not interfere', which is not much. The question should be - how much better can that engine…
Let's assume your engineer is indeed doing great, and you are not involved at all in their day. They plan things themselves, execute, and barely talk to you, all the while succeeding. In this case, the only thing you do is 'not interfere', which is not much. The question should be - how much better can that engineer be, and what can you do to support them? Maybe just helping to choose the right projects, connecting with people inside the company or from your previous companies is enough.
I believe that if you can't point to specific things you did to support that engineer, you didn't do that great of a job.
Thanks for answering here, I like the idea of "not interfering" which is eventually what I was leading to. Generally agree though there has to be a distinction between "I did nothing as a manager, they had to figure it all out" vs "I coached them to get to this point and made sure they were successful in delivering this project autonomously". It has to be a culmination of a growth journey rather than a complete absence from the manager, I should have called that out better. Thank you again!
I think there is still a place to dive deeper here :)
So for example you coached them for 3 years, and they grew a lot. There are specific things you did to coach them - 1:1 conversations, helped them learn from mistakes, and so on. You had a 'positive delta' on their progression.
Now, in year number 4, you didn't interfere, and they delivered autonomously. That year was a culmination of the previous 3, but during it, you didn't do anything actively to help the individual.
In this case, I still feel you could have done your job better. Maybe that individual is now ready for a bigger challenge, and a cross-team IC role. Or they can take on more management responsibilities that will challenge them.
I think that if you look at a long period of time (3+ months), there are for sure things you can do to help ANY individual in your team to succeed more. It doesn't mean interfering, but thinking on how to grow them even further and not be satisfied with the great coaching you already did.
I definitely do not disagree with that, there's always room for growth and wonder about "what's next". I like to think about this as the teacher/student relationship where once the student "surpasses" the teacher we reach an ideal teacher/student relationship. Your highlight though is a good remark on the fact that coaching continues to evolve from there, so your job as a manager is not done (in your example, it is not "done" by the autonomous delivery of the project).
I promise this is not AI generated, I was re-reading my message and felt compelled to point that out ahah
Thanks for the thoughtful comments! I think it’s an interesting debate, and a common case of good managers, who feel satisfied with ‘past’ coaching and don’t try to push people even further.
That's a great question.
Let's assume your engineer is indeed doing great, and you are not involved at all in their day. They plan things themselves, execute, and barely talk to you, all the while succeeding. In this case, the only thing you do is 'not interfere', which is not much. The question should be - how much better can that engineer be, and what can you do to support them? Maybe just helping to choose the right projects, connecting with people inside the company or from your previous companies is enough.
I believe that if you can't point to specific things you did to support that engineer, you didn't do that great of a job.
Thanks for answering here, I like the idea of "not interfering" which is eventually what I was leading to. Generally agree though there has to be a distinction between "I did nothing as a manager, they had to figure it all out" vs "I coached them to get to this point and made sure they were successful in delivering this project autonomously". It has to be a culmination of a growth journey rather than a complete absence from the manager, I should have called that out better. Thank you again!
I think there is still a place to dive deeper here :)
So for example you coached them for 3 years, and they grew a lot. There are specific things you did to coach them - 1:1 conversations, helped them learn from mistakes, and so on. You had a 'positive delta' on their progression.
Now, in year number 4, you didn't interfere, and they delivered autonomously. That year was a culmination of the previous 3, but during it, you didn't do anything actively to help the individual.
In this case, I still feel you could have done your job better. Maybe that individual is now ready for a bigger challenge, and a cross-team IC role. Or they can take on more management responsibilities that will challenge them.
I think that if you look at a long period of time (3+ months), there are for sure things you can do to help ANY individual in your team to succeed more. It doesn't mean interfering, but thinking on how to grow them even further and not be satisfied with the great coaching you already did.
I definitely do not disagree with that, there's always room for growth and wonder about "what's next". I like to think about this as the teacher/student relationship where once the student "surpasses" the teacher we reach an ideal teacher/student relationship. Your highlight though is a good remark on the fact that coaching continues to evolve from there, so your job as a manager is not done (in your example, it is not "done" by the autonomous delivery of the project).
I promise this is not AI generated, I was re-reading my message and felt compelled to point that out ahah
Thank you for the thoughtful exchange!
I didn’t think at all it’s AI generated 😂
Thanks for the thoughtful comments! I think it’s an interesting debate, and a common case of good managers, who feel satisfied with ‘past’ coaching and don’t try to push people even further.