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How to be a Manager – A step-by-step guide to leading a team

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Re: How to be a Manager – A step-by-step guide to leading a team

#201

Post by snow_mac »

dahart wrote: post #59
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention you can’t adjust your hours at all to avoid rush hour or cooperate with a spouse in day care management. 9-5 is necessary for banks, but not for software developers. Having a few core hours is necessary, but if it’s 8, you can no longer call them “core”.

> if it’s 8, you can no longer call them “core” You are lucky if you think 10-12 hour work days don't exist in software development. You might also be forgetting about flex schedules, core hours may include the entire working day and may be a signal that substituting 9-10am for 5-6pm is not acceptable because you were hired to do a job that depends on your presence when others are also there. There are multiple legit…

This is why I'm a contractor. You want me to work 12 hour days? Ok, I'm capped at 40 hours a week? Well, I guess I'll just work 3 days a week then! Or you can approve me for overtime. But either way I'm getting paid for every hour

Re: How to be a Manager – A step-by-step guide to leading a team

#202

Post by rikkus »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #128
piyh wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What were a few differences you ran into?

Asians have massive respect for authority. This, in effect, mean that they won't ever say no to, or disagree with, their boss. I had to learn to ask open questions, because if they could say yes they would. They would still guess at what I wanted to hear and tell me that. I got told different things than other members of the management team, not because anyone was trying to deceive, but purely as a show of respect. M…

Instead of calling this a 'respect' for authority, I'd call it a combination of submissiveness and deferring of all decision making, partly through a desire to avoid accountability. If you look at your situation where something 'else' happens due to a 'misunderstanding', I see this often with hierarchies: There is a rush to go off and do something, and no desire to ensure it's the _right_ thing.

Re: How to be a Manager – A step-by-step guide to leading a team

#203

Post by raphaelb »

croo wrote: post #181
gowld wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> After training myself for years to not send emails Why would you do that? That's a recipe for miscommunication and mis-coordination in any country.

In my (limited) experience email should be used for either: * non-urgent * not-that-important * things you want (others) to remember * communications you may want to point your finger later on (proof/contract details etc) For everything else phone and in person communication are vastly superior and should be preferred.

I always wonder if this is a personality thing... I vastly prefer email (or slack/chat rooms) over phone / in person verbal, with some exceptions for certain types of brainstorming / planning.

I like to provide my thoughts on a topic in written form up front so people have a chance to think about it, and like the same in response.

Plus having a written record of decisions and even the thinking process is so helpful.

Re: How to be a Manager – A step-by-step guide to leading a team

#204

Post by mi100hael »

One thing this is missing that I think too many managers forget about is CELEBRATION. When your team wins, you need to make a big deal of it. Bring in lunch or something and take a moment to say thanks on a regular basis. I think one of the biggest contributing factors to burn-out is feeling like your achievements have gone unrecognized and unappreciated.

Re: How to be a Manager – A step-by-step guide to leading a team

#205

Post by benedikt »

CSMastermind wrote: post #186
drblast wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to be the impression in the business world, which has what I can only describe as a fetish for stories about the military, but Marines in particular have a very tough time adapting to life and careers outside the military. It's fun to think of our businesses as just like a Seal team and try to glean lessons from stories of heroism, but the reality is if the military were in the business of making a profit,…

> but Marines, in particular, have a very tough time adapting to life and careers outside the military. I'm curious why you have that impression. I spent 6 years in the Marine Corps Infantry and I've found it super helpful now 6 years into my career as a software developer. Specifically, because of the leadership style you learn. The only thing I'd say it made it more difficult to adapt to was college where I had to…

Curious, were you much older than the other students in college?

Re: How to be a Manager – A step-by-step guide to leading a team

#206

Post by lostcolony »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #196
lostcolony wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and no. My current company favors consensus over correctness. They don't realize they do this, but they do, largely because most of the decision makers deal with subjective things, where you can spend hours bikeshedding. When they then hear disagreement on objective things, technical things, they want agreement, and view arguments over technical things as being disagreeable. As a manager I could take that value,…

Stated values are usually bullshit. If you want to understand a culture's real values, see which behaviours and traits are rewarded and which are punished. (Also applies to individuals.) Real values are often unconscious, generated by the unconscious goals of the leaders. This is not always a bad thing. Someone who has their shit together as a person can be a very effective and inspiring leader, and can even minimise…

Real values are often unconscious. Agreed. Good or bad.

Consciously deciding on values gives you something to point to, however. You say it's wildly naive and unrealistic, and if you mean the act of writing them down is sufficient I agree; the point being made is that defining a team's goals is -necessary- (but not in and of itself sufficient).

Without making it a point to say "This is what we want to achieve", you arm yourself, your team, etc, with nothing to actually bring about the values you want to see upheld. Sure, you can just try to do them yourselves, but is the team in alignment? Do they agree with them? When you deviate, will they call you out on it? When they deviate, will you have the rest of the team's backing to bring things back into line?

The answer is no, if you haven't stated them explicitly and gotten buy in. The answer is possibly yes if you have. It still takes effort, mindfulness, etc, but it moves from the impossible to the possible by taking the time to define them with your team.

Sure, it's possible you hire so well, so perfectly, based on unstated values, that everyone is in alignment, all the time, 100%. My experience hasn't been that. I doubt most people's has.

To break into heavy metaphor, it's important to define your 'guiding star', as it were, so you can reorient the ship when someone points out you're adrift. Because without it, you not only can't tell you're adrift, you also have no idea what to reorient yourself to.

Re: How to be a Manager – A step-by-step guide to leading a team

#207

Post by jph »

gowld wrote: post #168
jph wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd have some sign language for anybody who tried enforcing "sign language ground rules." Are you working with school children or professionals? For example the Executive Director was deaf, a significant number of client staff were hard of hearing, and there were 100K school students, including special needs students, and many recent immigrants who were starting to learn English. All online materials were provided…

You've received a lot of hostile comments in this conversation, and you've handled them all with aplomb and courtesy, bridging the gaps of mismatched assumptions. I salute you.

Thank you for noticing and commenting; I appreciate your salute. Positivity is enormous help to people, including me. :)

Re: How to be a Manager – A step-by-step guide to leading a team

#208

Post by jph »

a_e_k wrote: post #83
jph wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd have some sign language for anybody who tried enforcing "sign language ground rules." Are you working with school children or professionals? For example the Executive Director was deaf, a significant number of client staff were hard of hearing, and there were 100K school students, including special needs students, and many recent immigrants who were starting to learn English. All online materials were provided…

I once served on a jury with a fellow who was deaf. It's been a while now, but I recall that we'd do things like minimize side conversations, take very well-defined turns when speaking, and pause in between speakers to allow the interpreters to catch up. It was an interesting process and I think that being respectful of him and the interpreters actually made us more efficient in our deliberation as a group.

Your experience is fascinating! Can you write a bit more about this? I think you're on to something important.

Re: How to be a Manager – A step-by-step guide to leading a team

#209

Post by Hannan »

catach wrote: post #185
Hannan wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with you here (nor have I ever been military in any remote respect), but there are some overlapping truths in that page, e.g. "Employ your command in accordance with its capabilities", under "Develop", points 1, 3, & 4. I've resigned over unrealistic expectations from leadership about deadlines, and what was to be asked of my team to complete said deadlines. I would do it again. I'm su…

Do you know what the outcome was for a team you resigned from?

The project went several months over the proposed "schedule", which was inevitable, and I had told them as much.

The team was not asked to pull any overtime to complete it in the proposed time frame.

I took a 6 month sabbatical and then was asked to contract for them remotely as a developer (instead of manager) which I did for several years after that.

So, wins all around, I suppose.

Re: How to be a Manager – A step-by-step guide to leading a team

#210

Post by CSMastermind »

benedikt wrote: post #205
CSMastermind wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but Marines, in particular, have a very tough time adapting to life and careers outside the military. I'm curious why you have that impression. I spent 6 years in the Marine Corps Infantry and I've found it super helpful now 6 years into my career as a software developer. Specifically, because of the leadership style you learn. The only thing I'd say it made it more difficult to adapt to was college where I had to…

Curious, were you much older than the other students in college?

I served for 6 years so I was 24 when they were 18.
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