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Some mistakes I made as a new manager

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Re: Some mistakes I made as a new manager

#121

Post by steveBK123 »

papito wrote: post #117
matwood wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I worked for a guy who must have read a book that told him to ask for feedback, but he was so rigid that he would vehemently defend against any feedback he was given One of the hardest parts of getting feedback is simply listening. Everyone's nature is to defend. When I get feedback I nod, listen, and try to never sound defensive - even if the feedback feels wrong at the time.

This translates to other areas. I am working on a new product, my idea and implementation from start to finish. Yesterday I asked my spouse to use it and tell me what she thought. Anything she had an issue with, I was like a crab - just claw claw claw. One has to resist the impulse.

Yes it translates EVERYWHERE, and it's a strong urge to fight.

Re: Some mistakes I made as a new manager

#122

Post by matwood »

papito wrote: post #117
matwood wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I worked for a guy who must have read a book that told him to ask for feedback, but he was so rigid that he would vehemently defend against any feedback he was given One of the hardest parts of getting feedback is simply listening. Everyone's nature is to defend. When I get feedback I nod, listen, and try to never sound defensive - even if the feedback feels wrong at the time.

This translates to other areas. I am working on a new product, my idea and implementation from start to finish. Yesterday I asked my spouse to use it and tell me what she thought. Anything she had an issue with, I was like a crab - just claw claw claw. One has to resist the impulse.

> One has to resist the impulse.

One of the best ways I have found to resist the impulse is to own all feedback. If your wife has an issue with something it's either a real issue or you failed to communicate it properly or it's a combination. My wife and I have a relationship where I explain something and she has issues forcing me to rework communication, the something, or a bit of both. Ends up being very helpful.

Re: Some mistakes I made as a new manager

#123

Post by dilyevsky »

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #98
pcurve wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a director with 3 sr. managers reporting into me. They had 4-5 ICs. I found being hands-on pretty much impossible even with fewer than 20 people.

Honest question, I come from an industrial background where you have Work Package Manager in charge of the work of roughly 10 persons but not their actual manager with all the bureaucracy associated and an actual manager with less than 25 reports don’t exist. Is 4 reports common in the US? How do companies survive with so much management?

> How do companies survive with so much management?

Zero percent interest rates

Re: Some mistakes I made as a new manager

#124

Post by lucaspfeifer »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #83

Wow. the level of mistrust and fear shown by reactions here is ... at least I am not alone :-) We (most of us) live in democracies with clear rules of law and strong defence of individual rights. But we work in feudal hierarchies with arbitrary rules and love by whim of the powerful. I think that's the first thing to chnage rather than hoping the training middle management to be "better communicators" will improve th…

Rather than everyone voting for a few people at the top, what if each level voted for the one above and the one below? That way, people would be voting for the positions and people that they know the most about.

Like the other response said, when people with only a surface-level understanding get involved, democracy devolves into a surface-level popularity contest.

Re: Some mistakes I made as a new manager

#125

Post by uncle808 »

I worked as a manager for the past year and fell into a lot of traps this article describes. I've realised that managing people isn't for me and I'm moving onto a technical role but I've gained a lot of respect for engineering managers. It really is a tough job that I think many commenters on here don't fully appreciate.

Re: Some mistakes I made as a new manager

#126

Post by kayodelycaon »

devoutsalsa wrote: post #100
steveBK123 wrote: post #46

> I asked people for feedback. I found that if I just asked “do you have any feedback for me?” people often wouldn’t, but if I asked more granular questions—“was that meeting useful?”—I would usually learn a lot from it. This part is good. I think generally as engineers, a manager simply asking "do you have feedback for me" just feels like a trap. I don't know man, there's plenty of things you do that annoy me but li…

I’ve learned the biggest trap of all is “tell me what you’re really thinking thinking “.

Yup. I got reprimanded once for replying honestly to this.

Re: Some mistakes I made as a new manager

#127

Post by antman »

_adamb wrote: post #54
steveBK123 wrote: post #46

> I asked people for feedback. I found that if I just asked “do you have any feedback for me?” people often wouldn’t, but if I asked more granular questions—“was that meeting useful?”—I would usually learn a lot from it. This part is good. I think generally as engineers, a manager simply asking "do you have feedback for me" just feels like a trap. I don't know man, there's plenty of things you do that annoy me but li…

I find the pattern of "How are you feeling about X, 0-10?" followed up by "What would get you to a 10?" very useful. Almost nobody ever says 10 and when they do, when you pressure test it, "So, everything is 100% perfect and you want it to stay the same forever?" it gets revised down appropriately. "What would get you to a 10" is as very constructive way to think about it as well. It's not just complaining, it's arti…

Mine is: No people discussions, how do you feel about the project, if there was one thing that could change in 5 mins what would that be? If there was a very complicated thing that might need years but we could magically change instantly what would that be? Which are open risky things?

Re: Some mistakes I made as a new manager

#128

Post by achates »

roenxi wrote: post #113
kqr wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The other side to this is - don't ask for feedback if you don't plan to action any of it. It's fine to ask for feedback without planning to do anything about it. Balancing the feedback of multiple people means sometimes not every opinion can be accounted for. Being defensive, on the other hand...

If we analyse the sentiment a bit, we discover that there was no point asking for feedback - the course was already locked in and there was nothing to change. The feedback was useless. Providing feedback has some risk for employees (maybe they'll get blowback) and it is easy for a manager to "ask for feedback" as a power play because they just want to show they can ignore it. It isn't nice to ask unless the intent is…

You might not know whether the feedback is worth acting on until you get it. If I ask my friend what he thinks about a new car I'm buying and he says "I don't like the color blue" then I might ignore it. If his feedback is that the transmission on this model explodes after 10,000 miles then I'll change my decision.

Re: Some mistakes I made as a new manager

#129

Post by Balgair »

steveBK123 wrote: post #46

> I asked people for feedback. I found that if I just asked “do you have any feedback for me?” people often wouldn’t, but if I asked more granular questions—“was that meeting useful?”—I would usually learn a lot from it. This part is good. I think generally as engineers, a manager simply asking "do you have feedback for me" just feels like a trap. I don't know man, there's plenty of things you do that annoy me but li…

I think it comes down to a 'trust thing'. Managers have to prove to their reports that they are trustworthy. Until the ICs know that the manager will actually listen, let alone do anything, without the ICs job becoming more at risk, then nothing will come out.

As for how to build trust? That's a whole other blog, not just a few posts.

Re: Some mistakes I made as a new manager

#130

Post by avmich »

User23 wrote: post #91
david38 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a manager, but when I was an IC, I held your view. I learned that giving even softened feedback resulted in being at best ignored for a week, at worst, becoming a marked man. I resolved to change this for my team. Ask for feedback broadly, and about projects, not me per say. Peoples end up commenting on the project/ sprint, and they feel safer. Much of what they talk about however, I have power over, so I view i…

Can you think of a person that gave you harshly negative feedback that you then got promoted to staff or higher? And what was the feedback?

I feel sorry for other answers to this question. I feel they mostly duck the point and put the manager in the position of "right by default" too much.

Look, in professional setting truly being a dick - especially regarding this question - is relatively infrequent. Often someone doesn't understand that his arguments - or general actions - are off by substance (i.e., he's wrong and should be able to see and correct the mistake) or form (often he's telling not enough, assuming people will understand the way he means, and the form is such that they understand it differently than intended). Harsh criticism could be a lack of form - when the person doesn't put it in a shape somehow convenient for understanding, acceptance, analysis - or substance - when the person is wrong because either he doesn't know something, forgot something he did know... Truly being a dick professionally is to be "lazy enough" to systematically make these mistakes without taking care to fix them, or "evil enough" to do them on purpose. A decent organization has ways to hire and keep professional people, improve less professional and leave those not improving; the level of dickiness is under some control.

Sheep can be skinned once, but people aren't sheep, and power imbalance requires those wielding more of it to have the ability to grow that skin. Your question is valid and rather to the point, and I would like to learn more of the answer.

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