s/managers/humans/g
All managers make mistakes; good managers acknowledge and repair
61–70 of 134 posts
Re: All managers make mistakes; good managers acknowledge and repair
#62I think perhaps the largest change in American culture that I’ve seen over the last 50 years is that there’s nothing worse than being wrong. See it played out consistently in the public site and in the corporate world. I’m not sure what the solution is, but not allowing people to say I’m sorry and make amends and not holding those won’t say it accountable have been major pillars in a lot of our societal ills.
Re: All managers make mistakes; good managers acknowledge and repair
#63Two things I learned. As you move up the management ladder, the problems get harder. If they were easy, they would be solved already.
Second, when things go poorly, accept responsibility. When things go well, give credit to the team.
Re: All managers make mistakes; good managers acknowledge and repair
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
The book referenced is not wrong, but it is too narrow. Repair isn't the core attribute of parenting. It's the core attribute of human relationships. This is generally accepted as common knowledge - it's not about the rupture, it's about the repair. Good for you if you consider yourself so emotionally detached from work that you can let go of the fact that work relationships are still human relationships. However, yo…
Yeah IME "unemotional" people tend to just be people who don't view anger or rage or irritation as "emotions" even though they very much are.
Or, dont recognize own emotions. It is one of the symptomps of being on the spectrum - although the person have emotiona and their behaviour is affected, they cant name or recognize them.
Re: All managers make mistakes; good managers acknowledge and repair
#65I think this goes for Engineers as well. In fact, I say the biggest skill I want from a SENIOR developer regardless of years of experience is humility. Someone who "cannot do wrong" and is a toxic about it will poison the rest of the team with their toxicity. But the seniors who are more open to feedback even from Junior developers, those are the ones everyone else follows to hell and back because they're there with…
LLMs mess a lot, they are very confident bullshitters.
But, humbleness is punished and confidence is generally rewarded. That is why so many people refuse to be humble - they know it will affect them negatively.
Re: All managers make mistakes; good managers acknowledge and repair
#66This is great advice. It will work for introspective, self-reflecting managers who honestly want to do better.
Such a manager is extremely rare.
Most will be oblivious to their own biases and cognitive short-comings.
I don't think most "bad managers," even know that they're bad at their job. There's no accountability, no metrics, no performance reviews, no studies on their productivity... mostly because their "job" is to be the proxy for the power of the shareholders.
I applaud anyone who finds themselves an engineering manager and wants to be good at what they do and work for their team. It's hard to find a good manager.
But the only recourse for an IC under a bad manager is to quit or find another team to work on.
Re: All managers make mistakes; good managers acknowledge and repair
#67I wrote a list of dangerous things to look out for in toxic colleagues, trying to be objective, so as not to think anyone I'm annoyed by is "toxic"
Inability to apologize / repair was near the top of the list. Everyone makes a lot of interpersonal mistakes. Most people can apologize.
Another big one was "norms for thee, but not for me". As in the rules we create as a team don't apply to me. But apply to everyone else. The toxic person gets to use them as a cudgel, but they don't seem to be bound by them.
Another one is being very thin-skinned. Easily jumping into a kind of victim mentality (surprisingly common even in leaders) where they are the ones being put upon. Being a victim, they are justified in doing whatever it takes to correct the situation
Related to that last one, many of these folks feel like they're taking on more than their share and have to carry the team. They may have a narrative they are the brilliant person on the team that has to fix everyone else's screwups. Or the team can't live without their unique skills. Therefore they're "special" and get to act outside the rules / norms. And other leaders can feed into this when they think the special person is indispensable, turning a blind eye to their bad behavior.
Re: All managers make mistakes; good managers acknowledge and repair
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mostly I agree with 2, but be careful not to get so many systems that nothing can get done anymore. Finding that balance is hard.
That, and be careful to avoid a "box-ticking" culture where people rely on systems over independent thought. Also a hard balance.
Mere "box-ticking" in the form of checklists have been shown to greatly cut deaths in clinical/hospital settings. This may or may not apply to your systems.
Re: All managers make mistakes; good managers acknowledge and repair
#69IME the gap in management between ICs is accountability. It's easy to say you are sorry, or say things won't happen again but good management, and what I strive to do is hold myself accountable. To me, that means 1. To identify the issue that occurred (especially when you caused it), and much more importantly, 2. Put systems into place that prevent it from happening again. Employees can feel very clearly when a manag…
> Put systems into place that prevent it from happening again
In addition to what you said overall, I think bad managers can have all sorts of qualities, but imo the worst ones correct for mistakes to protect themselves or people's impressions of them, leaning highly neurotic, and can't deal with conflict well, so they put in arbitrary systems in order to indirectly deal with any one-off grievance or mistake. Bad managers won't evaluate or re-evaluate the systems they put in place because they put them there to protect their ego.
"Surely this employee is underperforming because I don't like how they're performing and we have a system for that!"
They struggle to adapt to their new job because to delegate sufficiently they need to be able to trust, and let that manifest as other people doing the tasks they might have once done without their hands in the pie directly. They might assume that part of the reason they got the job was because they're great communicators, and never consider that actually that it's just that nobody ever told them they have some growing to do.
Re: All managers make mistakes; good managers acknowledge and repair
#70This is great advice. It will work for introspective, self-reflecting managers who honestly want to do better. Such a manager is extremely rare. Most will be oblivious to their own biases and cognitive short-comings. I don't think most "bad managers," even know that they're bad at their job. There's no accountability, no metrics, no performance reviews, no studies on their productivity... mostly because their "job" i…
> But the only recourse for an IC under a bad manager is to quit or find another team to work on.
Agree but nothing easy about that.