Intro
This book was recommended to me by one of the most intentional managers I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. Matt R. brought me in as a Senior Cybersecurity Engineer at Cradlepoint and oversaw my transition to Manager of that same engineering team. Throughout my time with Matt, he worked diligently to hold me to the tenets laid about by Ms. Fournier in this book and to encourage me to be a better leader for my team. Overall, this book has been a constant reference for my career in leadership and I recommend it to anyone on a technical path who finds themselves considering or entering into the management field. Specifically for Engineers who are managing Engineers.
Amazon Link: The Managers Path by Camille Fournier
Looking through the book, I’ve highlighted certain passages and quotes that I feel are essential notes. I’ll list these under the headings used in the book. While I strive to pull out the things that I find most impactful, this is no substitute for the book, and I’d recommend you support Ms. Fournier’s work as an author.
Management 101
The secret of managing is keeping the people who hate you away from the ones who haven’t made up their minds. - Casey Stengel
What to Expect From a Manager
Managers should
- care about you as a person
- actively work to help grow your career
- teach you important skills
- give you valuable feedback
- help you navigate difficult situations
- help you figure out what you need to learn
- understand what work to focus on
- enable you to have that focus
One-on-One Meetings
Serves two purposes, Human connection with your manager and Opportunity to speak privately.
Human Connection
As much as some people would like to think otherwise, employees are humans and good leaders treat them as such. Relationships are built on trust and context and it benefits you and your manager to have both. The author doesn’t cover this, but whether fair or not, historically those with families and other commitments tend to do better financially in the workplace. Humanizing yourself and building rapport may benefit you more than you realize.
The author also makes the point that this isn’t just for extroverts who are comfortable sharing most things, with most people, most of the time. Introverts have to maintain relationships and trust just the same.
Speaking Privately
This also opens you up for an opportunity to speak privately with your manager about whatever might need discussing. Its often the fact that humans, working together, have conflict. And on occasion that conflict is not resolvable without a 3rd party. Every one-on-one shouldn’t be a whining session, but it may be useful to use this time to talk through issues, or get assistance with a situation that you’ve not dealt with before.
Feedback and Workplace Guidance
Another responsibility of the manager is Feedback and Workplace Guidance. If a system only ever exists with solely positive or negative feedback, that system will eventually destroy itself.
Take, for instance, a system that produces widgets. If this system only has the capability to increase production, but to never slow production, eventually a time will come when the system begins to produce more widgets than are needed or necessary.
Likewise, if the system has a negative feedback input, the system can be slowed to match the appropriate needs of the system.
While postive and negative feedback are possible and necessary, frequency is also important.
If I can only slow or speed up production yearly on the 1st, then you can imagine that a change in need for more or less widgets on January 2nd would make for a pretty terrible 364 days.
Its the same with feedback. Feedback should be both positive and negative (but constructive) and frequent.
If you only get feedback, and only once a year at review time, the system will not function correctly.
Some notable things to do with feedback:
- Ask for it
- Keep track of it
- Follow-up on it
Ask for Feedback
This may seem counterintuitive to our psyche, but negative (but constructive) feedback is one of the greatest motivators towards better outcomes. I can not recall any time in my youth where positive feedback drove me to do bigger and greater things. I was already receiving positive feedback, that ensures that my behavior is already correct.
But, I do remember my failings as a midfieldmen and the shame and frustration I felt when I understood that my performance was lacking. It drove me to practice harder, and ultimately to move into a position as striker for my football club (soccer team).
Your manager should be a trusted source of feedback, and that feedback should help drive your performance to be better.
Like any feedback though, public feedback should generally be positive, while negative feedback is given quickly, but privately.
Praise in Public, Criticize in Private
Keep Track of It
A lot of people get to their end of year review and find themselves a “post turtle”. In that they neither know how they got to this point in the year, or what they did to get there.
Don’t find yourself a post turtle. Instead, keep track of feedback that you receive throughout the year from everyone. Screenshot it into a folder marked “Review”, copy-paste it into an ongoing text file, tuck away thank you emails as well.
In the military, we had a yearly review that would be completed by someone over us. That person rarely knew what we had completed that year, and even less so, how that work was impactful. Hopefully in a civilian occupation, you have a more present and long-standing relationship with the person completing your review. Regardless, out of necessity, I begin to keep bullet points of my activities and accomplishments throughout the year. Then come review time, I could simply pull out my already existing list, arrange it neatly, and submit my review.
(Quick note on reviews, if you don’t support your review with evidence, it is extremely difficult for your manager to score you highly. Inversely, if you support your review with evidence, it is extremely difficult for your manager to justify scoring you lowly.)
Follow-up On It
Just like our systems of widgets above, feedback necessitates additional feedback. As you’re working to continue or improve on a behavior, continue to seek feedback. If you’ve developed an action plan to improve on a behavior, ask your manager, or peers, or otherwise if the behavior is improved. If not, adapt the behavior using the new feedback, and continue your loops.
Training and Growth
This one may be the simplest topic. If you want to be promoted or you want to take on more roles, Ask. You are an active participant in your career. Very few people end up where they want to be in their career because they sat and waited for their career to manifest itself. Instead, like scripture says, Which man wanting to build a house wouldn’t sit down and count the cost?
Or to put it more plainly, you don’t get to Toledo by lying next to the road and waiting on Toledo to come to you.
You’re in the drivers seat. If you want to manage larger projects, ask to manage larger projects. If you want to be promoted, ask what you need to be promoted.
The most impactful conversation I ever held with a manager was one in which I said, “I believe that I am doing all the work of a senior engineer, but I am a junior. What would am I not doing that a senior engineer is? And what do I need to do to be paid as such?”
I was told that I had not led any major projects, though I had supported several, and that I needed training on X, Y, or Z.
So the logical next step was to request to lead a major project, and to receive training on X,Y, or Z. I completed both and saw an increase in Title and pay that year.
Conclusion
Overall, this is a great book and one that I’m going to recommend to any new employee or peer arriving in the tech workspace. It’s not only a great primer on how to be managed, but also on how to manage. Its short, concise, and gives quick, actionable tips.