Managing Your Management Expectations

Management: Year One Series

This is my Year One series on Management. It’s going to be ongoing, kinda like a serialized comic of sorts. I’ll tag these posts when I make them so, at some point, maybe someone who is also getting into a management role can see they are not alone. Batman wasn’t Batman in a day. Even he has a Year One, Two, and Three.

The Shift

It’s a bit ironic to me that one of the talks I give is about finding ways to stay an individual contributor in an organization. I’ve recently found myself in a managing role however, and while my advice still stands, I know I chose to take on this role because I wanted to learn from it and gain information and experience I might not have been able to gain otherwise.

That said, I think in my research of taking on a leadership role, often, what people tell you are ways about how you can conduct and manage yourself in that role. What they don’t often tell you are the hardships and mental dilemmas that you end up taking on if you are managing people.

As a technical lead, coming up with ways to solve process issues or experiment with tech never seemed like a challenge to me, or rather, it was a challenge I was always willing to take. I jumped into roles around being a technical leader because I liked those technical conversations and with much of my career training in testing, planning and process, getting into the technical weeds seemed a natural fit.

It wasn’t until recently, when I was asked to move into a hiring manager role, that I realized I was jumping into the deep end of managing waters, and there wasn’t very much folks could do to help me out.

The Upside Down

It does make me think that a lot of companies get this backwards. They throw people into the deep end, sometimes with a little mentorship, sometimes, with not much more than someone to report to with issues above you, and hope you can figure it out, and swim.

What companies should be doing is grooming leaders, sending them to training way in advance of when they come into leadership roles, and continue to keep them and everyone else up-to-date with the latest management changes and practices. I don’t think this happens often enough for mid-level management. I think there are definitely programs for folks being mentored into director, VP, and C-level roles at larger companies, because I’ve heard about them, but this might also be lacking for smaller companies unless someone has been proactive about setting up this kind of training and mentorships for themselves and their own folks.

What generally happens, I think, is that often folks are hired with leadership abilities, like me, and then the training comes later. I have mentors in my current situation, so I’m not completely on the management island by myself, but it can be lonely at times.

Some of the things people should be talking about more are the harder issues of management.
Here are some of the following examples that would be nice to know about:

• What happens if there is a conflict between employees?
• What happens if someone reports conduct issues that amount to harassment and/or sexual harassment?
• What happens if you have to coach an employee that is having mental health issues or health issues?
• What happens when you have to coach an employee in an unsafe home environment?
• What happens when you have to coach an employee where they are under-performing and there isn’t a clear reason?
• What happens when you want to be objective about the folks you hire, and be aware of Diversity and Inclusion issues?

(Note: some of this I’ve had to deal with and some of it actually happened to me as an individual contributor. Other questions here are more planning or problem solving. It’s a lot of “What if’s” I’m not comfortable with as someone that is supposed to be leading folks.)

Maybe there are helpful resources folks can point me and others to dealing with all of these different issues. I’m sifting through various ones and trying to find resources for myself, but I have to admit, there is only so much reading I can do from day-to-day.

Does managing people really come down to instinct, open mindedness, and a willingness to help others? My gut reaction is, yes, very likely it does. The problem with that is mistakes will be made, and no one is perfect when it comes to managing people.

Harsh-ing My Harsh

I’ve been a harsh judge of managers that I’ve had over the years. Those that were some of the best, in my opinion, looked forward to mentoring people, often gave advice and feedback (even critical feedback), and found a way to make things better for their employees regardless of whether what they tried to do caught them a large amount of flack from other managers or the directors to which they reported.

Much of those actions that managers take on, seem fairly invisible until recently. Not only have I peeked behind the curtain, but I’m also now part of the whole backstage process that makes part of the magic happen.

Obsessed With Visibility

In my role as a tester, I’ve often talked about making things more visible to folks on the team, or other teams around you so you can manage expectations and also get feedback about what information teams are looking for in their testing information.

I feel like as a manager, I’ve entered a fight club of sorts, where it’s known that it’s a fight club, but we can’t talk about fight club, because we’re not supposed to talk about it.

What if we start talking about it? I know there is privileged information and things that can’t be shared because of all kinds of regulations, so I’m not talking about that exactly, but maybe more of the day-to-day issues, and more of the “holy crap!” issues, and maybe even discussions around hiring, managing problematic situations, and mental health would be good as well.

Jerry Maguire This

I’m curious if other folks would like to see these issues discussed more. I’m also curious about what format would best serve these kinds of topics. If you have an opinion, or an idea, please feel free to comment in the comments section.