The Manager's Path: Chapter 2 - Mentoring
The second chapter of The Managerâs Path addresses mentorship and the value it brings to organizations. In my career I have not seen many companies to mentorship well. When they do, it is typically limited to onboarding and internships. This is valuable, but limited in impact.
From a reviewerâs perspective Iâm disappointed that Clearly communicate is relegated to a single paragraph. The focus on listening is important, but communicating downward is where I have seen the most managers at all levels of experience fall down. Direct reports are not mind readers any more than managers are. It takes a great deal of effort to communicate clearly as a manager, but that is some of the most valuable work you can do. Your own outward communication must form the basis for your teamâs shared understanding if you want to be effective.
Post-COVID, many companies have distributed, multi-cultural teams. This exacerbates the challenges of communication. Non-verbal cues donât carry universal meaning; eye-contact and directness are indicators of value and attention in some cases but interpreted as aggression or ill will in others. You have to apply the New Golden Rule to your communications - communicate with others in the way that they prefer to receive information.
This is harder for you, of course. But isnât the whole point of communication to accurately and completely convey some piece of information? That only occurs when the receiver understands what you intended to convey. Itâs your responsibility as the communicator to complete that transfer efficiently and effectively, not the listenerâs.
Key takeaways
Titles arenât leadership
âThe first act of people management for many engineers is often unofficial.â
This is true for so many aspects of leadership. Many teams have a designated âofficialâ head but turn to an unofficial leader in hard times or times of confusion. If youâve ever found yourself persuading teammates to follow along with official guidance in an informal setting, congratulations! They identified you as their leader. This doesnât happen for everyone and can be a powerful indicator that you may be effective in a management path.
10x engineers arenât
âIf you have ever wondered why people donât seem to come to you for help despite your clearly strong technical skills, ask yourself whether youâre showing some signs of being an alpha geek.â
Hooooo do I have some thoughts (and experience) here. I have seen âalpha geeksâ (this book was written before the 10x engineer became a thing) shatter more teams than any other factor over my career. If you are responsible for an ongoing product or service and want it to improve over the long run, there is no amount of intellect or productivity that merits having this destructive influence on your team. As the saying goes, â⊠if you want to go far, go together.â
Of course, that saying starts with âif you want to go fast, go alone,â and itâs trueâmany alpha geeks are fast. If you have solo work that you can dedicate these engineers to and can keep them away from teams and other engineers, go for it, as long as you can deal with the downsides. You better be sure the juice is worth the squeeze though, as typically these engineers pile up tech debt and other long-term problems much more quickly than they deliver short-term value. Theyâre technical payday loans.
Assessing your own experience
- Does your company have an internship program? If so, can you volunteer to mentor an intern?
We do, but due to geographical limitations I no longer take them on. Prior to these restrictions one of my teams had an outstanding intern; she blew through the project we laid out for her and shipped a fully functional new feature into production during her summer with us.
Unfortunately, those geographic restrictions prevent us from hiring her full-time. If youâre looking for a brilliant, team-oriented contributor in the Vancouver area to start in the summer of 2025 let me know and Iâll put you in touch!
- How does your company think about onboarding? Do you assign mentors to new hires? If not, can you propose to your manager that you try doing this, and volunteer to mentor someone?
We have onboarding programs at the company, organization, and team level. On our team we assign an onboarding buddy - someone to guide the new hire through their first 90 days on the team across all domains. This isnât a formal, long-lived mentorship program, however.
We also have onboarding engineers update our existing documentation as they go to keep it (relatively) fresh. We move quickly and inevitably something will be out of date between each new hire.
- Have you ever had a great mentor? What did that person do that made you think he or she was great? How did the mentor help you learnâwhat did he or she teach you?
Not formally. Iâve benefited more from formal advisors as a startup co-founder and paid, external coaching at my current level.
- Have you ever had a mentoring relationship that didnât work out? Why didnât it work out? What lessons about that experience can you apply to avoid similar failures going forward?
Not really, as I havenât really had any mentoring relationships at all. I have team members who participated in sponsored mentorship programs recently that didnât work out. I havenât seen effective formal programs; mentoring relationships that develop organically from existing relationship have been more fruitful.
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