How do you coach your engineering staff for success?

I would like to mention what I used to do for my teams, as we set the goals (Short and long) terms goals for everyone, and we follow up them to ensure that their goals are aligned with their skills, in case there are some gaps, we should correct and fill them with follow up meeting, good feedback and encourage.

Coaching a team first starts with..."why are we a team?" Then identify mutually agreed upon teamwork and task work goals. Both a formal leader as well as "informal" leader will be identified and if not both on the same page, can cause rifts in the team.

Nurturing innovation and creativity in a team is key. Keep innovation and creativity alive and do not let it die at the hands of collaboration fatigue. Team work has always been credited with the development of new ideas and increased frequency of innovations and this is true for the most part. If the initial steps for any team project were not concise then it may eventually lead to getting more information, inviting more experienced team members and tweaking the goals further thus wasting precious time. There should be a crystal-clear understanding of primary strategic objectives about the project from the start. Collaborative competition if implemented judiciously can work wonders for any team.

I love to get my team to assess their *own* abilities before I make any kind of judgement of their own. For example, I'll get them to list 10 skills they use in their day job then rank them in order of strongest to 'needing support'. You can flip that list on it's head to collaboratively decide on actions to address the areas they want to work on. Growth conversations and creating plans always works better when driven by the individual themselves, not the manager. They need to feel engaged and empowered and the master of their own destiny. Nothing kills motivation quicker than a manager making assumptions about someones skills and goals and slapping down some half-baked objectives. Coaching and guide, never dictate.

As a technical team lead/mentor it is your responsibility to engage your team and to provide a collaborative environment. Below are a few examples on how I engaged my team. 1) Conduct weekly or bi-weekly project status meetings. 2) Assign each team member a task to perform and have them provide the status during your team meeting. 3) Provide hands on opportunity for each team member, "they may not might always succeed but will appreciate the opportunity given to them". 4) If the project requires travel to supplier sites, always select a different team member to go with you during the training phase. Once you have member that you feel is fully trained and knows the processes, let them lead and take another team member with them.

Being human means we all sometimes make mistake but let us agree as sometimes we win and sometimes, we learn, so we should provide constructive feedback for our staff to encourage them and let them feel better.

Man, this is a big topic. Of all the skills I find managers suck at, feedback is usually the biggest one. 'Radical Candor' was a game changer here for me; it's the idea that we must both challenge directly and care deeply in order to give effective feedback. Often people don't want to give feedback incase they hurt feelings (caring not challenging) or they say what they think without thought for how the person will feel (challenging not caring). The trick is to normalise feedback—both praise and criticism. Make it a routine, so it becomes a safe and natural part of your team culture to give and receive feedback frequently. So, are you practicing Radical Candor? If not, what's holding you back—challenging directly or caring deeply?

Keep feedback simple, straight and actionable (rationalistic and with no blame/finger pointing); and, wherever possible make it quantitative along with qualitative. Agree upon ways to measure improvement. Constructive feedback delivered right can create a significant positive impact on the team which is a measure of how well feedback been provided. Otherwise, managers should take it as improvement area themselves.

Feedback should be future focused (instead of past focused) and action focused (instead of person focused). The 2D feedback model by Dr. Tasha Eurich is perfect for this. And when the "area of improvement" feedback is given in alignment to helping the engineer achieve their career aspirations, it is always received very well.

Clearly define what success looks like for the first three and six months in the role. This helps set expectations and provides a framework for assessing performance and progress.

Be a servant leader and dedicate yourself to helping your team. A good manager "takes responsibility for failure and gives the team all the praise for success". By fostering that environmental you will see the team flourish and grow. Give people the space to grow and improve and they will. Remove blockers for them, encourage learning and continous improvement.

Mastering the art of when to mentor versus when to coach is critical for building or breaking trust, so be careful which 'mode' you engage. Consider this: What's their experience level? If they're new and inexperienced, act as a mentor. For those with more experience but need guidance to find their own answers, switch to coaching. What's their immediate goal? If it's facing a specific task that demands your expertise, then be a mentor. If it’s more about supporting their problem-solving or exploring alternative routes, coach them. What are their skills needs? If they need to build new skills or competencies for current or future roles, mentor. But if they need to up their game in adaptability and continuous learning, opt for coaching.

A regular 1-1 with every engineer in the team is a must. Preferably weekly. This way, one gets regular opportunities to identify coaching/mentoring needs. With a trusting relationship built, a regular on-going 1-1 is like a guiding beacon for every engineer.

Empowering engineers starts with building an emotionally safe, high-trust environment where engineers feel safe to take a risk and stretch their abilities. We have used retrospectives with questions like, "What went well," "What didn't go well," "What are we going to change?" and "Shoutouts," with great success. The retrospectives help engineers take ownership of a project and look at it from a team perspective, not just a single contributor perspective. Often, I would have engineers say, "I don't feel like I got anything accomplished this sprint," only to have a shoutout given to them for helping another teammate through a challenging problem.

Occasionally, we encounter a pattern of promoting profoundly introverted individuals to the Staff Engineer position or, worse, confining their talents to a solitary initiative for timely delivery. It begs the question: have we inadvertently introduced an antipattern? While this approach might ensure project completion on time, it falls short of enabling the company’s long-term growth. Instead, let’s promote individuals with the right aura and exceptional communication skills. We should challenge our Staff Engineers to think about how they can continuously increase their multiplication effect and “contaminate” other developers with the right approach to technical design, priorities, coding standards, and quality.

Challenging and empowering should happen in both width and depth. Depth - taking deeper, more complex work in their expertise area. Width - consistently expanding horizons and learning more & more. In today's ever changing technology landscape, helping engineers grow both in width and depth is a huge favor we do to engineer's career growth.

I am quite fortunate to lead a great team of Engineering Professionals who do their work diligently. All I need to do is to create a safe space for them to express their talents and provide guidance whenever needed. Coaching is about listening and asking the right questions to my team to help them solve their own problems.

Prevent burnout ?? Burnout generally occurs due to feeling; Stressed, Overworked and/or, Challenged. Although a passionate, motivated, devoted and hard working team offer important strategic, disciplined and forward thinking approaches to problems, be conscious of burnout. This is often a result of dedicated team members; Taking on other peoples stress / work and, Not having time to decompress after work or have sufficient time away from work to digest / reflect / relax. It is important to establish continuous conversations, regular 1-2-1’s and open discussions so a common understanding is established among peers to reduce and prevent the potential of burnout.

The underlying aspect of coaching is to build trust with your team members. Once there is trust the methodology of coaching will become a discovery process between you and your team member. More than you trying to coach the team member they should be seeking out your support and coaching. To build trust, you have to be open to sharing your vulnerabilities with your team member. They need to get to know more about you. I would recommend to start with a “Read Me” about you so they know what your values are, what can they expect from you, what you expect from them etc ., Once the initial rapport is built, every interaction will become a coachable moment - by engaging in constructive dialog.

Coaching your staff for success requires you to deliberately create time and space for coaching. In my experience of coaching Engineering leaders over the last 10+ yrs, lack of time is the biggest challenge. Knowing what needs to be done and creating time to do it, are two different things. Many leaders have too many direct reports (greater than 7/8) & spend too much time (greater than 70%) "doing" vs "coaching". To coach your engineering staff for success make sure you carve out enough time to spend on the 5 topics listed in this article. This means being self aware, being efficient & effective in delegating, convincing your own superiors to allow you to spend this time on coaching. Change yourself first, their success will follow.

Help them to find their passion: Most of the time we try to encourage our team to align with our expectations which may be is not their own interest. I always try to test them with different type of tasks: from designing a roadmap, writing a business plan, implementing some new technologies in their job up to teaching and mentoring new team members. I have realised that if we could find and show them their internal motives, they will shape their career better than the situation which we set external motivation.