Leadership Perspectives for Engineering Managers and Your True Team

Leadership in engineering management extends far beyond shipping code and meeting deadlines. At its core, it requires a fundamental shift in how we view our organizational roles and responsibilities. While many engineering managers naturally focus their energy and attention on their direct reports, a more profound leadership principle can transform how we drive organizational success.

Understanding Your True Leadership Team

Patrick Lencioni introduced a powerful concept in "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team" that challenges our traditional view of team loyalty. As engineering managers, we often consider our direct reports the engineers we mentor and guide our primary team. However, Lencioni suggests that our true "first team" is the management group we're part of.

This insight fundamentally changes how we approach leadership. Your primary team comprises peer managers, directors, product leaders, and cross-functional partners who collectively shape the organization's direction. While you maintain responsibility for supporting and developing your engineers, your core alignment needs to be with this leadership team.

Simon Sinek's work in "Start With Why" reinforces this perspective by connecting it to organizational purpose. When we understand our true first team, we can better align every decision and action with the company's fundamental purpose. This alignment creates a powerful ripple effect throughout the organization, fostering a culture of shared goals and mutual support, and ultimately leading to increased productivity and innovation.

The Power of Organizational Alignment

When engineering managers prioritize their management team relationships, they create cohesion far beyond their immediate influence. Consider what happens when managers focus solely on their individual teams: Engineering optimizes for technical excellence and delivery speed, while product pushes for feature expansion, and operations concentrate on stability. Though each goal is valuable, this siloed approach creates friction and misalignment.

Instead, when managers come together as a unified leadership team, they can effectively balance these competing priorities. They create strategies that serve the entire organization rather than optimizing for local maxima, which are the best outcomes within a local context but not necessarily the best for the entire organization. This alignment becomes particularly crucial during challenging times when resources are constrained or difficult decisions need to be made.

Navigating Dual Loyalties

One of the most nuanced challenges engineering managers face is balancing their commitment to their engineering team with their responsibility to the broader management team. This isn't about choosing one over the other - it's about understanding context and maintaining clear communication channels.

Your engineers need you to be their advocate and protector. They rely on you to create an environment where they can do their best work, shield them from organizational noise and distractions, secure the resources and support they need to succeed, provide career development opportunities, and represent their interests in management discussions. For instance, when a management decision might affect your team negatively, you can advocate for your team's needs while also understanding and communicating the broader organizational perspective.

Simultaneously, your peer managers need you to align on organizational priorities, make decisions that benefit the company, present a unified front on key initiatives, share resources effectively across teams, and build trust through consistent collaboration.

The Art of Communication

Effective communication becomes your most powerful tool in managing these dual loyalties. When the management team makes decisions that might be unpopular with your engineers, transparency becomes crucial. This means sharing only some details of management discussions but rather focusing on the why behind decisions.

Connect decisions to the company's broader mission and purpose, taking inspiration from Sinek's work. When engineers understand how their work fits into the larger picture, they're more likely to engage positively with changes, even challenging ones.

Building Trust at Both Levels

Trust forms the foundation of effective leadership, and as Lencioni emphasizes, it must exist at the management and engineering team levels. With your management team, trust is built through engaging openly in discussions, sharing concerns constructively, committing fully to decisions once made, supporting peer managers' initiatives, and maintaining confidentiality when appropriate.

Trust develops with your engineering team through consistent support and advocacy, clear communication about organizational decisions, regular feedback and recognition, career development support, and protection from unnecessary organizational complexity.

Expanding Your Impact

The first-team mindset dramatically expands your influence within the organization. Instead of optimizing for the success of a single team, you begin to shape the entire organization's direction. This broader perspective allows you to identify and address systemic issues that affect multiple teams, create cross-functional initiatives that drive organizational improvement, build stronger relationships across departments, influence company strategy and direction, and develop a more comprehensive understanding of the business. This expansion of your impact can bring a sense of accomplishment and fulfillment in your leadership role.

Leading Through Change

Change management becomes more effective when approached from a first-team perspective. When the management team aligns on changes before communication cascades through the organization, they can present a unified message, address concerns consistently, support each other through the transition, share resources, and best practices, and monitor and adjust the change strategy together. This shared purpose and unity foster a sense of connection and engagement among the team.

Practical Implementation

Engineering managers who want to embrace the first-team mindset must regularly meet with peer managers. Active participation in management team meetings, sharing resources and information across teams, aligning on common goals and metrics, and creating opportunities for cross-team collaboration all contribute to strengthening this approach.

Growing as a Leader

The journey to embracing the first-team mindset is ongoing. It requires regular reflection and adjustment. Consider how effectively you're balancing your dual loyalties, where you can better support your peer managers, what organizational challenges you can help address, how you can better connect your team's work to your company's mission, and what opportunities exist for cross-team collaboration.

Looking Forward

As technology organizations become more complex and interconnected, leading with a first-team mindset becomes increasingly crucial. This approach creates the foundation for scalable, aligned organizations where managers and engineers can thrive.

Remember that this transition doesn't happen overnight. It requires conscious effort, regular reflection, and ongoing adjustment. However, the impact on both your personal leadership effectiveness and your organization's success makes it well worth the investment.

The most successful engineering leaders can seamlessly balance their responsibilities to their engineers and their management team. They create environments where engineers feel supported and valued while ensuring their work aligns with and supports broader organizational goals.

Your role as an engineering manager is to be the bridge between these worlds, translating organizational strategy into meaningful work for your team while ensuring their voices and needs are represented at the management level. By embracing the first-team mindset, you create conditions for your engineers and organization to succeed.