Are you ready to lead?

As you evaluate your?decision to move into a management role for the first time, it can be difficult to know when you're ready.

Perhaps there’s a clear sign from the universe like your current manager getting hit by a bus.? Or maybe you’ve just obtained an after hours MBA from that highly accredited online program, so now feels like the right time to take the reins.

From my own experience, I find it to be funny how much the answer to the question of 'readiness' for management is to the answer to the question of whether or not you’re ready to have kids...

SPOILER ALERT:? you are never ready.?

I suppose in many ways... managing is very much like having kids.?

Your team, like your children, ends up being both an extension and a reflection of yourself and how you approach your role.? Lead them well and they’ll go on to do great things.? Royally screw the job up and you’ll end up estranged as they continue their lives without you in it.

Understanding the responsibilities of becoming a leader as well as the potential impact of doing the job poorly, is the first sign that you might be ready... On top of that, if you are starting to doubt your ability to manage others, I personally feel that you’re on the track towards becoming a good manager.? While that may seem counterintuitive, the worst manager you can end up with is the one who thinks they are a great manager and is done learning. They're probably a nightmare and have yet to realize it.

Let's also accept now that you're probably going to fail at this job for a while when you start. Managing is hard, even when you've done it for a while. As a new manager, you're going to struggle for a bit while you get your feet under you. That's actually OK. You're going to be fine in the end... But, you're going to need to be humble enough to accept that and hungry enough to do the job well to continue learning despite any of your failures to pull this transition off.

You’ve never really managed before, so how can you be sure it’s going to work out?

Unfortunately, you can't be sure... But that shouldn't stop us from trying to prepare as much as possible ahead of time for the transition into management.

So, I beg the question... how can you know you're ready?

Ready Checks

There is no absolute way to guarantee you’re ready to start progressing into a formal management role.? Even if you have read every book on management, understanding conceptually how management should work and putting it into practice are two very different things.? Fortunately, there are some foundational check points that can provide you with some degree of confidence before you formally take on a management position.?

The list provided in this section is by no means exhaustive, but from my own experience progressing into management -- I have found these to be things you could start to do at the team level to gain some experience before taking on the role formally.? An added benefit of the suggested checks is that they'll also provide you with a means to try out the role before you make the transition.

It's not at all uncommon for new (or long time managers) to find the role unsatisfying, unfulfilling and not fit for them... trust me when I say that it's better to find that out early.

With that said, you should consider adopting the following ready checks before transitioning to management to prepare yourself:

Coach Others

Being a manager means becoming an excellent coach and mentor for your team.? As the leader of a team, you’re accountable for your direct reports’ growth and performance.? It is therefore critical to have at least some idea of how to go about it.? As long as you’re continually learning, your approach doesn’t even have to be the most effective – you just have to have an idea of how to go about it.

The style I’ve adopted myself has evolved much over the years, but I found a lot of inspiration from John Whitmore’s book, Coaching for Performance .? If you’re looking for some guidance, that might be a good place to start.? Fortunately for you, I don’t think you need to read a book on how to coach in order to start gaining experience.? At some point in your life, you yourself have probably had a coach or mentor that has helped you in your career.?

How did they approach conversations with you??

What worked for you and what didn’t??

Most practical applications of leadership tend to stem from an adaptation of experience you’ve accumulated to situations you’ve faced in the past - you’re not going to learn everything you need to know by reading a book.?

Lead Pair Programming or Design Sessions

Becoming an effective manager means becoming effective at leading others.? In my opinion, true leadership has little to nothing to do with leveraging authority or being the smartest or loudest one in the room in order to drive results; it’s all about being present in a way that inspires others to follow your lead.? There are many ways that you can start to become more present and impactful prior to a transition into formal management.

For example, in heated team discussions, are you the calm voice in the room that brings the conversation and team back together -- or do you add fuel to the fire?

Effective managers know how to bring disagreement into agreement.? They mediate conflict and navigate differences.

As an engineer, you will have ample opportunities to exercise these traits on a regular basis.? In my career, the most heated discussions amongst engineers typically come about when debating the validity of technical approaches.? When you find a room moving towards a heated debate, consider this your opportunity to flex leadership.

A few techniques you can leverage to assist your team in mediation include:

• Find a common goal that the room shares and bring that into focus. Sometimes, you simply need to remind everyone that they are here to solve the same problem.

• Provide the floor to the quiet voices in the room. Typically it’s one or two loud engineers dominating the conversation.? The best thing you can do in the short term might be to get them to shut up long enough to let someone else talk.

• See if you can get the room to consider the merit of their colleagues' approach while identifying any faults in their own.? Your goal is to build empathy to move the room towards compromise. One often effective way to go about this is to model the behavior for the room; call out strengths in the designs of others and areas for improvement in your own.

If you find yourself in a situation that’s difficult to resolve, don’t take it personally, people problems are incredibly hard.? That said, it’s also necessary to understand that resolving conflict is a major accountability and expectation on team leaders.? Building your confidence and ability to navigate difficult conversations is essential to becoming an effective manager.

Give Hard and Honest Feedback

The ability to provide timely and honest feedback is one of the most powerful tools in a manager's arsenal.? It’s also a difficult one to wield effectively.? Giving praise to your peers should be easy.? It feels great to celebrate others and to lift those around you up.??

On the other hand, giving honest difficult feedback is something many individuals and managers aren’t capable of – it’s hard to look someone in the face and tell them they aren’t meeting expectations.? At the same time, it’s critical.?

If you’ve ever been surprised at an end of year performance review, you probably have had a manager who was afraid of giving direct feedback early on.? It’s very common for ineffective leaders to hide behind end of year performance reviews and other layers of abstraction when providing feedback.? Unfortunately, that’s a gutless approach that robs direct reports of immediate opportunities for growth. As an effective manager, you're going to need to be better than that.

Good feedback is timely.?

It’s honest.?

It’s well thought out and delivered in a way that the receiving end hears it.?

On top of that, providing good feedback requires much more than just blurting the quiet parts out loud and then patting yourself on the back for having said what needed to be said.? To land feedback effectively means establishing a mutual trust that allows the receiving end to let themselves become vulnerable enough to actually internalize it without shutting it down.

As an individual contributor, you’ll have opportunities to hone this skill amongst your peers while in your regular course work.? Think back to the previous example where we discussed mediating a heated discussion amongst peers as a technical lead...? Did you see opportunities for the engineers in that room to become more effective collaborators?? Did you see things they did well that you want to celebrate?? You don't need to wait to become a manager to help others grow – you just need to be willing to pay attention and look for opportunities to provide timely and resonant feedback to your team.

Now let's talk a bit more about you... You also need to seek out feedback for yourself.?

If you become known as the overly perceptive individual who is great at telling others how they’re not meeting their expectations, you’re not going to make many friends.? The Harvard Business Review calls out a feedback ratio of five positive to every one negative piece of feedback.? The intent behind that ratio is to establish a foundation of trust so that when you have something critical for growth that’s difficult to hear, the other side will hear it.? I don’t subscribe to the formal ratio of 5:1, but I do agree that you should be finding more things to celebrate amongst your peers than areas for growth that you are calling out.?

Craft Direction for Product

The best leaders can inspire their teams to do great things.? Inspiration requires charting a course that others can rally behind and do more than they would have thought possible to deliver.? That means setting a clear vision.? As an individual contributor, this means starting to develop an entrepreneurial mindset early.?

How have you impacted the direction of the product you are working on today?

When you become accountable for an engineering team, you may or may not have a dedicated product lead supporting you in crafting the vision for the product you are working on.? If you do happen to be fortunate enough to have a dedicated product lead supporting you, you may be able to get by early on without having invested here, giving you time to learn on the job how it's done.? Problems will quickly arise though if you happen to lose your product lead for any reason - as the manager, you are the ultimate accountable party.? This means you better be ready to step in at any time.

In many environments, there isn’t a product lead at all and the manager operates more as a ‘General Manager’, accountable and responsible for all aspects of the team, including product.? On these teams, it's critical to have experience setting direction and inspiring others to execute on your ideas.? To gain experience while still at the team level prior to moving into management, you can start by being conscious of the whys behind what you are working on rather than simply working through tasks.

Some practical ways to gain experience with product direction include:

• Identify improvements for the product you are working on and align your manager and product lead on the need to invest in those areas.

• Volunteer to participate and work with customers to identify areas for improvement in your product offering.

If you’re unsure how to proceed and you feel that you lack the ability to effectively lead product direction for a team, consider establishing a mentorship relationship with an impactful product lead at your organization that you look up to.? Most individuals are honored when sought out for mentorship or guidance, and will be happy to support you in your growth.

Lead Your Team's Delivery Process

Managing a team means being accountable for the team’s ability to execute and deliver.? Even if you work at an organization that has a dedicated delivery lead accountable for delivery, as the manager - you’re more than likely still accountable for their output.? If the team’s process prevents them from meeting commitments, that’s on you.

Becoming competent as it relates to team process is one area where I’d strongly recommend formal training.? I realize individuals might balk at the idea of structured learning, but understanding how to effectively organize work isn’t something you’ll want to fail your way into doing correctly.? If you are a manager who’s unable to meet commitments, you’re not going to manage for long.

In the world of Software Engineering, we’ve generally standardized on the Agile Development process.? If you find yourself in an organization that hasn’t adopted Agile, I’d take the over-under that you are working with government customers.? Regardless of how your organization functions, you should understand the process.? Learn all you can about how delivery works where you work and volunteer to help where you see opportunities.?

I’d recommend the following as opportunities to gain early experience with delivery within your organization:

• Raise the bar for defined work. Improve the clarity of planned work on your team by pushing for better scope and definitions of done on all queued work.

• Participate in process discussions and suggest improvements. If your teams are anything like mine, you’ve spent potentially years debating how to go about story pointing.? Do story points really matter?? When your team is debating their process, engage in the discussion rather than becoming a wallflower.

• Volunteer to run parts of the process. During the normal course of work, there will be opportunities when the usual players are out for one reason or another.? You should be looking for opportunities to run the team’s standup, planning or any other ritual that correlates to process. Volunteer to help whenever you can.

Your goal here is to gain hands-on experience while you’re in a controlled and generally failsafe environment.? Your team will be very forgiving if you’ve volunteered to help and things don’t go perfectly.? They’ll be a lot less forgiving once you become the manager and the process feels slow, arbitrary or ineffective.??

After All That, You’re Still Not Going to be Ready

Great, we’ve checked all the boxes, gained some experience... and now you’re good to go - it’s time to manage right??

Well, unfortunately you still aren’t prepared for the job.? In fact, I’ve been managing for years and there still are things I’m not prepared for that require me to invest in learning, ask for guidance or sadly, fall flat on my face and reflect on the opportunities for learning while picking up the broken pieces.?

That said... If you’ve taken the time to gain some team level leadership experience related to tech, product, delivering and people management; you may have done all you can for now.? The critical part is to acknowledge you have more to learn and know how to find support when you need it.

You hopefully now understand that you'll never be ready for management, which means that you are ready!

Congratulations!

How does one become a manager exactly?