How to Avoid the 4 Biggest Mistakes Every New Engineering Manager + Tech Leader Makes!

If you're a newly promoted engineering manager or a tech leader,

this video is going to save you a lot of time and stress because I'm going to show you how to avoid the four biggest mistakes that nearly every new manager makes.

If you're a newly promoted engineering manager or a tech leader, this video is going to save you a lot of time and stress because I'm going to show you how to avoid the four biggest mistakes that nearly every new manager makes.

But for those of you who are new to the channel, I'm Doug Howard, and I'm on a mission to break the cycle of undertrained leaders throughout engineering and tech. Each week I post videos with tangible techniques, skills, and strategies that are going to increase your impact as a leader. So make sure you hit that subscribe button. Let's dive right in.

Mindset Shift from 'Doing More' to 'Getting Others to Do More'

The first mistake you want to avoid is make sure you don't have the, I need to do more to be productive mindset.

I'll say that one more time just to make sure you didn't mishear that. You need to avoid the, I need to do more to be productive mindset.

Back when you were an individual contributor, your sense of productivity was most likely tied to completing tasks and solving complicated problems on your own. However, when you become a manager, that paradigm shifts. Your productivity is now dependent on your ability to empower and guide your team to achieve collective goals, not just your individual goals. It's a mental shift from being task oriented to supporting others in their tasks. Therefore, your productivity is based on multiplying your team's overall output, not just your productivity.

Now this transition can be challenging for new managers and it requires a whole redefinition of what productivity means in a leadership role. A lot of managers struggle with this, so I want to give you three tangible tips for overcoming this.

The first thing is you want to delegate and empower your team. Take a step back and identify which tasks of yours can be delegated to team members based on their skills and their developmental needs. Then empower them by providing them with guidance and resources and allowing them to take ownership of those tasks and their work.

Now, if delegation is something that you struggle with, and many engineering managers do, then you're going to want to check out my episode called Delegation Strategies for Engineering Managers. I'll include a link in the episode description.

The next thing you want to do is make sure that you're setting clear goals and priorities with your team. What I mean is making sure that you actually establish clear goals for each individual on your team. What you want to do is make sure you're fostering a results oriented mindset by focusing on the outcomes when your goal is setting.

You also want to make sure that you're creating aligned incentives by defining your success criteria towards shared objectives throughout your team so that people aren't pulling in different directions.

The third thing you want to do is make sure you're celebrating team achievements. As engineers, we tend to have a mindset of, okay, we should all be doing a good job. You did the job. Great. Move on. Let's continue. But when you do that, you're not really showing appreciation for the hard work people are doing and people are motivated by appreciation, whether you believe it or not. People are motivated by a paycheck, but they're also motivated by knowing that their leader and their manager and their boss and their company cares about them.

You're going to want to make sure you're celebrating personal accomplishments, but you also want to make sure that you're acknowledging and celebrating team successes too. This means recognizing and celebrating milestones that are reached collectively. Maybe your team completed a project ahead of schedule or under budget, or maybe you guys released a new product launch or something like that.

You want to make sure you reinforce a collaborative and team oriented culture by calling attention to these milestones and celebrating instead of moving them on, skipping to the next project without acknowledging this success that everyone's having.

Stop Letting Other People Dictate and Control of Your Day

The second mistake that you want to avoid as a new manager is letting other people control your day. Now, this might sound obvious, but a lot of people don't think of this because it's again, it's a shift. In your previous role as an individual contributor, your schedule was probably influenced by the directives you received from your boss, or your production manager, or incoming tickets, or maybe it was client based, but now that you're a manager, you're going to have to take charge of your time and prioritize your tasks effectively.

This transition can be overwhelming because you have a lot of stakeholders that are going to seek to add a lot of tasks to your agenda and everyone's going to be fighting for your time and trying to dump more work on you from all directions, cross functionally from above and downward. People on your team might not be carrying their weight and whatnot.

However, managing your time effectively means focusing on high leverage tasks that contribute significantly to your team's goals and results. It's all about steering your day towards where you're going to have the most impact and working on those areas and activities rather than just being reactive to every demand and every fire that you need to put out.

Now, three tips to help you with this first, establish boundaries and time blocks and guard them. What you want to do is allocate specific time blocks for tasks such as meetings or emails or deep work, stuff that needs to get done, but isn't critical. You want to set boundaries for when you're available for impromptu discussions as well so that you can protect that dedicated work time.

What I did when I was a manager is I would keep an hour or two each day free for impromptu things that came up. I would put that meeting on my calendar and I would show it as busy so no one could just intercept that time. Once in a while, that time did get hijacked by something else, but that was the idea. I was creating that float in my day for the impromptu things that came up versus blocking off every minute of my time in advance, without any float in my schedule to be reactive to things that came up.

So it's all about creating room to be reactive. The next thing you want to do is you want to make sure that you're practicing communication. When I say that, effective communication. You want to encourage stakeholders to consolidate requests and issues into scheduled meetings or emails.

You also want to communicate your availability and your preferred communication channels to manage expectations proactively. So one thing I did back when I was an engineering director, was I was getting emails from all over the place and I could not keep up with it. It was impossible. So what I did was I created a little system for myself where I was only checking email first thing in the morning, then right after lunch, and then right before I left for the day.

A lot of people that didn't work for them because they wanted an immediate answer from me. They felt like I was ignoring their emails. So what I did was person by person, I would let them know, Hey, just so you know, I have this system where I only check my emails in the morning and right before I leave at the end of the day. The reason I do that is that I can make sure I keep up with everyone's requests and give everyone the support that they need. So with that in mind, if you send me an email, I probably won't respond to it until one of those time periods. However, if you have something urgent, make sure you call me and I'll make sure to give you my attention right away.

Setting those boundaries like that creates different expectations. What I found when I did that, was that people were more respectful of when they sent me an email or not, as well as when they actually called me for an urgent item.

So you're training people to guard your time. The next thing you want to do is you want to use prioritization frameworks and time management techniques. You want to use techniques like the Eisenhower urgent, important matrix, if you're not familiar with that, or maybe the Moscow method to categorize tasks based on urgency and importance, because this will help you focus on the high priority tasks that make a difference.

I'm not going to talk about those techniques here in this episode. But if you want some help with time management techniques and prioritization techniques, you should check out my episode called Time Management Tips for Engineering Managers and Tech Leaders.

Not Dedicating Enought 1 on 1 Time with Your Team

The third big mistake that you want to avoid is not dedicating enough one on one time with your team. I can't stress this one enough. One on one meetings are invaluable for fostering trust, aligning team objectives with business goals and guiding individual team members for their growth.

If you neglect these one on one interactions, it's going to hinder your team performance and your ability to achieve long term results. It's also going to hinder your relationship with them, which hurts your ability to influence them, motivate them and understand them. This piles up over time. So you want to make sure you're holding these one on one sessions because they provide a platform for you to discuss your concerns, their concerns. You can give ongoing, candid mentorship and constructive feedback. You're able to clarify expectations. You're able to basically nurture the talent on your team.

Make sure you're investing time in regular one on ones because this is going to help in understanding your team dynamics, as well as each individual on your team's aspirations. Ultimately what this does is the more one on one time you have with your team, it's going to help contribute to a cohesive and motivated team.

Now, three tips to help you with this. First you wanna schedule regular and consistent one-on-one meetings with your team. So for each person on your team, establish a cadence with your team members. Does it make sense to meet once a week? Maybe for new people, it does. For senior people, maybe it makes sense to meet less frequently, like once a month. But figure out what each person needs from you on their team. Maybe you need to do some work to improve relationships with some of the people on your team.

Take a step back, look at all the people on your team and just figure out what would be the ideal one on one cadence with each of them. Then lock those meetings in the calendar. Of course, have a meeting with them first to tell them what you're doing, if you haven't been doing this.

It's really easy when you're an engineering manager to get disconnected with your team, because you're pulled in so many directions and you assume everyone's good and they're capable of working on their own. But remember your job as a manager to continue clearing the path for them and giving them what they need to be successful and putting them in successful positions. Think of yourself like a coach, you need to be there for your team. The game plan doesn't work if the coach just leaves in the middle of the game.

The other thing you want to do here is ensure consistency by scheduling to demonstrate commitment to them. When you put these things on the calendar as ongoing meetings, it's going to provide a reliable platform for them to open up and have real genuine and authentic discussions with you. They're going to keep things in mind that happened in between these meetings and then feel comfortable with bringing them up to you. Otherwise you wouldn't find out about these things because they wouldn't feel comfortable, bringing up a complaint out of the blue, let's just say. Or maybe they wouldn't feel comfortable talking to you about their career development out of the blue if you're not having these ongoing discussions with them.

The other tip I have for you on this is you want to prepare an agenda and make sure that you actively listen to them. What I mean by this is, make sure you're encouraging your team members to contribute topics for discussion beforehand. This kind of ties into what I was saying before, don't just have a meeting for the sake of having a meeting. Have an ongoing discussion with them and make sure that they're coming prepared. Whether it's talking about their professional development. Maybe it's talking about areas that they're interested in learning or growing in. Maybe it's about creating a constructive feedback cycle where they're seeking feedback on a new skill that they're building.

Whatever it is, you want to have a purpose and intention and kind of an ongoing building dialogue with them that keeps going forward about their career and their professional development. How they can continue growing and how they can take on more responsibility. This is what's going to help delegate. You're going to kill two birds with one stone at the same time. I can't stress this part enough either. When you are having these meetings with them, make sure you're actively listening to everything they say. Ask open ended questions, offer guidance, offer support based on what they're telling you.

What you don't want to do is have these discussions and then make it look like you're somewhere else responding to emails or checking your phone. Give 100 percent of your focus to them. That's the purpose of these meetings.

The last tip on this is, when you have these meetings, there's going to be action items. Make sure you follow up on those action items. Go back to when you were an individual contributor. How frustrating was it when you shared something with your boss, they told you they were going to make changes or take action on it, and then they didn't follow up with it. It makes you feel uncomfortable about it too. Should I remind my boss about this? At a bare minimum, it makes you feel like you can't trust your boss or they're not going to do what they say they're going to do.

When you have these discussions and you guys create action items, make sure you follow up on it and make sure you're documenting all the key takeaways that come from these one on ones too. So if your direct report says he's going to research potential courses he can take to develop a skill, hold him accountable to that in the next meeting. Likewise, if you're supposed to go do some research on, let's just say reimbursement programs for training for your team, make sure you go do your homework on that and have that ready before your next meeting.

The worst thing you can do to lose someone's trust on your team is by not following up on the agreed action items. So make sure you follow up on these commitments and make sure that you're providing necessary resources and assistance to continuously facilitate their progress and their growth.

Don't Ignore Your Knowledge Gap as a Manager

The fourth and final mistake you want to avoid as a new manager is ignoring your knowledge gap. What I mean by that is, when you transition into a managerial role, it's not a promotion, it's a career shift because you need to acquire a whole new skill set. You might've been proficient in your technical and individual contributor skills, but like I said, managing people is an entirely different skill set, and it's completely different than what it takes to be a successful engineer. There isn't like a real linear growth path there of a natural progression. It's a career shift. It's a pivot. Yes technical skills are important. But you didn't naturally pick up any of these leadership skills along the way and you need to acknowledge that and be aware of that instead of just assuming you're going to just naturally figure it out as you go.

This is the biggest mistake engineering managers make. I can't stress this enough. These are tangible skills that need to be learned. You would not be a successful engineer if you just entered the workforce out of high school and did not go to engineering school. The same is true when you become a manager, if you don't get proper training in the areas that you haven't been coached up on or didn't learn about, you're not going to be effective as a manager.

By acknowledging that need for learning and growth is crucial and recognizing that this transition into management isn't just a promotion, but that it's a reset in your career. This helps you to being open to learning management skills instead of being embarrassed about it or feeling like you should just be able to figure this out on your own.

In reality, you're going to need to learn these skills from scratch. This might involve seeking mentorship or attending training programs or reading books or learning experiences just from other people in your company. What you want to do is just proactively realize that there is a knowledge gap there and continuously look for ways to fill that knowledge gap. One thing you can do is subscribe to this YouTube channel, because that's what this channel is for, to make sure, we're breaking that cycle of undertrained managers and leaders within engineering.

On that note, I want to give you some tangible tips for this too. So the first one is make sure you're seeking mentorship and coaching. Identify the experienced managers and mentors within your organization, or go find some outside of your organization and seek guidance and advice and feedback from them so that you can learn how to navigate the challenges of transitioning from an individual contributor role into a manager role. Everyone that's in a manager role has gone through this process, and I'm sure they'll have a wealth of advice and stories and experiences that will help you shortcut through the obstacles that they faced along the way.

Now, the next thing you want to do is actually invest in learning resources. You want to enroll in management courses, workshops, seminars. You want to acquire formal knowledge on leadership. You want to learn about team management, conflict resolution, you want to learn about delegation, and every other managerial skill. These are all tangible skills that you can learn and they are all skills that don't typically come natural to you either.

I've said this, reoccurring theme throughout this episode here, but when you're an individual contributor and when you're an engineer, we have this hands on mindset like I need to figure these things out on my own and I should just know how to do these things, but it's a whole different mindset when you're a manager. It's not about optimizing systems and processes anymore. It's about optimizing your people and getting them to do more. This is a learnable skill.

The last thing I want to tell you is you want to make sure that you're learning from your experience and the feedback that you get. As you start transitioning into your manager role, make sure you're reflecting on the experiences that you're having as a manager. Proactively seek feedback from your team, your peers, your boss. When you get this feedback, make sure you're taking it in and adapting based on the lessons that you're learning. You're going to make mistakes and that's okay. But the best leaders learn from them and the worst leaders ignore them and just leave them in their blind spot. Embrace a growth mindset that values continuous improvement.

I've covered a lot of points here, but these points collectively emphasize the importance of mindset shifts, time management, effective communication, and continuous learning when you're making that transition from an individual contributor to an engineering manager role.

The other importance is, you want to make sure that you're aiming to prevent burnout because when you're burnt out and you're exhausted and you're stressed, you're no good to anybody, including yourself or your team. The way to avoid burnout is by making sure that you're have a balanced and sustainable approach to leadership.

But if you want to learn more ways to avoid burnout, check out my episode called Overcoming Burnout in Engineering and Tech.

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