leadership

As an Engineering Manager, I am accountable for the delivery of my team as well as the growth and wellbeing of each of my reports. Throughout the years, however, my day to day hasn’t always been the same. This is mainly due to the fact that the expectations for the EM role differ greatly between organisations.

Creating a roadmap can be a challenging task. I can’t really say I am an expert on the matter, but have done it a couple of times. The most recent one, I put together a workshop that got fairly positive feedback and so I’m sharing it for the benefit of anyone interested.

Every day we need to make decisions as leaders. But this is often not easy. How can we improve our chances to make good decisions? There are many techniques for this, one of which is critical thinking. This technique is particularly effective, and it allows us to deconstruct the situation removing undesired bias and revealing hidden issues.

When you use critical thinking, rather than making a decision just because it feels right, you will scrutinise every available option and apply scepticism. Using the tools described below you will eliminate everything but the most useful and reliable information.

At work, great communicators have an advantage. They know how to have great conversations. Personality helps, but this is a skill that anyone can learn. Here I explore a few tips to improve your conversational skills.

A job pays the bills. But if that is all it means to you, it will be hard to feel inspired. It is not unreasonable to expect a job to excite you and provide you with a higher sense of purpose.

Purpose is feeling that your time is being well spent and your work is adding value to something that matters. For some people it is easier to feel purpose, and also some vocations are simply more likely to help you feel purpose e.g. teachers and healthcare professionals are frequently included in this category.

But most people are not wired to feel purpose that easily and most jobs are not clearly fulfilling in that sense. You, as a manager, have to effectively lead those people. What can you do?

For most people, it is hard to objectively self-evaluate their work and behaviours. Great leaders learn to build strong self-awareness. There are two main sources of information that can help you with this.