The "Problem"
Picture this: you're moving from a team member (also known as an individual contributor) to a manager position. Hopefully this isn't too hard to imagine, and is actually happening to you.
Congratulations! Your hard work and dedication to improvement has paid off. Now you are being put in charge of a group of people doing the thing you were doing until yesterday. You are now responsible for their collective (and individual) performance, setting clear direction, and hitting everyone's targets and deadlines instead of just your own.
What can an engineer do?
Naturally, you focus on what you can do to/for the team. You ask about the actions you can take during the process of managing.
The Real Problem
Actually, the biggest challenge isn't hitting a checklist of external actions (good 1-on-1s, praising in public, etc.). Those are all important things to consider as a manager, and are skills that will be built through experience, self-reflection, and concerted effort.
The key problem, especially when transitioning from a technical role to a managerial one, is managing yourself.
Why This Happens
When you get promoted, you're going through a significant identity shift from being a go-to technical expert to being a leader. If you don't successfully make that shift in your own mind, you will fail. Period. Doesn't matter how well you run your 1-on-1 meetings or how much you praise people in public.
The hardest part isn't the people. Chances are, if you have not been a complete shut-in, you can intuit many of the right things to do in a given situation. And for the things you can't, there are resources and tools (including Sofia) that can help.
The hardest part is the psychology that you have to let go of when making the transition.
What To Do Instead
You need to focus on yourself and making sure you are in the right mental space for the job you're taking on. Recognize that, although it will still be related to things you know and recognize, you will likely not be the one doing the vast majority of the work anymore. That's the reality of your new job.
So what does that mean for you?
You have to survive the withdrawal
As an engineer or other technical professional, you've gotten used to the satisfaction of tangible accomplishments. Closing a ticket, solving a bug, whatever. The feedback is immediate and frequent.
As a manager, your "wins" are abstract, delayed, and often nonexistent. You might have a good 1-on-1, help a team member grow over the course of a year, or watch a project run smoothly entirely without you. The more senior you get, the more abstract your successes become.
What you do: figure out what a "productive" day looks like in this new role. It's not about personal output anymore. You need to get satisfaction from the team's success, and that requires rewiring your brain. Assume this will be very hard.
Your instincts can be a liability
When you were an individual contributor, you could "just fix it". That was your job. Don't talk to anyone, don't give instructions, don't complain, just do it. Years of that mentality will come up constantly in the form of an instinct to jump in and solve things yourself. You might even be the most experienced person and know the most obvious answer.
Except this is a massive trap. Every time you do something yourself, you revert to being an individual contributor. Over time, you'll create an expectation in your team that errors won't just be tolerated, you'll fix them all yourself. Quality will decline and you will be working 30 hours a day.
What you do: Your new job is to become the village idiot. Ask questions and only give input when it's absolutely necessary. Do not dictate solutions - instead, guide team members to figuring it out themselves (even if you already know it).
Think about it as designing a system
There are a bunch of tasks you will have as a manager. Those will always exist (and will compound). Don't think of your job as a series of tasks. Instead, think about the team as a product. Your job is to design and maintain it so it functions optimally.
For people, that means having clear and efficient communication, clear expectations, balanced workloads, a sense of purpose, and psychological safety. Create the conditions for success.
What you do: Those tasks you heard about like 1-on-1s, team rituals, project planning, become part of your overall process and product environment. Debug the team instead of the specific things they're working on.
What Most People Get Wrong
- They think of management as a checklist, missing the fact it's a completely new role and outlook that requires you to focus on building the environment around the work rather than the work itself
- They assume managers are just elevated individual contributors, so they use their experience to "just fix things", getting far too into details and ultimately burning themselves out while harming their team
The Bottom Line
The key is to focus on making sure YOU are ready for the change. The transition from team member to manager is a difficult one. Your psychological readiness will do more for your success than a million checklists or books.