This is my Manager README, a document that helps introduce you to my management style, philosophy, and expectations. The intended audience is anyone who reports to me, though anyone is free to read it - or even provide feedback on it! Please treat it as a reference and promise on how I will conduct myself as a manager, and what I expect from you.
I urge you to hold me accountable to my promises, and to call out anything that might be missing from this document. Without your guidance, I will not be able to improve as a manager.
As a Team Lead, my role is to make sure our team is successful, happy, and working on the things that are most important to develop our product and our business. More precisely:
- I am here to make sure you are both successful and happy at work. I want you to improve your technical skills and enjoy your work.
- I am here to make sure we are getting all the information and support that we need to successfully deliver our work.
- I am also here to write some code.
These are mostly in order of importance. If you are unsuccessful or unhappy, then our team is unsuccessful or unhappy. In this situation, writing code will most probably not be my priority.
As a Team Lead, my primary function is to be a multiplier. I am here to retain and develop the talented individuals in my team, provide context and priorities, and work to help you accomplish your goals.
Finally, I am not here to tell you exactly what to do or how to do it. I have my own way of thinking and my own way of doing things, as do you. I believe that each individual has their own philosophies that, when refined together, will improve the output of our team as a whole.
Quick feedback. I promise to give you both positive and negative feedback on how you are performing, and as soon as I possibly can. If I'm worried about your performance, I will let you know.
Clear, gentle, honest communication. I promise not to leave you guessing what I “really” think nor expect you to read between the lines of what I’m saying. If it’s not clear, and you have a nagging feeling, let me know so I can fix it! It’s not intentional.
Optimize for humans. I believe that informed, productive and happy humans build great product. I promise to always do my best to be available to you if you want or need to talk to me.
Build along side you. I will be in the trenches with you, writing code, reviewing pull requests, and troubleshooting issues.
Respect for work/life balance. I'll endeavor not to communicate with you about work-related subjects outside of your working hours. And if I do, I don't expect you to respond before you begin your work day.
Remember that you are good at your job. If you weren't, you wouldn't be here. If I'm asking you a lot of questions, it's because I'm trying to gather context, or I'm helping you round out some thinking.
Communicate. Writing, talking, documenting - all of these provide myself and the team with the information we need to work efficiently.
Share your mistakes. Mistakes will happen. You should consider them learning opportunities. I believe that if shared, a mistake becomes a challenge; if hidden, it becomes a failure.
Tell me how I'm doing. I crave feedback. I make mistakes and sometimes don't notice. I need you to tell me so that I don't do it again. I can adapt and adjust my style to fit what works best for you, but I need your help to do it.
Disagree with me. The best solutions come from a healthy level of debate. I'll challenge your ideas; I hope you will challenge mine.
These 30 minutes meetings are a weekly time for you to ask and talk about anything and everything.
- One-on-ones are your time. We will go through your agenda first and if we have some time left, I will always have some questions.
- One-on-ones are a safe place. Hopefully, we will talk about things you wouldn’t otherwise bring up in another setting.
- One-on-ones are flexible. I will put these meetings in your calendar, but they can move around the week to fit our schedule.
- One-on-ones aren't for status updates, unless you really want to talk about status.
- Urgent matters should not wait for a one-on-one.
These meetings are first and foremost your opportunity to let me know how you're doing, what you need, what I can do for you, what you wish could be different, how you feel about our team and your teammates, what your career goals are,... etc.
Feedback is essential to both our successes. Three dimensions are required for people to continue to give feedback:
- Safety. Unlikelihood of being punished for giving feedback. Should be high
- Effort. The amount of work in order to give feedback. Should be low
- Benefit. How likely is it that giving you feedback will materially impact your behavior? Should be high
If I have feedback to give you, I'll endeavor to tell you as soon as I can. And if you want feedback on something specific, let me know. I will be happy to provide you some.
I believe feedback should go both ways. So if there is something you like, something you think I could do better, or something you think I totally screwed up, please tell me, I want to hear it.
I am an introvert. This means that prolonged exposure to humans is exhausting for me. Meetings with three of us are perfect, three to six are ok, and more than six you will find that I am strangely quiet. However, do not confuse my quiet with lack of engagement.
When I ask you to do something that feels poorly defined you should ask me to clarify and prioritize it. I might still be brainstorming. These questions can save everyone a lot of time.
My DISC style is Formalist - CS. This means that I rely upon procedure and structure and that I am detail-oriented and seek perfection. Please ask me for my detailed profile if you're interested.
React
Typescript
Django
Laravel
Facebook
Microsoft
Google
Alibaba
D3
Tencent