Common management failures in developing individual contributors

This resource first appeared in issue #69 on 09 Apr 2021 and has tags Becoming A Manager: Managing Individuals, Becoming A Manager: Coaching, Becoming A Manager: Other, Becoming A Manager: Feedback

Common management failures in developing individual contributors - Camille Fournier

Fournier writes about some common ways that managers - especially new managers but I’d argue it’s quite common even in more experienced managers - fail to develop the skills of their team members. While we’ll often make time for a team member to learn some new framework or to read some papers in a new area, building them up in their technical/product leadership ability is more rare. Not only is this a wasted growth opportunity for the team members, it’s an good and important way for you to make time to grow your own skills in delegation - and then to be able to take on other responsibilities!

Fournier calls out five areas she sees that technical managers don’t take the opportunity to grow their ICs, and describes each very well in the article:

Doing all the technical design work yourself
Doing all of the project management yourself
Neglecting to give feedback
Hoarding information [LJD - this is surprisingly easy to find yourself doing unintentionally!]
Focusing too much on your personal output, and

All of these are very relevant in our field, but I think this quote below on feedback is especially true in research:

Many new managers are comfortable giving technical feedback and uncomfortable giving other kinds of feedback. They freely criticize the design and technical work of their team, but they don’t challenge their team members on other growth areas like collaboration, communication style, or project ownership.