Managing people - Andreas Klinger

This resource first appeared in issue #110 on 19 Feb 2022 and has tags Becoming A Manager: Other

This is a bullet-point list aimed at new managers, and so there’s some basics here - but it’s always useful to review the basics, and we always have new members joining the list (hi!) including new managers.

I like this list because it expresses a lot of ideas that have come up on the list before, but in ways I haven’t read. I wouldn’t necessarily express all of those thoughts this way, but it’s useful to get another take on ideas. Some highlights:

As a manager, everything is your fault
You manage processes; you lead people
Processes are expectations made explicit
In every discussion/project/problem/situation, it needs to be clear who makes decisions
Avoid back and forth
Trust through transparency
Don’t confuse autonomy and abandonment

I think the last one I chose, “don’t confuse autonomy and abandonment”, is particularly relevant in academic areas of research computing. We tend to expect and grant a large degree of autonomy - which is great! But that doesn’t mean not giving our team members what they need to succeed, including as much context and, yes, guidance and direction as they require. The trick is not to always be giving them more guidance and direction than they require.