Have you ever been responsible for leading an engineer into a management role? If so, could you tell me about that?

Question

Anonymous · Accepted Answer

I have had several opportunities to coach engineers that were exploring moving
from an individual contributor to a team manager role. I use the Goal, Reality,
Opportunities and Will (Next Steps) framework (GROW) to coach and measure
progress of ICs looking to make this transition. Usually the IC is looking to
test the waters and would like to make sure they can come back to being an IC if
they can. Lets take one scenario where one of my top IC contributors shared in
our 1/1 that she would like to pursue a management role as a goal and wondered
if I could help with advise and opportunities.

From a goals perspective, the first step was to get an initial understanding of
my employees motives, was this mere curiosity, boredom in current role or a true
growth seeking situation. I create a safe space where we level set on her goal
to be a manager, I gave insights into the role by sharing a day in the life of a
manager, the rewards, opportunities and challenges and then asked questions if
this met their expectations of what management was like.

The next step is to look at the realities and opportunities, we identified
opportunities on the team where she could lead a few team members acting in the
managerial capacity of setting direction, coaching team mates, reporting
progress to leadership on deliverables. Luckily we had a group of interns and
junior employees and a short term project we could carve out.

The IC took the opportunity led the delivery of the 4 month project acting as
the team manager and at the end of the project we gathered feedback from the
team she led, we worked together to evaluate her experience, the anonymized
feedback and growth areas. She decided at that point that she was not ready to
relinquish her technical acumen and would like to stay an IC.

For the record, I have also followed the same approach and have had successful
IC to Manager conversions.

Anonymous · Answer

As part of my role, I continuously evaluate team members on key attributes such
as working effectively in ambiguous environments, domain and technical
knowledge, ownership, bias for action, and team collaboration. While many of
these align with their current job requirements, an engineer consistently
excelling in these areas and contributing beyond their immediate scope is a
strong indicator they are ready for the next level.
Once I identify such an engineer, I collaborate with them to expand their
responsibilities. For example, I assign them as the lead for a project where
they can create a project plan, unblock teammates, remove blockers, and enable
the team to work efficiently. Additionally, I ask them to tackle a persistent
engineering problem, allowing them to expand their influence and showcase
strategic problem-solving.
To further assess their readiness, I give them a project that requires
cross-team collaboration to evaluate their ability to work across functions and
manage stakeholders effectively. Throughout this process, I gather data, monitor
their progress, and document their achievements. The final step involves
compiling these insights and recommending them for promotion based on
demonstrated impact and readiness.

Anonymous · Answer

Yes, i coached an engineer to progress into a manager role with an ownership of
delivery responsibility for an entire customer account and managing 3 teams.
This progression happened in a course of 3 years. This was during the time when
I was leading embedded sw organisation, and while building the time I hired this
senior engineer.
He showed good promise and transitioned into top performer with good hold on
technology, communication skills and mentoring and helping others. We identified
dealing with ambiguity as one of the improvement ares and he systematically
addressed that. Cleint communication was next identified target area and he
improved on that too.
To help him get better, i provided his opportunities at project work, connected
him to mentors and also suggested trainings that he can leverage.
Based on his interest to lead a team, we identified team management as learning
focus area.
I started him with a small team of 3 memeber s, gave him autonomy to lead and
drive his charter interacting with his team, but with regular check-in to assess
how he is doing.
This way he made good use of opportunities provided to him and grew in his
cadre. At each growth level, we identified opportunities to improve on and
facilitating him with various support parameters including regular feedback
mechanism and course correction I was happy to grow a senior engineer to a
client account manager

Have you ever been responsible for leading an engineer into a management role? If so, could you tell me about that?

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