How do you balance being hands-on with ensuring your team members have the autonomy they need to grow and develop?

Question

Anonymous · Accepted Answer

I consider this as a multiple part question, a) When to delegate b) Who to
delegate c) Who has the eventual accountability of the work d) How do we track
and measure success.

I determine the tasks where either I have potential to become bottleneck, single
point of failure, or does not require specific skills that only I have, or is
not a hot potato task, and can be done by someone who has better skills to me,
or can be a learning opportunity for someone.

Then I identify potential candidates who has the skill, or benefit from
developing the skill, or would benefit from opportunity to show growth signals.

I talk to them and discuss if they would be interested in the opportunity. If
they agree, we align on the expectations, anything where I can help them with
coaching or resourcing.

Eventually as I own the task I have the overall accountability through
delegation. We agree on periodic syncs to ensure we can identify any risks and
help unblock.

Let me give an example, there was an ask from the compliance team where they
needed all launches to be certified by Org leader (that is me) before they would
review it. Their objective was to filter asks going to them and have right
amount of details. I found this to be a great opportunity for two of my direct
report manager to have to have org level impact and show cross team leadership.

I worked with them and guided them to work with compliance leadership to come up
with review checklist and template. They would form a rotation and work with
engineers to collect the upcoming launches, prepare the review doc, do an
initial review and iterations with the engineers, and once satisfied come to me
for a final review and stamping.

This became a great template for other orgs to follow as well.

Anonymous · Answer

1. Do I have the skills to do it and know how to do it? If yes, then I will
consider if this task needs to be done repeatedly? If yes, then I would delegate
it to a team member who I think has the skills to do it so that they get
familiar with the task and can do it next time without supervision. I would also
consider my load while deciding to delegate or not.
2. If there is a task for which only I have the skill but that task is not
urgent then I will delegate it to a team member giving them resources and  time
to learn the skills needed and complete the task. If it is urgent then I will do
it but plan to upskill a team for future.
3. If I believe a task can be done better by a team member then I would prefer
to delegate.
4. I will delegate a task if that task is a routine task and can be distributed
to a group of team members making sure one person does not become a bottleneck.

Anonymous · Answer

I received the strong dissatisfaction from our business parter expressing strong
dissatisfaction with our system's performance of anomaly detection system.  They
were receiving 4-5 high severity ticket monthly out of which 60% being false
positive.   I took three key steps to resolve this situation
1. Active listening and Investigation
- I immediately scheduled a meeting with the concerned stakeholders to
understand their frustration.
- Worked with my team to conduct a thorough root cause analysis.
- Identify 3 primary technical issues.
a.  Aggressive threshold prioritising speed over accuracy
b.  System not accounting for planned processor maintenance windows
c.  Low transaction volume leading to statistical anomalies

2. Stakeholder Engagement
- Had a 1:1 discussion with the client leadership team
Discovered their core pain points.
- High severity ticket disrupting their team's work-life balance
- Total ticket count negatively impacting their team's performance metrics

3. Solution development and Implementation :  I proposed a balanced solution
that address both team's need
Technical improvements
- Incorporated planned outage signals into the detection algorithm
- Adjusted thresholds specifically for low volume processors
- Set a goal to reduce false positive by 50%
Business solution
- Implemented the dual sev system for different threashold levels
- Helped them build a case for excluding low sev monitoring tickets from their
metrics.
The outcome was successful by reducing false postive by 50%

Anonymous · Answer

I do maintain the balanced approach between hands on leadership and delegation.
 I believe strategic delegation is crucial for two primary reason. 1. It enable
me to scale my impact across the organisation. 2. It creates growth
opportunities for my team member.
I do use delegation opportunities to reduce single point of failures.
To give you an example.  I do QBR with our leadership including our tech VP.
My strategic involvement in this is I personally drive critical aspects that
require senior leadership perspective, such as defining the QBR template and
executive summary,  I maintain oversight of key reliability metrics and
architectural decisions,  I ensure final quality through personal review of
deliverables
I delegate based on development opportunities based on team members strength and
development opportunities,
 * Project management aspects like timeline tracking and cross-team coordination
   are handled by our TPM
 * Individual goal updates are owned by respective managers, promoting
   accountability
 * Technical metrics automation is assigned to senior engineers, which also
   enables them to identify architectural improvement opportunities

I do still own the final outcome and remain accessible to provide support and
remove blockers.

Anonymous · Answer

Delegating a task as an EM is a very important skill as it builds confidence in
team and help them learn new skills . Below mentioned framwrork I use to
delegate task : 
1. Understand the task its impact and its effort. 
  a. If the task can act as a stepping stone for some one will assign hem the
task. 
  b. If the task is a repeatable task with medium impact and low effort I will
assign this to a junior developer with the ownership and clearly define what
needs to be done. 
  c. If the task is is very urgent very impacting and if I have the skill and
other are busy with other high priority task then I will do it and share the
learning and feedback with the team , else I will assign it to a senior
developer d. if a task is low impacting and not urgent then will add it in
backlog
e. If that task is very critical and will require a lot of time then will
discuss with business and will stop another task and distribute it with the
team 
f. Always make sure that thing provides learning and uplevel the skill set for
the team.

For Example : 
Situation: Our service availability was low and we need to fix it urgently.
Task : we need to identify the area of improvment reason for down time , 500
error , 400 error  , latencies.
Action : 
1. When I categorized this task this was a high priority and impacting task.
2. I assigned this task to an entry level SDE-3 who wanted to move in lead
direction.
3. I set the clear objecting and outcome of this task and asked him to come with
a plan and resouces required.
4. I helped him out to set the milestone and success of this task
5. He created a etrics and with the help of an SDE-2 who wanted to work on tech
product and SDE-1 who had a now about the system we crated a small task fource
that tech lead was leading and I was providing the coaching.
Result : 
1. Tech lead learnied how to own and deliver the product . 
2. Stake holder received weekely communication about the metricies number of 500
bug fixed.
3 .Task force got to know various area of code.
4. And we idenitifed some tech debts that were not immediate actionble but need
to solve in long run.

Anonymous · Answer

I would consider if this task can be stepping stone for someone to grow into a
role, this task would be assigned to them.
If this work is impactful and has visiblity to Executives I would assign it to
Senior member who can be owner and i have handsoff approach.
If this is a repeatable with less complexity task I would assign it to a Junior
Engineer for them to take care of automation.
I would communicate the reasons of delegation and set clear expectations for the
task completion.
For all the tasks I would gauge the current skills of the candidate and provide
coaching mentoring  and skill development for them to handle the task.
I would share an example where there was a high impact feature to be built. I
engaged a staff engineer for Scoping and architectual design and engaged juniors
for coding tasks.The junior members were provided coaching on the translation of
architectural design to Service definition.

Anonymous · Answer

I would consider if this task can be stepping stone for someone to grow into a
role, this task would be assigned to them.
If this work is impactful and has visiblity to Executives I would assign it to
Senior member who can be owner and i have handsoff approach.
If this is a repeatable with less complexity task I would assign it to a Junior
Engineer for them to take care of automation.
I would communicate the reasons of delegation and set clear expectations for the
task completion.
For all the tasks I would gauge the current skills of the candidate and provide
coaching mentoring  and skill development for them to handle the task.
I would share an example where there was a high impact feature to be built. I
engaged a staff engineer for Scoping and architectual design and engaged juniors
for coding tasks.

Anonymous · Answer

I would consider if this task can be stepping stone for someone to grow into a
role, this task would be assigned to them.
If this work is impactful and has visiblity to Executives I would assign it to
Senior member who can be owner and i have handsoff approach.
If this is a repeatable with less complexity task I would assign it to a Junior
Engineer for them to take care of automation.
I would communicate the reasons of delegation and set clear expectations for the
task completion.
For all the tasks I would gauge the current skills of the candidate and provide
coaching mentoring  and skill development for them to handle the task.

Anonymous · Answer

I treat delegation as more than just distributing tasks — it’s about assigning
ownership with clarity, support, and accountability
1. Align the right person to the right problem

2. PROVIDE CLARITY — NOT MICROMANAGEMENT

3. ENABLE WITH SUPPORT & CHECKPOINTS

Anonymous · Answer

I do maintain the balanced approach between hands on leadership and delegation.
 I believe strategic delegation is crucial for two primary reason. 1. It enable
me to scale my impact across the organisation. 2. It creates growth
opportunities for my team member.   Another reason, sometime I keep in mind is
reducing single point of failures.   May be I can give you an example.  We do
QBR with our leadership.  My strategic involvement in this is 1. I personally
drive critical aspects that require leadership perspective, such a defining QBR
template and executive summary.    2. I maintain oversight on key  metrics and
architecture decisions.  3. I ensure final quality through personal review of
deliverables.    Some of the things which I delegate are 1. Project management
aspects, like time line tracking and cross team coordiantion are handled by our
TPM,  Individual goal updates owned by respective managers, promoting
accoutnablity,  Technical metrics automation is assinged ot Senior engineers,
which also enable them to identify architectural improvement opportunties.  To
ensure success of deletaging, I clearly define expectaiont and outcome upfront,
Remain accessible for guidance which avoiding micromanagement, Regualar
check-ins to provide support and remove blockers, Maintain final accountability
for all delverivables.

Anonymous · Answer

In my role - my responsibilities are more on strategic initiatives. I do see
delegation as 1. What can help me to scale and 2. Is this a good opportunity for
any of my directs in the team.  Some time it is the whole task and sometime it
may be subtasks with in task.   To give you an example, for QBRs, I was involved
along with my leads to define and freeze the template upfront. After that I have
delegated specific responsibilities.  I do own the executive summary but
publishing working backward  timeline, strengthening the template, follow ups on
highlights/lowlights from external teams, I have delegated to TPM in my team.
 Goal updates are coming from each of the manager owning that particular goal.
  In QBR template, I have kept important metrics to track.  This include,
resiliency score of each services, number of outages in the quarter, impact on
orders, I have delighted that too one of the Sr. Engineer in my team to automate
this information with the intention of they also look into opportunities to do
architecture fixes in the system.   Before the leadership review, I still own
the final proof reading and fixes in the doc.

Anonymous · Answer

I would consider if this task can be stepping stone for someone to grow into a
role, this task would be assigned to them.
If this work is impactful and has visiblity to Executives I would assign it to
Senior member who can be owner and i have handsoff approach.
If this is a repeatable with less complexity task I would assign it to a Junior
Engineer for them to take care of automation.

Anonymous · Answer

Delegation is a very important skill. As it shows your team members that you
struct them and is genuinely interested in their growth
urgency and importance - I evaluate the urgency of the task and the impact. If
the task is a time bound task which has signification impact on the customer
then I tend to do it myself to not put the team member on the spot. complexity -
If the complexity is high I oversee the task myself. I assess the potential risk
of delaying the task to the business and consider the impact on stakeholders
before making a decision. expertise and skill level - if the task maps with the
skills of the individual I like to delegate to promote development collaboration
- delegation can empower team towards autonomy which is good for developing
leaders
e.g.
I delegated running weekly RCA call for the platform team to the Architect in my
group
 * Expertise - In 2 quarters time, architect has build good knowledge about the
   overall system
 * Collaboration - Architect has run major cross team projects and showcased
   skills needed to collaborate with respect with other teams
 * Attention to detail - Architect was part of the meeting for 3 quarters and
   knew how to drive the post mortem meetings
 * Reverse shadow and feedback - I gave the opportunity to the architect to run
   the RCA call and did reverse shadow and provided feedback later.
 * Expectation setting - Setting up the right expectations for running the call
   and identification of the long term tech items for roadmap,
 * Review process - setup a biweekly cadence with architect to review this

Anonymous · Answer

Yes, I am an hands on engineering manager
- It all depends on the task and how open ended it is plus which engineers I
have eg
If task is open ended all my senior, staff engineers are busy, I will get
 clarity on prioritisation eg whats the priority based on eg what benefit it
will have? more revenue, customer satisfaction, decreased tech debt etc.
Accordingly I will prioritise.
If it requires immediate prioritisation and I cant get my senior folks in this,
but I see that this problem can challenge a junior dev, I will try to create
clarity for them and assign it to them post clarity.
If none can be done, I will negotiate with senior leadership on prioritisation
and compare with all the other items on my teams plate. I will also check if
somebody wants to challenge themselves and volunteer for this problem.

Anonymous · Answer

In my role - my responsibilities are more on strategic initiatives. I do see
delegation as 1. What can help me to scale and 2. Is this a good opportunity for
any of my directs in the team.  Some time it is the whole task and sometime it
may be subtasks with in task.   To give you an example, for QBRs, I have
delegated specific responsibilities.  I do own the executive summary but
publishing working backward  timeline, strengthening the template, follow ups, I
have delegated to TPM in my team.  I do have specific sections delegated to each
of the manager in my team.  P0 business metrics I have delegated to another TPM.
 This help giving everyone an accomplishment and also reduce the load and single
point of failures.

Anonymous · Answer

In my role - my responsibilities are more on strategic initiatives. I do see
delegation as 1. What can help me to scale and 2. Is this a good opportunity for
any of my directs in the team.  Some time it is the whole task and sometime it
may be subtasks with in task.   To give you an example, for QBRs, I have
delegated the specific section to each manager

How do you balance being hands-on with ensuring your team members have the autonomy they need to grow and develop?

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