You're a new engineering manager. How can you build a strong team?

Ensure you have strong lead engineers. Empower the lead engineers. Ensure everyone is working together with a common goal and future. Where there is conflict in the team try and resolve it. In conflict resolution always focus on the problem not the people. Ensure the team has all the correct tools: people, hardware, software, systems, environment, praise & reward. Have a schedule/budget in-place that the team has bought into. All team members should have a No.2 / DOA. Minimise meetings/attendees. Have out-of-office team-building events. Identify the team, training and development needs. Identify opportunities. / Think outside the box. Always have face-to-face communication. Have clear job/role descriptions. Focus on high-quality

By always maintaining clear communication channels and being open to team recommendations, setting clear, measurable goals and deliverables of the project, tracking progress using KPIs, SMART, and encouraging the team to be proactive and preventive, allowing questions, being rewarding and showing appreciation to your team

Get most out of your team not by building org charts, then fitting people in them. Build people, then org charts around them.

Few high level things 1. Hire attitude, coach skills 2. Trust (but also verify from time to time) 3. Promote culture of continuous learning and upskilling. 4. Avoid introducing pure managerial layers unless critical for the team's welfare - hire managers who were once hands on. 5. Own failures and credit success.

Creo que es muy importante respaldar la unificación de la visión del equipo, es esencial para promover la cohesión y el rendimiento en conjunto de un verdadero equipo. Establecer una visión clara y compartida, proporcionando una dirección y propósito, permiten a los miembros del equipo alinearse hacia metas comunes. Este enfoque contribuye a una mayor motivación y a un seguimiento más efectivo del progreso.

As a manager, it is important to establish an atmosphere where failures are not just tolerated but embraced as avenues for growth and learning. Encouraging your team to take calculated risks and explore opportunities where they can fail safely and gain insights from their mistakes is paramount. In doing so, one fosters trust within their team, as their staff understands that setbacks are not only accepted but also valued as part of the learning process.

Las reuniones 1 a 1 son super importantes para entender en donde estamos parados frente al equipo. No es solo para charlar de la situación laboral, sino también de la personal y como desde nuestro puesto podemos apoyarles en cualquier momento. Además, las relaciones no solo son Manager-Dev sino también entre todos. Utilizar herramientas como las integraciones mensuales o inter mensuales son poderosas para desarrollar confianza entre todos.

Conversas 1:1 são primordiais para estabelecer a confiança. Sempre importante ser transparente, ter feedbacks baseados em fatos e não em situações hipotéticas. Uso a "regra das 24horas" onde uma situação seja boa ou para ser conversada tem que ser tratada em um periodo curto de tempo para que as evidências e fatos estejam frescos e tenha um debate saudável. Importante sempre trazer perguntas ao seu liderado para reflexão e usar isso para criar planos de ação para tais situações.

Earning trust from the team would be one of the high priority "tasks". Communicating with everyone is important to allow staff and oneself: 1) To understand each other in characteristics. 2) To understand each other in each person's expectations. 3) To understand each other in each person's goals in work or even in life(where possible). Depending on the people management style, this could be conducted in a many to one or a one to one setting. A team without trust will have everyone always being suspicious of other's behavior and motives. Productivity and success rate of any projects or work will be diminished.

Trust is the currency of all relationships. Especially when coming to manage a team new if trust and rapport is built then the dividends of that trust will allow you to continue to work and build the team.

At the end of the day, the best thing you can do is find people who you believe to be capable of being experts in their fields, and then let them challenge YOU. It's very true that we don't hire people so we can tell them what to do...we hire people so they can tell US what to do.

As a leader, get to know the people on your team. Spend time with them. What makes them happy? What motivates them? Develop a relationship and trust between you and every person on your team. Then empower them to make decisions by building an environment where failure is not demonized. If something goes wrong, find out why, learn from it and move on. As the agile manifesto says, prioritize individuals and interactions. A team that trusts each other and their leader will be high performing.

It’s helpful to remember that stress is proportional to the delta between Authority and Responsibility… Delegating some of both passes on a portion of ownership and helps build a strong team by empowering them. Delegating just responsibility is what micromanagers do…

You are the new manager which means you have no credibility yet. Learn and embrace your new team and find the great leaders within the team to delegate and empower. Eventually once your leaders are ready to move upward, help them get to the next position and start developing their replacement. Managers don’t just manage their staff for an assignment, you are to develop others for higher roles even to take your place so you can move up also.

A Team contains individual contributors who need to know their responsibilities. Every member in a Team thrives to become a Leader in the near future. Delegating the work based on their expertise will make them feel their responsibility. Handling the work independently will give a sense of accountability and make them feel they grow. Also coordination among the Team will increase.

Fazer a mentoria é um desafio grande, pois com o feedback e condução errada , pode direcionar de forma errônea a carreira de uma pessoa. Sempre funcionou trazer as questões para serem debatidas em conjunto, fazendo com que o mentorado seja protagonista da sua carreira. Costumo compartilhar situações que já vivi e trago para reflexões. Dicas de leituras, treinamento e manter objetivos definidos é essencial para manter o mentorado focado .

Coaching and mentoring are essential in today's professional landscape. I've found the GROW technique to be incredibly effective for coaching, providing a structured approach to guide individuals towards their goals. It's crucial to empower senior team members with coaching skills. Mentoring is now a default expectation and ad a leadsr you should always be mentoring people but also finding a strong mentor for you Moreover, honing the ability to identify potential mentors and pair individuals accordingly is a valuable leadership skill, fostering growth and development within the team.

List out the "Strength" and "Opportunities for improvement" for each of your Team members. Create "Sub-groups" or "Task-Forces" and distribute your team in such a way that each member of your team gets empowered and trained for leadership qualities. The leader of each Task-Force should have the strength aligning with the end goal of the Task-Force. Whereas, Other Team members of that Task-Force should have opportunities of improvement aligning with the end goal. In this way, People will get trained and empowered at the same time while the task will also get completed ON-TIME by the acceptance of accountability by all the members.

You got to have people you can trust in your team, and that takes at least two years of daily experiences, which may be positive or negative. As a manager, you must ensure that the team will have more positives than negative experiences. The ratio must be 80 to 20. Period, simple as that.

The most powerful technique I've been affected by from the perspective of being coached or mentored is being inspired by a person's incredible capabilities. I interpret it with the basic human nature of trying to be like someone you look up to. This way a mentor can impact your professional development by pulling you up to their standards by showing you how it's done, rather than pushing forward by telling you how it should be done, i.e. mentoring by example.

‘Right person for the right job’… absolutely correct and necessary for the success of any job. Success shall not be defined by just measuring how well we delivered the job from programme and cost perspective, but whether we delivered it in a way that kept team’s morale up through the process is extremely important. Team members must feel appreciated so they look forward to working with you, rather than just finishing the task for the sake of finishing it and try to look something else afterwards. A leader needs to appreciate how critical it is to be an inclusive leader, who really knows (and understands) strengths and weaknesses so any gaps are efficiently filled.

One of the best ways to bring a team together is by identifying their individual strengths and empowering them to be the “go to person” for that responsibility. This empowerment, along with their feeling of accomplishment, often leads to a further desire to improve in other areas.

Recognition and reward can be as simple as a public "thank you, job well done". Team efforts needs to be recognised at a public level.

Sometimes the easiest and yet most effective way to recognize and reward is through words - "Good job" on your 1:1, to a Team congrats email or slack sent company wide. As for monetary rewards, my mentor told me: Reward your stars. Don't spread salary raise and bonus around. Reward your stars.

It is paramount to consider a balanced and mainly fair reward system, acknowledging both individual and team achievements. Tailor recognition to each team member's preferences and be transparent about the criteria for rewards. Provide timely and factual feedback, highlighting specific contributions to improve effectiveness. Foster a culture of appreciation and celebrate collectively. Encourage peer-to-peer recognition to create a positive and collaborative environment. Regularly review and adjust the reward system to ensure it aligns with evolving team dynamics and goals. Celebrating team or individual achievements will strengthen motivation, engagement and will create good bonds among teammates and also with the organization.

First before any of these, read the (engineering management) plan and program plan and project or program execution or support strategy if there is one, and read it again, check if it’s clear who is doing what, what is being done in house, what’s been done externally, who is the senior responsible engineer, has engineering authority for design or maintenance been delegated - if so to who. Read first, then meet stakeholders and *listen* if what’s in the plan is actually being followed and if not, why?, lack of resource, lack of skills experience, lack of time, or actually is the plan wrong? What do team, customer, suppliers, regulators think are the technical risks & issues…. are these being resolved? Also, importantly what’s going well?

If you're going to be leading an existing team, be humble and ready to learn from the team. Rushing to make changes might not be the best way. Work together with the team to thoroughly understand the reasons something is being done a particular way before proposing changes or improvements. Also, have frequent 1:1s with the team to build a good rapport with them.

At the risk of going against the grain, I don’t agree with much of this article. An engineering manager doesn’t need to have a ‘vision’ and ‘goals’; they need to create an environment for the team to excel. Start by knowing what is required; so ask questions, listen, ensure there is a plan, know what standard(s) need to be applied and know what evidence needs to be generated. Then stay within your competence and delegated risk thresholds, conform to approved processes, report honestly, challenge assumptions, strive for innovation, communicate regularly, validate evidence, verify the quality of work and document lessons to enable and inform continual improvement. And remember the standard you walk past is the standard you accept.

Satisfied people make better use of their skills and abilities. As an engineering manager it is your responsibility to first informally distribute roles, choose the method of team collaboration, develop a set of shared norms and values, and establish mutual communication this ensures synergy effect.

My favourite way of building high performance teams is by letting people do their job while removing obstacles from them and enabling them to do their best. This is called servant leadership. Of course you should make sure that your team members are actually capable of doing their tasks. Healthy blameless atmosphere is also very important. And don't forget to conduct 1:1 meetings with your team members regularly.