The Management Skill Nobody Talks About

IME the gap in management between ICs is accountability. It's easy to say you are sorry, or say things won't happen again but good management, and what I strive to do is hold myself accountable.

To me, that means 1. To identify the issue that occurred (especially when you caused it), and much more importantly, 2. Put systems into place that prevent it from happening again.

Employees can feel very clearly when a manager lacks accountability and as part of mid and especially high level management (if your goal is actually improving both output and quality of people's lives) to not just say you did something wrong, but actually put your skin in the game ensuring what happened will not happen again (usually it means being better at saying no or aggressively managing prioritization rather than heaping additional tasks on people).

> I recently read “Good Inside” by Dr. Becky Kennedy, a parenting book that completely changed how I think about this. She talks about how the most important parenting skill isn’t being perfect — it’s repair.

Love this book! Just read it. Must read for parents, IMO.

Someone posted a link on HN years ago to a set of google docs titled the "Mochary Method", which covers all sorts of management skills just like this. I have it bookmarked as it's the only set of notes I've seen which talks about this stuff in a very human way that makes sense to me (as a non-manager).

Here's the doc for responding to mistakes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AqBGwJ2gMQCrx5hK8q-u7wP0...

And here's a video with Matt talking about it in a little more detail: https://www.loom.com/share/651f369c763f4377a146657e1362c780

It's a very similar approach to the linked article although it goes slightly further in advocating "rewind and redo" where possible.

EDIT - The full "curriculum" is here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/18FiJbYn53fTtPmphfdCKT2TM...

Implementers are not babies and managers are not our mothers.

I think the management skill nobody talks about is how managers should realize they are part of a team and their focus should be on whatever the team's goal is, not in finding the perfect way to apologize. As the article says: "Your job is to ship working software that adds real value to users, to help your team grow, and to create an environment where people can do their best work."

I couldn't give a rat's ass if a manager doesn't apologize to me in a way that makes my eyes water, admitting his humanity in the process, if that manager doesn't insist on making the same mistake and getting in my way all the time.

As a former teacher / coach this is definitely the approach I took to build strong relationships with kids. Too often such relationships are all about "I'm the infallible leader...you are the flawed pupils" and that doesn't support really connecting and understanding their unique needs.

In any situation, I've always believed it is better to let people we're all human and it's ok to take risks and make mistakes.

I think this goes for Engineers as well. In fact, I say the biggest skill I want from a SENIOR developer regardless of years of experience is humility. Someone who "cannot do wrong" and is a toxic about it will poison the rest of the team with their toxicity. But the seniors who are more open to feedback even from Junior developers, those are the ones everyone else follows to hell and back because they're there with you through it all so you're there with them through it all too.

We are all humans, not robots. Heck, even the LLMs mess up.

I think the best skill is protection from executives. My best manager would tell the executives 'no' for ridiculous requests like cutting deadlines last minute or feature requests that didn't make sense. He also talked me up after an acquisition and I never ended up getting cut.

He was also close to retirement and didn't care about moving up the ladder. Many bad managers do and will sacrifice you and the rest of the team to make themselves look better.

I think the problem is that there's a difference between a good manager and a manager who keeps their job.

> The ~~Management~~ Skill Nobody Talks About.

Getting on with people long term is often about making them feeling acknowledged and being clear about what makes them valued.

The real trick to 'repair' is not to make hollow promises. Managers can be perceived as failing when an external event happens and they haven't planned for it, or they bet against it happening. This can kick off a whole chain of events, including pushing team members into crunch time or 'impossible positions'. Its rare that you can stop the external event or a similar one from happening, so promising it won't is hollow.

The next hollow promise commonly made is 'when it happens I won't let X happen [to you]'. The problem here is often that you probably will. In two ways: either X happening is clear in hindsight but not with foresight, so you'll probably make similar decisions again; or, the team member ending up in an unhappy situation is the best of a bad bunch of options.

I've had to place people in positions where they had insufficient support and excessive demands. Sometimes I knew this going in, and sometimes I did not.

You also have to be careful about passing the buck - if you're the manager you need to be clear with yourself about what your job is and whose issue any given problem actually is. Do you help your team interact with third parties, or do third parties interact with your team through you? How much are you supposed to represent your teams needs to management (e.g. pushback) vs how much are you supposed to represent your management's desires to the team (e.g. pushdown).

If you are caught passing the buck to shirk responsibility by your reports or by management you will lose a lot of trust and respect very quickly. You can always pushback or pushdown harder to appear 'good' to one party, but at some extreme that is going to lose you your job. Its your choice how to play this - so own the choice.

People love to talk about management skills and how things should be, but in my experience the autonomy to have that freedom is greatly lost upon the manager. At every level of management you'll be barking down orders as a transitory and the main difference is how you do or do not get buy-in from your reports - and often it is next to impossible to gain that buy-in (more work! longer hours! emergency pragmatic fix for an administrative problem!), which is why you're the one presenting the task.

The title is misleading.

It's not about management skills.

It's also impolite to use "nobody" in it.

I have lived a life where I have to constantly be taking personal inventory, and when wrong, promptly admit it.

I think that helped make me a decent manager. At least, my employees seemed to think so.

But I could be wrong.