Lean into Management
There's absolutely only one reason why I decided to really lean into line management, it was to learn how to really listen. Ofcourse you can listen for instructions, and listen for all sorts; but to really listen in the true sense of active listening is the genius of management. My hope is just maybe I could change someone's life by listening to them. Hopefully I get to master this skill quicker.
In the heart of management is the art of really listening. Being someone who is excited about tech and my excitement can get me to talk a lot, for me to lean into management - is to shut my mouth and open my ears and my ears.
My goal is to really get to know people on a personal level first as humans and on a professional level as developers, designers or product managers.
Managees is a term to refer to persons' that a manager manages.
On my dev team, there are the cool managees and the not-so-cool managees.
The cool ones are self motivated, they come at you with questions, plenty questions. They want to know why, how and what. They talk...
The not-so-cool ones (for lack of a better label) are extremely apathetic. Speaking to my manager about it, he said "they could literally remain juniors all their life and not care". They've got zero motivation. Now they can do their assigned work well at their level, but that is it. Don't expect any initiative. Most importantly it doesn't seem like they like to talk... and I really want to listen (I'll write a below about listening to the silence)
When you're a handed a team member to manage, whom other manages aren't excited to have... what do you really do with that one. It feels worse than an arranged blind date gone bad.
If I am the Boss of you, why do I feel more worried about my capabilities? Especially my capacity to listen, which you've stolen because you ain't going to talk. I feel handicapped in this relationship.
Being given someone to manage, that other managers are not so excited about is a good thing. Because if I do a bad job, they would blame it on him/ his personality/ his etcs... I could pretty much get off the hook by saying that guy is not quite cooperating like the others.
Much of my bias come from the previous managers who have managed him. They've told me things they've tried, to get him motivated, opportunities they've given, etc and it all didn't work and this is his 3rd year of being a junior. They would have loved to promote this guy, but he is unpromotable! Because at higher levels soft skills become more important that technical skills.
These managers are gentlemen I've come to respect, they've got more years of experience above and beyond me... so it is quite disheartening hearing all woefully story about this person.
Having being given these updates, it had unknowingly influenced the way I see him. It was almost like I was given this historic filter to see this dude through and it was all grim and dark.
My first strategy was being aware of my own bias, injected bias from feedback from other managers. I was going to take their words for it, it would serve as something I could test.
I'm going to start on a clean slate.
Everyone has got a perculiar history. And I absolutely found it truly fascinating to investigate this complete lack of motivation. I havent met anyone so apathetic to being social and communicating. And this is beyond being an introvert. He would be the introvert's introvert.
This genuinely perked my interest! I really did want to know and understand. Probably he fell off from Jupiter, and there's a way life is lived there.
First observation, not everyone is well schooled in the construction and utilization of words to express their thought. They might have adopted that process to pass through school and probably get a job; they've not imbibed the process into their lives.
Words are not the only means of expressions. Silence is.
Listen to the silence, and how it is punctuated.
The most important part of listening to the silence is being patient with yourself and knowing you haven't done/ aren't doing anything wrong. New processes like this can be hard. That voice in your head either wants to get done with the conversation, or you're so bothered about what to say next to salvage this drowning deadly silence.
Pause. Pause. Pause.
It is ok. Silence is the Speech. Learn this new language.
In the objective setting for the business year period, we started with setting a couple of objectives we'll like to see achieved for the year, however, it was to drill down and focus on just one