My READ.ME

Context

This is a document I share with everyone in our Engineering team at Medenterprises. I am sharing this here for the benefit of our future Engineering team members. I hope that this can give you a bit more feel for what working with me is like.

Why a READ.ME document?

If you reading this it probably means we have recently started working together, or we are about to start. This doc is a quick introduction to help you understand who I am, how I work, and what to expect from me. It should not replace our one-on-one time.

My goal is to ensure my behaviour matches this document, so it would be a great help if you let me know if it doesn’t match. This document is a living breathing thing and likely incomplete. I update it frequently.
Having said that, I have never experienced having myself as a manager or a colleague so please feel free to suggest changes to this document as we go.

This document was inspired by Martin’s readme, Molly’s document, Rands’ approach, and many more.

My role

I am here to make sure our engineering group is successful, effective, happy, and working on the things that are most important to help our customers, improve our product, and improve our business.

More granularly:

• I build our engineering teams — this means hiring engineers, promoting our engineering culture outside, and exploring what skills we need now and what skills we might need in the future.
• I also make sure we are aligned with other parts of our business on our direction. So that we build the right product and we do it right.
• I provide the context so that our engineering teams can be autonomous and confident to make decisions.
• I facilitate co-creation of great engineering culture.

My job is not to tell you exactly what to do and how to do it. It is also not to be the “official decision maker” for our teams. Yes, I am accountable for the success of our engineering group but it does not mean I should be the bottleneck for our decisions.

Feedback

I am here to help you and our teams succeed but I can’t do that if I’m not aware of areas I’m failing you in. If you have feedback for me, please give it as soon as you can. It could be something you liked and would like to see more of, something you thought I could do better, something you thought I totally screwed up, or something that doesn’t fit in any of these categories. Even if you think it might not be the case, I do want to hear it. And if you think I don’t want to hear it, I’d love to hear why you feel that way.

If you can give me this feedback face-to-face (Teams/Zoom or in person), that’s my preference. If you’re only comfortable kicking off a discussion with an email or a Teams/Slack message, I would rather you do that than not bring it up at all.

If you’re not comfortable giving me some feedback yourself, I’d love for you to give it to someone above me in the management chain so they can anonymously relay it to me.

My often reaction to feedback is saying “thank you” and not adding anything else. This is my way to avoid a defensive reaction (I have a tendency to do it). I will take your feedback and will reflect on it and decide how I want to respond to it. I may ask you some clarifying questions to better understand your feedback. I can’t promise I will always improve or act on every piece of feedback I receive, but I can promise I will actively listen and reflect on it.

Once every 3–4 months I will set up an anonymous survey to foster feedback. This is a way for me to make sure I create space for regular feedback. You should not wait for this survey to give me feedback, though.

Similarly, if you have feedback for a team member or colleague, I encourage you to give it to them directly; if you’re not comfortable doing so, let’s chat and I can either get the feedback to them or we can figure out a way to deliver it that makes you comfortable.

Trust

I trust you by default. You don’t have to feel like you need to earn my trust. If because of any reason I lose my trust in you, I will let you know as soon as I can, and we will come up with a plan to improve that.

I assume that You’re very good at your job. You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t. If it feels like I’m questioning you it’s because I’m either: a) Trying to gather context. Or b) Trying to be a sounding board and a rubber duck.

I hope that you can feel safe debating with me. I find that ideas improve by being examined from all angles. If it sounds like I’m disagreeing I’m most likely just playing devil’s advocate. This does rely on us being able to have a safe debate.

I trust that you can make decisions on your own and with your team. If there is a case where you need my opinion, advice or decision, please ask me directly. Otherwise, I will assume that you got it.

One-on-ones

We will have our one-on-one at least fortnightly for 45 minutes. There might be times when we need more time or meet more frequently — let me know if you feel like that’s what we need.

One-on-ones are your time. I will probably have some things to discuss with you, but this is first and foremost your opportunity to let me know how you’re doing, what you need, what you wish could be different, how you feel about our team and your teammates, what your career goals are… etc.

This time is more effective if you have some topics to talk about ready before the meeting. Feel free to send me a vague agenda ahead of time, this way I can be better prepared. But don’t worry if your agenda is empty, we will find some topics to talk about or we can finish early.

Heard a rumour? Need clarification on something? You get blocked? I’d love to hear it as soon as possible. Give me a call, or send me a message, we don’t need to wait for our next scheduled one-on-one.

Performance

I will give you feedback on how you’re doing continuously, including in our one-on-ones. If I’m worried about your performance, I will let you know. My goal is for you to never be unsure about how you’re performing (and how I think you’re performing). If you ever feel unsure about either of these things, please let me know.

My schedule

My default working hours are between 8:30 am and 5pm NZT, with a lunch break around noon. Sometimes I may have odd periods when I am not available during the day — I will block them out on my calendar.

My calendar is public so feel free to look around. From time to time, and it should be very rare, I may have some meetings that have some confidential content, and these meeting would be market as private in my calendar and you wouldn’t see the content of it.

Feel free to put something in my calendar, don’t feel like you need to ask first. Is my calendar full? Send me a message and I’ll very likely be able to move something around.

Communication

I will get a sense of your normal working hours as we begin working together, and I will make a strong effort not to message you outside of these hours.

I treat MS Teams/Slack as asynchronous communication methods, and I don’t expect you to answer straight away. In case something is truly urgent I will indicate it at the beginning of my message. This should happen extremely rarely.

Similarly, if you email or message me outside of my working hours, I may not respond quickly. I do try to keep up with notifications in case there’s anything urgent, but if I read a message and it’s non-urgent, I may leave it until the next working day. Therefore, if your message is urgent, please indicate it in your message. If something is urgent and important it may be the best to call me on my phone.

When I ask you to do something that feels poorly defined you should ask me for both clarification and a call on importance. I might still be brainstorming. These questions can save everyone a lot of time.

I am not a native speaker and I make language mistakes. If something does not sound right to you, ask for clarification. I am always keen to improve my English skills and I encourage you to call out my mistakes — this will help me learn and improve.

Empowerment

I believe in co-creation and that you already have most of the answers (if not all). This means that I may not be making decisions. This may be me leaving space for you (or for our teams) to reflect, collaborate, and take ownership. There might be times when you want me to make a direct decision or share my opinion. If that’s the case and you are not getting it please ask for it directly.

From time to time I can make suggestions and offer ideas. Treat them exactly as suggestions and ideas, you don’t have to use them. I will ask you what actions you want to take and will keep you accountable for them. Sometimes I may ask you to do something — I will do it directly. If this request is poorly defined you should ask me for clarification.

About me

I am ENFJ.

I like to think and reflect. This may render me quiet and disengaged in meetings. That’s rarely the case. It probably means that I am processing the information. If I have an idea and/or disagree I will speak up. I may also ask for some time to think before I give my answer.

I make mistakes. I am happy to admit to them and say that I am sorry. Sometimes I may not be aware of my mistake. Feel free to let me know if you see my mistake. This is sometimes the only way for me to learn and improve.

I have blind spots. If you suspect that I am unconsciously biased, let me know. This will help me make better decisions and actions. If I am aware of my bias, I will call it out to make it clear.

I used to be an agile coach, and a lot of my ideas and experiences come from the agile movement. However, I am not religious about agile, as long as we find ways to continuously improve and experiment.

I like to think that I have a growth mindset. You will often find me saying “I can not do it…YET”. I believe that everything can be learned, it does not mean it would be easy though.

I publish my thoughts outside of work. Here is my blog. Here is my podcast. Here is my LinkedIn. I am not expecting you to follow any of those.

I struggle with, and constantly try to improve:

• Small talk
• English grammar and typos
• Being distracted by my phone
• Being defensive
• Conversations about money

Triggers for me are:

• Meetings invitations without purpose and outcomes.
• Gossips.
• Conversations when we talk about them and us.
• Stating opinions as facts.

Outside of work I spend most of my time on my bike or tasting wine.