I was recently asked: “What mentoring techniques have you used to help engineers make the move into management?”  Great question!

While there are many tools that can be used here, I think it’s important to start with some key factors in making this jump:

1. Engineers thrive on building things and the resulting sense of accomplishment when it’s built.
2. To improve yourself, there must be an awareness of the improvement area.

Starting with the first point, I’ve seen (and personally experienced) a sense of floundering when engineers are asked to manage others.  Being used to writing code all day they often feel like they aren’t accomplishing anything day after day.  As far as I can tell, there is no way around this and represents the first half of the chasm.  Tool #1, Patience.  We must remind our manager in training that what they are experiencing is perfectly normal and that things take time.  Additionally remind them that the sense of accomplishment will return if they are willing to be patient. In John Baldoni’s book, Lead by Example, an entire lesson (#7) is devoted to this topic alone.  Tool #2, Communicate…then communicate some more.  In the realm of engineering it is common practice to communicate things only once and expect that they are understood, in reality this is rarely the case.  Give people direction, set clear expectations, talk about team goals, discuss the vision of the company…rinse and repeat.  Your team must understand what you expect from them and start including these expectations in their decision making process, this takes time and repetition.  Tool #3, Watch for changes.  As our management in training begins to use the first two tools, have them watch for changes in behavior on the team, however subtle, that may be a result of their leadership.  This tool is the preface to regaining that sense of accomplishment.  As the team begins to respond to our manager in training’s leadership there will be changes to team dynamics.  These changes may be positive or negative depending on the many factors, but awareness of the change is important.  The ability to detect changes in the team based on decisions made by our manager in training represents the second half of the chasm.

On the second point, we need to instill in our manager in training (and remind ourselves) that having an awareness of an improvement area is the first step in making changes.  For our manager in training to use the tools above, they must be able to see how certain aspects of their experience, education, personality and management style impacts what they do.  It is the job of the mentor to make them aware of this. (albeit tactfully)  If there is no awareness, there is unlikely to be improvement.

This is far from a complete list but instead represents some of the basics. I hope that it’s helpful and, as always, I welcome your comments.