Leadership

Conflicts are healthy Did the title of this section, set off alarm bells in your head? Maybe it depends on your experience with conflicts. In the early days of my career, I thought conflicts were unhealthy and I used to get into conflicts a lot because as an engineer, I had my opinion on solving a problem a certain way. And obviously my way was the best way because I had done my reading and compared other solutions and made my decision based on that research....

Background I grew up as a third culture kid, born in India and raised in the United Arab Emirates. At a very early age, I had encounters with some racist kids often while in a school bus in the lane next to mine. This altered my perception of myself, created an inferiority complex when compared to the instigators of the racist incident, and I felt helpless and trapped. The problem in the UAE was not a lack of diversity....

Starting as an engineering manager As an engineering manager you already have a lot of responsibilities. At an early stage in your engineering manager career, you could even feel overwhelmed by the amount of things you have to know. Some of them include Mentoring and coaching your direct reports who are individual contributors Setting strategic objectives for the team and the individuals Performance management - performance improvement programs Recruiting the right engineers for your team, squad and organisation Preparing promotion packs for your engineers Liaising with the people team to ensure benefits and compensation are attractive enough for bringing in new talent Working with Product and Peers to ensure delivery is smooth and dependencies are communicated and coordinated It doesn’t end there and the list goes on....

Featured image: Photo of Group of Men Wearing Assorted Scarves Holding Sticks What is culture? You are probably tired of seeing this word mentioned in countless job descriptions and conversations in and outside your organisation. “That’s not the culture here.” Or “that’s our culture”. Or “we have a transparent culture”. Quite often this is just an abuse of the term culture. But because it is popular, it makes those making the claims feel like they work at a great organisation....

Featured image: Photo by RODNAE Productions from Pexels Preamble “Psychological safety is the belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns or mistakes and that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking” - Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams by Amy Edmondson, 1999. That is an impressive definition and one that is easy to understand by anyone who reads it....