Effective delegation is crucial for engineering managers to empower their teams and focus on strategic tasks.
Why it matters: Delegation allows managers to optimize their workload and fosters team growth, leading to a more efficient and skilled engineering team.
Three key steps that can make you an effective delegator:
Prioritize: Identify non-essential, time-consuming tasks. Separate routine tasks from strategic ones. Hold onto the tasks that require close managerial oversight.
Empower: Delegate tasks that offer development opportunities. Give your engineers the space to learn and make mistakes, and support them either directly or with the aid of a peer to successfully complete a task.
Set expectations: Be explicit in a task’s requirements. Touch base with the engineer to ensure they’re on the right track. Close out a task with feedback or acknowledgement of a job well done.
The bottom line: Delegating is tough and feels unnatural, but committing time and energy to the practice will set you apart as a skilled manager. Bon courage
SOMETHING EXTRA:
🤖 Generative AI won’t replace building an engineering team. Junior engineers bring benefits to a team that AI-generated code simply can't match.
Stack Overflow still has an excellent blog, even if it’s less relevant for coding help these days.
Charity Majors’ recent post on the topic is absolutely worth a read.
📺 This is some high quality television for engineers. Check out Jason Lengstorf’s most recent Web Dev Challenge episode. You don’t want to miss it.
📚 Want to be a better communicator? Smart Brevity will make you rethink how you approach creating content.
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