006. Autonomy šŸ‘£

Ā· 407 words Ā· 2 minute read

So lately Iā€™ve been consuming leadership literature the way a Labradour consumesā€¦ wellā€¦ anything. I used to read these kinds of books as an IC but for fun, and I could never compare them to my own experiences because I didnā€™t have any. Now theyā€™re really starting to hit home, and the two booksā€  that have stuck out to me recently have been:

And itā€™s the first one I want to reflect on today, weā€™ll get to the other one next time.

Dan (can I call you Dan?) mentions the three ingredients of motivation are:

  1. Autonomy - the desire to direct our own lives
  2. Mastery - the urge to get better and better at something that matters
  3. Purpose - the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.

An engineering manager has a lot of influence in creating an environment where these three things are maximised for their team and reports, and itā€™s been the first one that I feel like Iā€™ve been tripping up on.

Autonomy to me, in a software team is, given a goal I get to decide how to get there. This means less hands on guidance from the EM (less micro-management if you will). The EM can provide the context and ultimate goal (ā€The business wants us to release x in November because yā€), but how to get there is the ICs responsibility. Even if as an EM I am ā€˜accountableā€™ for it.

EMs should have input of course (and you bet your ass I do) but to dictate is demotivating.

Yes, Iā€™m learning the difference between responsibility and accountability. Itā€™s fun.

Transitioning from an IC, this is hard because Iā€™m so full of āš ļø TECHNICAL OPINIONS āš ļø honed over many years of projects, poor decisions, good decisions, study and experimentation. To let go, stand back and ā€˜justā€™ guide feels like Iā€™m not doing my job.

Keep your opinions to yourself

But Iā€™m starting to realise my job now is to support others doing their job. So, even though my glorious serverless lambda* driven event sourcing architecture may never see the light of day, Iā€™m happy to trust the team to come up with a much better solution and feel ownership and direction over the work, since the result is always better.

ā€” Milly

ā€ Both recommendations by the amazing Hannah Browne

*Just kidding. I would never use lambdas.