HOW TO LEAD A TEAM OF ENGINEERS.

Understand Your Team.

As the leader of an organization, you should know your team members so that they can perform at their best. Whether building new structures or fixing existing assets, these are individuals with individual strengths and weaknesses who will complete projects successfully on time without fail if led by someone like themselves-someone knowledgeable about how each one works best in order to succeed collectively as part of something greater than just them selves The key insight here is understanding what makes everyone unique: people have different personalities which means no two teams work exactly alike. 

People are only suited well for one part of the process but tend to flounder in another part of it. The engineering manager’s job is to make sure the right people are given the right projects to work on so that they can do their best work and be successful. Quality control requires you to work beyond the mechanics of the task to help ensure that they meet management requirements. A leader understands what each team member brings to the table and learns how best to motivate them to achieve peak results.

Engineer vs. Engineering Manager Calendar

There are major differences between an engineer’s and an engineering manager’s calendars. As an engineering manager, you have to take into account business and non-technical calendar demands while your engineers will take care of the technical side.

Most team members work best when they have a couple of hours to work without interruption, so if you want your code to be high quality, you need to make sure that there is enough time available for performing the task. It was their constant search to find a new time to work that eventually led to the development of the 24-hour clock. That’s exactly how the schedule is set up for engineers in most companies. On the contrary, engineering managers usually work in 30-60 minute blocks.

To develop a meeting culture in your organization, ask for the time and context-sensitive help of your engineers. They are more likely to understand their manager’s work than anyone else. 

Also, engineers may see meetings and context or task switching as distractions, while engineering managers see meetings as their main work and context switching as normal. 

Another point he made was that if you don’t have at least two one-on-ones with a prospect before your close, you need to be prepared to reschedule them as you go through the funnel. 

You might want to consider scheduling more one-on-ones instead of less. If your team members think that they’re less important than others, it might make them feel like they’re not valuable enough to you. 

One-on-one meetings are the most important part of any business because they are the first steps you take towards developing relationships and strengthening your partnerships.

The main takeaway is you should have a daily or weekly routine for your life to stay organized and on top of things.

Hold one-on-one meetings

Establishing trust within a team is the number one thing that leaders must do before they can effectively lead. According to the leadership-member exchange theory, leaders should establish relationships with their team members before they can influence their own responsibilities, decisions, access to resources, and performance. You must show that you can handle emotions, so you must become familiar with this topic.

Engineers in a large company often complain that meetings are pointless and time-consuming. However, this is not always true. If properly used, face-to-face meetings are invaluable as an effective means of communication, problem-solving, and team building.

While they may not be easy to execute, one-on-ones are a powerful and effective technique, so it’s critical for you to know how to execute them properly. Engineering managers are often asked to perform their job through one-on-one meetings. While these are a critical component of the job, many managers have a difficult time performing this function.

Understand Project Details

There’s no substitute for your core knowledge; if you’re a project manager, your knowledge of engineering principles should be your base, whether you work in one of the hard sciences or one of the soft sciences. If your people don’t know you really know what you’re doing, they’ll never fully buy into your vision, and your success will be limited. If you want to be a good project manager, you have to be detail-oriented. 

You also need to master the details to earn their respect. Whether you are their leader or just the guy who knows everyone’s job, you must know each person’s specific responsibilities, as well as how each one contributes to the organization’s overall mission.

To have a successful project, you need to be able to question people and to answer questions they may have about the project. When a team is moving into an area that’s not on target, and they get off track, you need to be ready to bring them back on target or risk having their questions become more complex and potentially even harder to answer. 

Engineers sometimes don’t work well in teams. This isn’t always a negative, but it’s important to redirect people if their work veers away from the connection to the overall goals of the project. Understanding how and why individuals complete their individual tasks and contribute to the accomplishment of the group’s goals is the key to directing all employees in the direction of the 

common purpose.