Effective Engineering Manager
Tim Wenzel: Building Exceptional Teams
We are featuring a guest, Tim Wenzel, who is a Silicon Valley native, expert in recruiting, including building early teams and PayPal and Tesla, and a founder and an executive recruiter at The (A)Lyst Group. Tim shares practical recommendations on feedback, candidate experience, and building teams in dynamic startup environments. In the end, Tim shares a checklist that our listeners can start using today to build exceptional teams.
Cultivating Trust
We dive deep into the importance of trust in engineering management, and how it impacts productivity. We share that trust is built and reinforced over time. We highlight the different layers of trust, including organizational, team, and individual trust, and emphasize the need for consistency and building trust through actions. We explore the subtle distinction between expectations and trust. We also discuss the emotional toll of mistrust caused by broken trust. In the end we provide a checklist that allows our listeners to start cultivating trust in their organizations.
Effective Dependency Management
We share how to manage project dependencies in a way that brings results. We are going to define what a dependency is and how to manage your dependencies to ensure that projects you are a part of are delivered on time and with quality. In the end we will provide a checklist that our listeners can use to ensure that their dependencies are always satisfied.
Managing Innovation
We offer an effective way of introducing innovation to an engineering team and getting results regardless of the organization size. In the end we offer an actionable checklist that engineering managers can use to start innovating today.
Managing Up: Complaining
We are starting a series on managing up. In this episode we talk about how not to communicate work issues to your boss. We define what complaining is and why complaining is ineffective. We provide a checklist that our listeners can use to see if their upward communications are in the complaining territory.
Effective Remote Work
In this episode, Adam and Slava discuss the new normal of the remote workplace. We discuss the challenges in working remote, key benefits to being remote, and provide guidance for managers to effectively manage remote teams and maximize healthy productivity.
Effective Goal Setting
It’s that time of year again for managers and directs to start planning goals and executing on them for the new year. In this episode, we will discuss the challenges with goal setting and provide guidance for making the goal setting process more effective.
Getting Things Done: Taking Time Off
We share the effective way for taking time off. In the end we offer a check list that consists of
- Designate a substitute
- Prepare your substitute
- Set up the Out of The Office response in your email client
- Have a sync up meeting with your direct report after you come back
Getting Things Done: Staff Meetings
We share what staff meetings are, why they are important for keeping your team accountable for their deliverables and how they help you to stay on top of everything the team is doing. We provide guidance on how frequently you should run them and how to make them effective. In the end we provide a checklist that our listeners can use to start running effective staff meetings.