2023-09-20

Managing Managers: How to Scale Your Leadership Impact

Transitioning from managing individual contributors (ICs) to managing managers marks a significant shift in your leadership journey. Your focus expands from direct team execution and individual coaching to enabling other leaders, shaping strategy, and cultivating the environment across multiple teams. When you start managing managers, leadership takes on a whole new meaning, demanding different skills and a broader perspective. Here's how to navigate this transition successfully and effectively scale your impact.

1. Embrace the Shift: From Directing to Enabling

Your primary role is no longer about directly guiding projects or coding solutions. It's about enabling your managers to lead their teams effectively.

  • Coach, Don't Command: Resist the urge to jump in and solve problems for your managers' teams. Instead, coach your managers on how they can solve them. Ask guiding questions: "What have you tried?" "What options are you considering?" "How can I support you?"
  • Focus on Systems: Think about the systems, processes, and structures that enable teams to succeed (e.g., hiring processes, performance management frameworks, communication channels, goal setting). Your leverage comes from improving these systems.
  • Measure Success Differently: Your success is now measured by the success of your managers and their teams, not just your direct contributions.

2. Invest Heavily in Developing Your Managers

Your managers are your primary leverage point. Their growth and effectiveness are paramount.

  • Dedicated Coaching: Spend significant time in your 1:1s coaching your managers on leadership skills, strategic thinking, delegation, conflict resolution, and people management.
  • Provide Feedback: Offer regular, specific, and actionable feedback on their performance as managers. Help them identify blind spots and areas for growth.
  • Create Peer Learning: Foster a community among the managers who report to you. Encourage them to share challenges, best practices, and support each other.
  • Define Their Career Path: Help them envision their own growth trajectory within leadership.

3. Set Clear Expectations and Align Goals

Clarity is crucial when working through layers of management. Ensure everyone understands the direction and their role in achieving it.

  • Define "What Good Looks Like": Clearly articulate the expectations for your managers regarding team health, delivery, technical excellence, and people development.
  • Align Objectives: Ensure their team goals (e.g., using OKRs) clearly cascade from and contribute to broader organizational objectives. Help them translate strategy into actionable plans for their teams.
  • Establish Shared Principles: Define and reinforce shared engineering principles or management philosophies across the teams to ensure consistency.

4. Master the Art of Delegation and Empowerment

You must delegate entire outcomes and areas of responsibility, not just tasks. This requires a high degree of trust.

  • Delegate Ownership: Give managers full ownership of their domains. Trust them to make decisions and manage their teams' execution.
  • Define Scope and Boundaries: Be clear about their decision-making authority and when they need to consult or inform you.
  • Provide Context, Not Solutions: Equip them with the necessary context, resources, and strategic direction, then let them figure out the "how."

5. Build Robust Communication Systems

Information flow becomes more complex. You need mechanisms to stay informed and ensure alignment without creating bottlenecks.

  • Effective Manager Syncs: Use group meetings with your managers for strategic discussions, cross-team alignment, information sharing, and peer problem-solving – not just status updates.
  • Strategic Skip-Level Meetings: Conduct occasional 1:1s with individuals on your managers' teams (skip-levels). Use these to understand team morale, identify systemic issues, get unfiltered feedback, and build connections, not to undermine your manager. Be transparent with your managers about these conversations.
  • Clear Reporting Structures: Implement lightweight mechanisms for managers to report on progress, risks, and team health without excessive overhead.

6. Drive Accountability for Outcomes and Leadership

Hold managers accountable for the performance and health of their teams and their effectiveness as leaders.

  • Focus on Results and Behaviors: Evaluate managers based on their teams' outcomes (delivery, quality, impact) and how they achieve those results (team health, adherence to values, people development).
  • Use Data and Observation: Combine metrics (delivery speed, bug rates, retention, survey results) with your observations and feedback from others (including skip-levels) to assess performance.
  • Address Performance Issues: Be prepared to have difficult conversations and take action if a manager is consistently underperforming or not meeting leadership expectations.

7. Shape Culture and Ensure Alignment Across Teams

As a leader of leaders, you are a key culture carrier. You set the tone and ensure consistency.

  • Model the Values: Consistently demonstrate the behaviors and values you expect from your managers and their teams.
  • Facilitate Cross-Team Collaboration: Identify and resolve dependencies or conflicts between teams. Foster a sense of shared purpose beyond individual team boundaries.
  • Ensure Consistency: Promote consistent application of processes (like performance reviews or promotions) to ensure fairness.

8. Focus on Strategy and Organizational Health

Elevate your perspective beyond immediate team concerns to focus on the broader organization.

  • Organizational Design: Think critically about team structures, roles, and responsibilities to optimize for current and future goals.
  • Talent Strategy: Develop a holistic view of talent needs, hiring strategies, and capability gaps across your entire scope.
  • Anticipate Future Challenges: Look ahead to identify potential roadblocks, market shifts, or technical challenges that will impact your teams.

Conclusion: Leading Through Leverage

Managing managers is about multiplying your impact by empowering others to lead. It requires letting go of direct control, investing deeply in the development of your managers, building robust systems, and focusing on the bigger strategic picture. While challenging, mastering this transition allows you to scale your influence significantly, fostering healthier, more productive, and more aligned engineering organizations. It's a shift from doing the work to building the teams that do the work, and it's one of the most rewarding steps in a leadership career.