Hello all, I have been hoping to blog here for a long time now and finally a simple conversation over an absolutely scrumptious lunch (for all those curious – Stir Crazy, must try!) with a set of colleagues made me understand this and thus compelled me to pen this down. The realization of how our (a set of engineers) conversation kept reverting back to discussing our ‘Managers’. No matter how hard we tried to change the topic we kept coming back to it!!
Conclusion of our lunch conversation: As engineers it is inevitable to not talk or even compare our Managers and their Managerial skills.
Well, I’ve been working as a PS Engineer for about a year and a half now and the purpose of this blog entry is to give an Engineer’s point of view on what they expect from their managers. We’ve all read and heard a lot of very learned and experienced (Project) Managers give their views on a wide variety of topics which are indeed very valuable. Thank you all. I am here to give mine, as an Engineer.
Needless to say a manager plays a very crucial role in the professional efficiency and productivity of an engineer. An engineer is like clay in the hands of a manager and it is up to the manager to guide and mould him/her. It’s a two way relationship: mentor-mentee if I may say. The mentee must have the right guidance from the mentor in order to perform efficiently and both together result in a perfectly functioning entity. As an Engineer, I would always look up to my manager and would try to imbibe his/her mannerisms, knowledge, the way of handling things/situations and basically all the good stuff. I could go on and on and therefore in a conscious effort to keep this short and thus fun to read I am going to break this into a few blog entries. And so I am going to list down a few qualities that I would look for in my (team/project) manager as an engineer part of a team:
1. - ORGANIZATIONAL SKILLS
No matter whether you (the manager) are on a single-project or multiple projects being unorganized is unaffordable. This also includes prioritizing what needs immediate attention and what can wait, also what must be taken care is that none of the tasks/clients get ignored/delayed for long.
2. - TIME MANAGEMENT
Truly speaking this does get covered under the organizational skills but the purpose of listing it separately is solely to highlight its importance. A manager can’t afford to “accidently” not be on calls – conflicting calls is completely a separate issue and sometimes unavoidable and understandable – or to make a client wait for you on the call (or as I like to call it a ‘big-no scenario’).
3. - COMMUNICATION SKILLS [both internally and with the client(s)]
I believe, being well connected to both the client as well as your team of engineers is truly a sign of a good manager. This helps maintain transparency within a team and help the manager understand and therefore resolve issues if any. Regular communication may also mean day to day depending on the demand of the phase in which the project currently is in.
4. - CRISIS MANAGEMENT
As a manager how well can you handle a crisis situation which may span over - two off your three resources on a vacation and you trying to meet a deadline or to that of an unhappy client – etc. This might involve you to help your team or the client handle a specific scenario resulting in either minimum loss of time, minimum expense (for the client) and so forth. A manager with something as simple as presence of mind in a stressful situation can tackle and control the situation efficiently. A confident manager always results in confident team – imagine yourself (the engineer) if your manager is freaking out over an issue in his cabin, disastrous!
