# Mihael Brenko's Manager Readme **Department Manager at Zenitel** # Motivation for this document The purpose of this document is to provide you with a short introduction to my management and communication style, and as a general "get to know me" document. This is an organic document which will evolve with time, so feel free to revisit it from time to time. For new team members, this document will assist in the initial "getting to know you" phase and set some initial expectations. For my current coworkers, you might discover new insights about me and get some clarifications about how I work. # My role My primary responsibility is taking care of my team members, i.e. you. This includes, but is not limited to: - Providing technical advice and guidance. - Removing organizational obstacles. - Offering general coaching. - Ensuring you have all necessary equipment and supplies (coffee! :)) that you need to do your job. On the technical side, I'm responsible for the device side of things in Zenitel. In short, this means that I provide input to roadmap and priorities. If you're not involved in device projects, this aspect may not directly affect you. I also participate in code reviews for specific repositories, so expect my feedback on your merge requests. Regarding the local office in Matulji, you can consider me as an unofficial office manager. Whether you need administrative support or general help with office space, feel free to reach out, even if I'm not your direct manager. # When/how to reach me When I'm working from the office and my door is open, that means that I'm available and you can come in. If the door is closed, I'm either on a meeting or I need some interruption free time to do some concrete work. When I'm working from home office, send me a message on Teams (please note my status though, if I'm in a meeting, call or busy it might take some time for me to reply). If you know that the discussion will take longer and/or multiple people are need: - Preferably, send an email. - Arrange a meeting with a proper agenda. For emergencies (and I really mean emergencies) you can always reach me on my mobile outside working hours. Non-emergencies will wait until the next working day. You can expect the same from me towards you, i.e. if I'm calling you outside working hours it's urgent. # What can you expect from me as a manager/coworker/human being, and what do I expect from you If I mess something up, I'm going to own that, and I expect the same from you. It's understandable if you are struggling with something and things take more time than expected, that's why you have me and your colleagues to help you. What's not OK is not putting in any effort and expecting that a solution will be handed to you. Regarding your work, I expect that you will follow the agreed upon priorities and that you will not shift your focus to non-prioritized tasks. I expect you to be accountable for your responsibilities. I appreciate when people are sharing their knowledge, this can be an update to Confluence how-to documents, participating in Friday knowledge sharing sessions, or simply helping out your coworkers. Be there for your teammates, support and help them if you can. I care about being transparent and sharing relevant information. That being said, there will be things I'll not be able to share with you until we align on them on the management level and reach a final decision. Conflicts are part of the job, keep them civil and work related. I like learning from other peoples' mistakes, it's more painless the doing those mistakes on your own and then learning from them. It's OK to ask for help when you need it, even though I'm personally not that good at that. See point above and learn from it :) . If I'm your manager, you don't need to ask me for approval for every little thing you want to do. Instead, keep me in the loop, and I'll let you know if I have any concerns. My preferred communication style is ask-assertiveness, meaning that I'm not going to tell you to do something, I'm going to ask you to do something. This comes from my personal dislike of to being told what to do. When I ask you to do something that feels poorly defined, you should ask me for both clarification and a call on importance. I might still be thinking it through. These questions can save everyone a lot of time. I believe that most humans are trying to do the right thing, and I start with an assumption of positive intent for all involved. # On meetings Meetings deserve a separate section. A lot of people don't like meetings, and I can see their point. We have all received a meeting invite 5 minutes before the meeting starts, got an invitation without any agenda wondering what's this about, been to hour-long meetings where nothing was decided or clarified etc. Reality is that meetings will happen within the organization, and what we can all do is be better at organizing and participating in the meetings. The way I like for meetings to be organized and conducted: - Whoever calls the meeting is the owner of the meeting, and he/she should drive the meeting discussion for most of the time. - Prepare agenda - meetings without agenda are meaningless, without providing agenda and additional information people you invite can't properly prepare and contribute. Don't be surprised if I decline a meeting invite where agenda was not set. - Audience - as a rule of thumb, try to keep meeting participants to \<= 5 (this is not always possible). - Conclusion - follow up the meeting with a short email summary/action points/meeting notes, whatever is the most appropriate form for the topic of the meeting. - Send response to meeting invite - accept, decline or propose new time, don't leave the invite sitting in your inbox. - Check the calendar - respect the time of the people you are inviting, if their calendar is already booked find another time slot. - Unless extremely urgent, don't send a meeting invite 30 minutes before you want to have the meeting. - Can this be an email - if the discussion point can be taken asynchronously, and you don't need a decision ASAP, consider writing an email instead. - Start the meeting on time. I deliberately run with my calendar publicly visible, if a meeting is private or confidential, its title and attendees will be hidden from your view. If you have a question about a meeting on my calendar, ask me. # 1:1s We will have 1:1 once per month, 30–60 minutes. If needed, an additional 1-1 can be scheduled. I see 1:1 as a place where you can safely discuss various things which are bothering you with me. I will occasionally bring in some topics I want to discuss with you, and ask questions, but I see you as the primary owner of 1:1 agenda. While I may bring up some points I, I see you as the primary owner of the agenda I will use my best judgment to professionally manage any information you share with me. If there's something you'd like to discuss in confidence, please explicitly invoke the Vegas rule. # Personality quirks and random facts I'm a grumpy introvert. I like to keep things brief. If MBTI is your thing, I'm an [ISTJ](https://www.16personalities.com/istj-personality). As any other model, MBTI is not fully accurate and it has its flaws. It can be a useful tool, especially for introspection purposes. Anyway, I do recognize some of my personality traits in the linked description, so feel free to read it, but take it with a grain of salt. I like to have time to think before reacting and making a decision, that's why I'm usually quiet during the meetings. Eurotrip is one of the best comedy movies ever made. My guilty pleasure is Eurovision ([Finland](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6rS8Dv5g-8) was robbed in 2023.). When I'm in a bad mood, [this always cheers me up](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2Pv0L_t43I) :).