# Terry Brown's Manager Readme **Senior Director of Engineering at Mews** # Motivation for this document This document is my attempt to distil in writing everything that defines who I am, what I value, and what I expect when you work with me.  The primary audience for this document is anyone who is on one of my teams, though everyone else is free to read and feedback on it. I've been steadily evolving my approach to leadership throughout my career, and this document attempts to capture the important parts of that into something that's easy to consume. Please treat this as a reference and a promise on how I will conduct myself as a lead, and a guide on what I expect from you.  I urge you to hold me accountable to my promises, and to call out anything that might be missing from this document. Without your guidance, I will not be able to improve as a lead. If any of this document doesn't work for you, I would ask that you feedback to me - I am flexible, and I care about you, so I will try to adapt. # My role My role is varied and ultimately falls into two categories - my responsibilities to you, and my responsibilities to the business. My responsibilities to the business are: - Making sure the team are aligned to the business goals and working towards those as effectively as they can be - Delivering 'value' to the business from the team - that value is generally focussed around the customer, but could equally be driven around internal metrics too - Making sure we're working on the right things at the right time - Representing and amplifying the team, and the business both internally and externally - Helping grow the team, the culture, and the environment of work My responsibilities to you are: - Help you be successful and happy - Support you in your personal development, and provide mentorship and guidance - Help you understand the context, the "why" and the wider picture of the work we're undertaking - Help ensure we have good relationships with other teams - Ensure we have the right processes and procedures in place that help us add value for the business - To give you direct feedback, both positive and negative, quickly and on an ongoing basis - Make it easier for you to do your job If I'm unavailable to you or seem too busy, let me know.  You are my priority. I can sometimes move into maker mode, and it can detract from my management. # What do I value most? Here are some of the things I value most: - **People** - I spent a lot of my earlier career caring more about the software than the people, and it didn't serve me well.  Our people (the team, and those of the wider organisation) are the main reason we're successful, and I care massively about the happiness of the team and enabling them to show up. - **Ownership and Accountability ** - I take ownership and accountability for my work, and I value it in others.  Taking a problem, a business area, or whatever it is you're doing, and making it your own removes my need to do so, and reduces the chances of me becoming a bottleneck in any communications. - **Continuous Improvement** - I spend time trying to be the best I can - I've done it throughout my career from being a junior developer through to now.  I expect you to do the same both on regular work and in your protected time, and much as I'll help and support you while you work on that improvement, I expect that improvement to be driven by you.  I do not expect your growth to come outside of core hours though. - **Push Based Communications** - I prefer you to push information to me that I need to know rather than having to pull information.  This will be seen to be working best if I never ask for a status update on a project, or ask for outcomes from a meeting/discussion. - **Regular Feedback** - I care about doing a good job, and I care about those things that are important to my role above - if you feel I'm not delivering on those, or I could be doing so more effectively, I will genuinely appreciate and value any feedback you have for me, and I will never take it personally. - **Trust and Autonomy** - I will default to a trust/autonomy mindset for our working relationship.  I'm happy to get more involved in checking things if you need me to, but I really like the 'leader/leader' mindset from '[turn the ship around](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqmdLcyES_Q)'.  Tell me what you intend to do, share, communicate, and I'll let you know if I have any concerns. - **Collaboration** - I love people who work together to achieve better flow of work.  This is true not only within the team, but working with others outside of the team.  Collaboration and sharing is a cornerstone to us building better relationships. - **Perseverance ** - failure happens.  That's absolutely ok.  The best people will learn from that failure and move forward, and their attitude will rarely steer into the negative. - **Your Health** - I have suffered illness in the past because I didn't look after myself.  I have suffered significant depression in the past.  I care about both of these things, and I care that you feel supported when talking about both of these things.  I will always listen, I will always support you, and if you need anything, I will always deliver. # My Expectations These are some of the things that I'd expect from you as we build up trust. - **Bother me!  ** - It helps me deliver value to you, and value to the business - if you're happy and unblocked in your work, you're productive, and the business benefits.  I'm always happy to be interrupted from anything I'm doing.  If I'm in the middle of something that can't be delayed, I'll let you know and we'll catch up straight after it. - **Communications** - I expect you to be open and honest when communicating within the team and with those outside the team.  My order of preference for communications with others is face to face, video, phone, instant message, and finally email.  I like those who take the initiative in communications and reach out.  I encourage you to engage in [radical candor](https://www.radicalcandor.com/) with me. - **Bad news is delivered faster than good news** - I want you to deliver good news quickly, and deliver bad news quicker.  It doesn't matter that we break things, it matters how we deal with things once they are broken.  How we communicate those issues is paramount to that. - **Deliver ** - I expect you to help the team delivery of value to the customer.  I track and understand individual performance, and that is important, but how we perform as a team is way more important than you individually just working through 30 tickets this sprint or spending 50 hours at work.  I do not value hero developers. - **Work life balance is important** - I will endeavour to support you in keeping the flow of work through the team at a manageable level so that we are not required to work at 100%.  That you relax and have other interests away from work is important. # 1:1s I get a great deal of value from one to ones - I hope you get as much value out of them as I do.  It very much is your meeting, and your agenda. I'll always have questions and comments, but we'll focus on what you want to talk about first, so please come to these meetings prepared. I'll ensure I give you any wider context from the business, though this is secondary.  There are some key things I really care about during that time though, in particular, how you're doing and if there's anything you need from me. I'll take notes during these, but will focus entirely on the conversation.  If you need me to take away actions, that's cool.  If you want to take any that's also cool. These aren't our only opportunities to chat through, and if you need to catch up with me for anything else outside of these, please do so. ## Personal Development I care about you having the space and support for personal development - we will speak regularly on this and how it is working for you.  I will help you align those things you wish to progress with the overall business goals, though I will not drive these (in the same way I will not drive your career progression) - I'm here to mentor, support, and encourage, and ensure that the business adds it's formal support to your learning/development pathway. Progress on this is entirely in your hands.  What I want is for you to be happy and productive while delivering value for the business - if you can do all of that and you don't feel that your personal development goals are needed for that, then that's fine - it won't be held against you. # Personality quirks These are not set in stone, and if any of them bother you, let me know. - **I'm opinionated and passionate ** - it's never my intention to be heavy handed with it, but I've had a lot of years building up a toolset and approach, so it'll take a little more to convince me if I feel strongly about something - **I like sarcasm and use it as a form of humour** - I try to direct it towards myself as self deprecation, though I sometimes also use it outwardly.  Given I will give bad news to individuals quickly, never assume that if I'm saying anything publicly that could be negative that it is - I will never call you out publicly for anything. - **I will repeat myself - ** especially around wider business context, 'why', and when we're going through any sort of learnings as a team.  If even half of what I've said is any clearer for this, I think it's worth it. - **I'm perhaps too enthusiastic with work** - please don't imitate this, if I do anything outside of work, it's not because it's an expectation on my part that you will do so.  Your time away from work is as important as your time at work, and I expect you to be refreshed and not overworked. - **I'm terrible with eye contact** - I can speak confidently on many topics, but I'm still an introvert at heart, and I'm very acutely aware I do this - I aim to improve this. - **I'm not afraid of making decisions** - though I value input into those decisions. I can be impatient with actions, and I personally prefer making a reversible decision quick and change it later, over analysis-paralysis. # Your first 90 days - what to expect For my part: - I'll ensure you have a mentor (it may be me) and that you will be supported - I'll make sure I spend regular time with you during the first 30 days so that we can minimise any pain points from onboarding - I'll make sure we put in place a useful shared pathway for the first 3 months so that we have enough structure to get you up to speed with our architecture, approaches, frameworks, and tools - I'll always be available to ask - please bother me - I'll ensure that you have protected time to learn anything you need to to get up to speed I'd expect that you: - Will ensure you commit to learning about the organisation and what motivates/drives the business and our customers - Will build your relationships with the team and the wider org - you'll take opportunities to pair up, and will involve yourself with the team - Will commit to learning our technologies and approaches - Will bring suggestions/improvements and discuss them if you feel they could add value to us Please give us open and honest feedback about which parts we could improve upon and I'll ensure that it's done.