Collaborating with Leadership
Develop the skills to effectively collaborate with your leadership team.
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Engineering Managers have a challenging job that involves managing complex collaborations with various stakeholders, including their colleagues, XFN partners, and leaders around numerous projects and priorities. Collaboration with leadership is a key pillar of success for Engineering Managers and their teams. Collaboration with leadership includes collaboration with managers, Skip-Level Managers, directors, or the vice president. This also includes collaboration with other senior leaders in the organization or a cross-functional organization.
Why you should collaborate with the leadership
There are multiple reasons why an EM should build a strong collaboration with the leadership. There are many communication channels to build this collaboration, e.g., 1:1 meetings, group meetings, and asynchronous communication via messaging or email. Usually, EMs have engaged with their own leadership more actively, but it’s often a good idea to stay engaged with the XFN partner’s leadership as well. Meetings with leaders from important XFN partners at some regular cadence is a good way to build a strong collaboration with them. Good communication with leadership is essential for a team’s success.
Strong collaboration with leadership is important to establish a channel with leadership to listen to their ideas and seek guidance from them. Engineering Managers should also get constant feedback from the leadership about any new ideas, projects, and challenges. Business and project reprioritizations must be communicated to your manager and senior management as soon as possible. This will give everyone a good amount of reaction time to adjust to and handle the situation more efficiently.
Engineering Managers should also seek timely feedback about themselves and their team’s performance from their manager and Skip-Level Manager. This will reduce the expectation gaps between the team and the senior leadership.
Engineering Managers should also communicate the wins and successes of the team, so the leadership is aware of the team’s achievements, even for small wins.
Having a strong collaboration channel with the leadership will make it relatively easier for managers to communicate about any risks in any of the projects sooner. It will be useful for leadership to know ...