EngineerHer

… not as I do…

This is a standing joke in my teams at work. Seriously. I will frequently kick them out of the office to go home and rest, while forcing myself to get through a pile of work. This is not sensible in the slightest, but that need to look at them, while pushing myself is born out of early experiences in the workplace.

What is the role of a manager?

I was reared, in an engineering sense, in a system of the manager looking after the team. I didn’t hear the term “servant leadership” until very recently (although it has apparently been around since the 1970’s). But that term certainly encapsulates the good types of managers I saw in my early years as an engineer.

These were the men (and they were all men, trust me) that supported their teams, made sure they ate, slept, rested as needed. In the chaos of a long 3-week shutdown, keeping track of who was onsite and when and what they were doing was usually managed through a little black book, or possibly an A4 diary, but these men would have an internal calendar about who needed to be sent home and who could be pushed a little bit more.

These men knew their team would be tired at the end of the project, but they would be healthy and not broken. That was what was important.

And to me, most of them did it naturally.

It was only when I started learning more about being a manager, that I learned of the effort that went into this.

So for me, the role of a manager was always to make sure the team was ok. The Team would survive. The Team would fight another day.

Manager vs Leader

Managers can be leaders and leaders can be managers. That’s the nature of modern industry.

But the role of a manager is not the same as that of leader, even if one person carries out the duties of both. Now, I will say, the Harvard Business Review disagrees with me on this. And they have some good points. Managers tend towards order, systems, organisational process. Leaders tend towards understanding, greater tolerance of chaos and development of said processes and systems.

But these are tendencies. It is rare that a leader emerges that has no managerial responsibilities in the modern workplace. So what is the difference? The following table is taken from numerous internet sources smashed together, but sure google “manager vs leader” and you’ll probably get similar enough results to mine.

Leader	Manager
Coaching	Directing
Inspiration focused	Task/ outcome focused
Set the vision	Execute the vision
Shape culture	Creates structure to encourage said culture
Look forward, constantly forward	Pave the way

Now, look, it’s obviously a limited list. And it’s highly bent towards what appeals to me. But as it goes, well… it matches my experience pretty well!

How to be both?

Well, here’s the thing. I consider myself a leader of a team in work. I shape the culture within my team by choosing which policies to apply strictly and which ones need to be more flexible (shhh, for the love of all you hold holy, don’t tell HR that!) I decide who and what I push more at certain times. I hold that inner map of who’s exhausted and who’s not so bad right now.

Ok, we have a lot of organisational tools and automations and all sorts to help us out with this. But most of the time, it comes from knowing who my team are, what they have going on, noticing body language and facial expressions. And sometimes you address these things in public and sometimes in private, but you deal with it.

But, in the modern workplace, to be effective at your role, you probably need to switch between these roles.

There are times you have to set the vision for your team. There are times you have to help them execute the vision. There are times you need to provide the inspiration. There are times you need to keep them focused on a specific task or outcome. There are times you have to shape the culture through what might seem like random acts. There are times you need to put the structure in place to ensure said culture develops.

I know, it’s hard to think of, but these are all skills you can learn. Usually by practicing them, to be honest.

So where does that leave us with “do as I say”?

Well, here’s the thing. It’s a part of my team culture that I can and do encourage people to take breaks, to end the day at a reasonable time, to not get into the habits of long hours. And it’s also part of the team culture that I expect them to do the same to me. To challenge me on the things where I’m falling down, particularly when it comes to managing my own rest and my own breaks.

And they also know, there are times when I will push both myself and them to go above and beyond to deliver on unreasonable expectations. And we have a tendency, as a team, to do so. Part of the reason I can draw on them for those unreasonable expectations is because I insist on proper rest and breaks most of the time. And because I encourage them to challenge me.

So when I have to switch tactics, become more managerial, directive, and task focused, they know there’s usually a really good reason for it. It’s not to make me look good, because I’m all about making the team look good. It’s about a dire business need. And they respond.

We have open discussions about who’s available for what. Who can cancel plans, who can’t. Who has caring responsibilities and who doesn’t. Who is free to work over the Christmas period and who isn’t. Because we all know that just because someone can’t work at weekends, doesn’t mean they won’t pull out the laptop late at night when needed. Other people can work weekends til the cows come home, but late night calls are a pure no-no.

So when I come out with “do as I say”, they laugh. They know the background work that’s gone into that phrase with all of us.

Does it matter?

In the end, I think the label of manager or leader is an ambiguous one at best. In my experience, most of us have to switch and swop between the roles, sometimes even multiple times in one conversation. That’s the modern workplace. We’re all multi skilled.

Thankfully as engineers, we tend to be good at this. We know there’s times we need to dig deep and pull out all the stops. We also know there are frequent times when creativity, inspiration and out-of-the-box thinking really needs to come to the fore.

Do you agree? Hop in the comments and tell me!