How to build trust with engineers in your team as an Engineering Manager ?

Trust is often the key requirement for a successful relationship to blossom. This is true for personal and professional relations alike. As an Engineering Manager(EM), you are leading a team of engineers and trust is essential for the functioning of the team. The goal of this post is to debug what trust looks like for the EM<>Engineer relationship, what EMs can do to establish and maintain trust and to educate engineers about what to expect from a good EM so that they can grow their careers meaningfully.

What makes trust important
In hypergrowth companies, change is the only constant. Most likely in the course of a year, project priorities will change, roadmap will change, project scope will change, collaboration partnerships will change, requirements will increase, there will be re-organizations. Sometime you will be prepared as a team. Sometimes things will catch the team by surprise. Sometimes the team will make wrong decisions along the way and then they will need to course correct. A core responsibility of an EM is to help the team navigate through these transitions and facilitate in a way so that the journey seems smoother and less thrashy. I described the above from a team perspective. Let us break this down into how it affects the engineers in these teams and their individual career growth.

From an engineers perspective, imagine these situations. You may have faced one or the other at different points in your career:

1. An engineer likes a project, which needs to be paused because priorities changed. 
2. An engineer needs to do some grunt work, which no one on the team enjoys, but is a critical business need
3. An engineer needs to get better at collaborating with partner teams with shared goals 
4. An engineer needs that critical career feedback, that will enable them to get to the next level
5. An engineer needs to understand how to develop a better working relationship with the PM when priorities are changing
6. A Tech Lead needs to be able to deliver more meaningful and actionable feedback to a junior engineer, so that they can make meaningful changes and progress in their careers

All the above situations would need the EM to work with the engineer to help them improve. That would involve 1:1s, diagnosing and explaining the problem/context/business, sharing the feedback/decision/priority to the engineer, helping them understand the situation, giving them actionable steps to get to the next phase. Trust is the glue that enables all this and makes it easier. 

Debugging trust dynamic further

In a relationship where there is mutual trust, there is a win win dynamic. The EM is invested in the career growth of the engineer and is helping them get better. The engineer trusts the feedback and learns and improves. This is a positive feedback loop. Together both of them improve, the relationship improves, they solve bigger problems, build bigger things in the future. 

In a relationship where the engineer doesn't trust the manager, this often ends up in a vicious cycle. The engineer doubts the intentions of the manager, feels threatened, doesn't pay attention to the actionable feedback/decision/priority change, doesn't act to make changes and the situation gets worse. Often times the vicious cycle doesn't end well. Hence, it is very important for the EM to maintain the trust. 

Now that we have established why trust is every important in todays dynamic work environment, comes the critical question that we started with : how does an EM build trust ?

The meaning of trust from the dictionary stands at : firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something.

Below I break down each of these dimensions into more granular questions, that engineers on the team would ask to tick the boxes. This by no way is exhaustive, but paints a picture of what the process of building trust looks like for the Engineer <> EM relationship. Trust is not a snapshot at an instant of time, but is a regular process that needs to be worked on proactively to maintain. 

For an engineer reading this article, it is a good way to keep your EM honest and accountable. Not all these boxes may be ticked all the of the time because management is not binary and more fuzzy, but you will know when you have a manager whom you can trust with your career :) 

1. Reliability : what makes an EM reliable ?
• Do they make false promises. They promise project A and we end up in project B. Priorities change once in a while, but is that the norm rather than the exception ? 
• Is their feedback actionable, quality and timely. When the feedback misses any of these dimensions, it is bad feedback
• Would they allocate 1:1 time for me every week and would they be invested in my career growth ? or would they drop the ball on me ?
• Predictable/no surprises during performance reviews
• Are they both invested in my career growth and will they hold me accountable. 
2. Truth : 
• Does the EM come across as authentic when they are talking because lack of authenticity is a trust killer
• Fairness : Is he/she fair while judging performance across project complexity/functionality/workstreams and attribute effort and ambiguity proportionately
3. Ability : what questions does the EM need to answer to demonstrate ability to build trust ?
• What is the background of the EM ?
• Were they rockstar engineers in the past ? 
• Do they have experience in top places(Google, Facebook, Apple) and did they build world class products/infra/platforms/teams in the past ?
• What does past success look like ? Would an engineer say that they would like to work with you once they meet you ?
• Are they knowledgeable
4. Strength : The EM is awesome. How are they putting all that ability into play in the current setup and what are their strengths ?
• You may be a junior engineer or a tech lead. Can the EM help me grow/rewarded/promoted from your current level?
• Can they unblock the team, pushback against unrealistic demands, shield the team from thrash or are they pass throughs? Can the team focus and deliver?
• Can they and are they aligned with the org priorities ?
• What are the team goals and how is the team currently executing on those goals ?
• Can the EM develop the team roadmap, strategy and mission for short/medium/long term ?
• Is the team growing ? Is their continued investment ?
• Is the team's impact/contributions well understood in the org ? Can they navigate org complexity ?
• If strength axes is not there, often times engineers end up telling their managers, you are great as a friend and i like you. But I will take my career growth elsewhere, to someone who can make things happen for me. 

As an engineer, trust on the EM is one of the biggest factors in choosing a team that enables them to grow their careers meaningfully. Of course there are several other factors that determine engineering happiness and to strategize on right team selection, but those will be the content of another post.

Thank you for reading. Would love to hear your thoughts/stories on anything that stands out for you that makes you trust/distrust your EM.