When I switched to management last year on April 5, one of the things I wanted to start with was to make sure that my teams understood what they could expect from me and hold me to. I had been at the company for over three years and interacted with many of them before, so I wasn’t a stranger, but one thing I’ve learned is that clarity rarely hurts in situations like these. And so I wrote up a “contract” of what they could expect from me. I later updated it to be what they could expect from the managers that report up to me as well, including things like PTO, sick time, not micromanaging, and so on.
It’s worked out well, specifically relating to getting feedback that I expect that most managers don’t usually get, both constructive as well as positive. Some of it relates directly to the things in the contract below. Specifically they pointed to where I hadn’t been giving enough guidance as to vision and direction, but also in matters outside what’s directly in the doc, because they knew I would handle it correctly.
The contract is as follows:
I want this to be a psychologically safe team. See https://hbr.org/2023/02/what-is-psychological-safety
Information
I will mind whose information is whose – if it’s not mine to share, I won’t. If you’re in doubt about something sensitive to you, tell me (in the if you’re in doubt as to whether I already understand that something is a thing you wouldn’t want shared). The other side of this is that I may have info shared with me that might be pertinent to you that I cannot share because it isn’t mine. In such cases I will work to see if it can be shared, but sometimes the result will be that I cannot.
I will be transparent with my own information as much as I know to and am able to, but also try not to pummel you with irrelevant info. If the level of comms to you is wrong, please say so.
In the conflict between truth and your agency over a piece of info, I may ask you if I can share. If you say now, I will keep my trap shut as that’s the easiest by far, or at worst obfuscate, unless I’m required to share by policy or law.
I apologize in advance if I have to obfuscate (on behalf of you or others) as I don’t like doing it, but the alternatives are lying or breaking confidentiality, both of which are clearly worse.
I will do my best to make sure you understand the social/technical/business conects and direction of what you’re doing so you can make the best decisions without necessarily involving me. Setting the table so you can be maximally autonomous is best for everyone. You should always be able to answer the question “Why am I doing this?” with a better answer than “my manager told me to”. If you don’t, please ask, we should have reasons.
Feedback is a gift which I value, both for you and for me. I will aim to make sure you get regular feedback, and always feel free to ask for it at any time.
I will receive bad news and constructive criticism well. As a practical matter, if I don’t, you won’t tell me things I /need/ to hear, and I’ll be flying blind. Truth matters. I’m fine with being told I’m an idiot, as long as you’re willing to explain why you think so.
in any 1:1, it is always an opportunity to ask me anything.
I realize that some amount of trust comes with the position by necessity; the rest is earned over time. So I’m fully aware you may or may not trust me or everything in this doc for a while.
Work and Life
Work-life balance is important. At the end of the day, stop working. Take enough PTO. Or I will nag you about these. It’s important because it’s an example to others too, especially if you’re more senior. Ideally have separate work and personal devices if you can, or at least separate profiles on your device so you’re less likely to pop open work slack while sitting on your couch because you’re bored. honestly, it can be good for your brain to be bored from time to time.
I believe that health and family are more important than work. I will do my best to accommodate your needs.
Be on the lookout for burn-out, both your own and those on the team. Our personal blast radii are bigger than we think. I will do what I can to alleviate it.
Misery is multiplicative – help me to help you squelch the small stuff even though it’s small. Over time it will get to a breaking point, and that point can happen suddenly, and can be hard to pinpoint the actual cause(s) because there are more than one, and the thing that tips things over is often not the most important thin. That said, I can’t fix everything, and not everything can be fixed.
I will be nice when I can, kind always. To clarify: Nice would be not giving necessary constructive feedback because it would feel bad to receive it. Kind is giving it in a way that is empathetic always, but firm when necessary.
I will work to ensure that the pager rotations are kept reasonable so people aren’t on call all the time. I will support work to reduce pager pain (and KTLO generally), as happiness is a silent pager. As a practical matter, pager pain and KTLO are a drag on the happiness and productivity of the team.
Career Growth and Learning
I’m a firm believer in the growth mind set. Quoting from https://hbr.org/2016/01/what-having-a-growth-mindset-actually-means:
Individuals who believe their talents can be developed (through hard work, good strategies, and input from others) have a growth mindset. They tend to achieve more than those with a more fixed mindset (those who believe their talents are innate gifts). This is because they worry less about looking smart and put more energy into learning. What it means to me is: we’re all works in progress, looking to improve at what we do. Rather than: I’ve learned X and I don’t need to learn any more. It means that you’re not going to keep mindlessly doing something that’s not working.
If you’re not learning and that bothers you (there are seasons where not learning can be ok), talk to me. I want to work with you to figure out what to do. Maybe it’s taking a class, maybe it’s putting you on a different project, maybe it’s putting you in touch with someone who knows about whatever it is you’re looking to learn. But if you feel like you’re stagnating, let’s talk.
There are no stupid questions, or if there are, they are perfectly acceptable to ask. Asking a question says you’ve discovered something you don’t know and are looking to cure the ignorance there. This is a good thing.
Being challenged about a thing is good when done with kind intent. Sometimes being on the receiving end is hard because we no longer remember why we did what we did, and we don’t want to look stupid. Work through the question. At least one of you will learn. Either you learn that the thing that they’re challenging you on is what you thought it was, and the questioner will now understand; or you learn that it wasn’t what you thought and both of you learn what the reality is. This applies for me first (especially!).
Things going sideways
Nobody likes surprises, especially negative ones, and I will do my best to ensure surprise is kept to a minimum.
Nothing in a perf review should be a surprise to you, at least in a bad way. One exception here would be unexpected peer feedback.
Always feel free to ask for feedback, especially when you don’t know, or feel like you’ve been screwing up lately. For me, sometimes I feel like I’m screwing up, and the feeling is wrong. Asking for feedback is a way to get that necessary reality check.
When I screw up, I will own it. I expect the same of you. If we’re to maintain some amount of velocity, mistakes are going to happen, and that’s ok. Corollary: our target incidient count will never be zero. Perfect can be the enemy of good. Failure isn’t truly failure if you learned along the way. I will do my best to learn from mistakes, especially my own. I expect the same from you.
I believe that consequences != fault – just because something bad happened doesn’t mean it’s your fault, even if you’re the proximate or even root cause.
Saying something wrong isn’t necessarily a lie. Lying requires intent to deceive. I will try to be right always, but beause I’m human, I will be wrong from time to time.
I will assume people are competent and trying to do the right thing. Sometimes problems arise over what “the right thing” ought to be.
I will project calm when things are on fire. The last thing anyone needs is a manager who’s making things worse when people are trying to get things fixed.
My general model is: trust by default. I find that trust begets trust in return. Trust makes the job easier. Lack of trust makes things much harder. So helping to generate trust both within the team and with those outside is a goal.
When it comes to bad behaviors, I start with trying to put a positive construction on the events because it generall winds up being right. Essentially this is Hanlon’s Razor. That is, here at Datadog at least, people generally tend to screw up than are behaving maliciously as a pattern. But when the positive construction is no longer tenable, I will do something about it.
Generally this strategy works well, but when it fails, I admittedly tend to be slow to pick up on it. I want to give the benefit of the doubt to others, because I’d want the same in return. But when the issue is for real, it drags things out more than I’d like.
Communication With Me
Slack is great for non-nuanced questions. As soon as tone, feelings, ambiguity, and such are involved, a meeting is better. The bandwidth of slack can be surprisingly narrow, and so the risk of misunderstanding can be high. But the asynchronous nature of slack can be good if the questions are the sort that take some thinking to do.
If you’re not sure if you should loop me in on something, err on the side of looping me in. I can always choose to loop myself out. If there’s information that you think I might want to know about (subject to information ownership commentary above), err on the side of sharing. If I’m not looped in, or the infor isn’t shared with me, I don’t have the choice of doing anything with/about it. Rarely have I had someone share too much, and will let you know if it happens. but failing thatw it’s not bothersiome, it’s literally my job to deal with.
How to use my calendar
My calendar tends to be busy. But I keep it up to date. If you want to meet, grab any available slot, you don’t need to ask. If it’s a same day booking, please slack me to make sure I know. If you can’t find a slot that works for you, let me know, I’ll find a way to make things work.