9 ms·

All managers make mistakes; good managers acknowledge and repair

308 points by matheusml 1y ago

harimau777 1y ago
I think the problem is that there's a difference between a good manager and a manager who keeps their job.
- mettamage 1y ago
  The incentive is more strongly aligned with the latter one than the former one. I'm going through a bit of a phase at the moment, so I'm biased. It's "show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome". I used to find that an interesting idea, not sure if true or not. Nowadays a few years later, I'm almost hyper focusing on it, because I'm noticing that it is mostly true. Like, there's some room for individuality but when things _matter_ (e.g. livelihood, etc.), then the incentive seems paramount for most people.
  - giancarlostoro 1y ago
    Bad management trickles down from the top usually.
    - lazide 1y ago
      Also known as ‘a fish rots from the head’
  - scubbo 1y ago
    > I'm going through a bit of a phase at the moment, so I'm biased. It's "show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome". I've been in that "phase" for several years now. It's rarely steered me wrong.
- giancarlostoro 1y ago
  I had one that fired everyone he hired, I was the last one and one other guy, I got the can for sticking up for the other guy, and the other guy got a demotion. Eventually when things at the company were bad enough the manager got the can with a ton of other managers. My friend who is still there says this is his last ever programming job, after that manager he wants nothing to do with this industry, and that is a shame.
- apwell23 1y ago
  despite talk of "great flattening" I've found that management seems to be strangely immune from layoffs compared to ICs. enterprises just love layers and layers of management. can't get enough of it. No CEO has ever seen a management layer he didn't like.
  - game_the0ry 1y ago
    > management seems to be strangely immune from layoffs compared to ICs. This is super common and a very bad sign. As an employee, you are disposable in this type of culture, though it should go without saying. > enterprises just love layers and layers of management. can't get enough of it. No CEO has ever seen a management layer he didn't like. Bc more warm bodies in your org looks better on the resume. Managing 200 people on paper is more impressive than managing 20.
  - matusp 1y ago
    True. Also paradoxically, managers are the most likely to have negative value for the company, running entire departments or projects into the ground. Yet you rarely see this being reflected.
botswana99 1y ago
My mantras in management: Love Your Errors It's not a failure, it's an opportunity for improvement No shame, no blame
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ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
I have lived a life where I have to constantly be taking personal inventory, and when wrong, promptly admit it. I think that helped make me a decent manager. At least, my employees seemed to think so. But I could be wrong.
- BubbleRings 1y ago
  I’d rate this comment a “10”, ha. Good stuff, I’m with you on that road. I especially like OP’s point #1. “I know I did x, sorry about that” is so much more powerful than “Sorry you let yourself get upset that I did x”.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
    "I'm sorry you feel that way." is also another non-apology. Another important aspect is the context. A lot of people are good at public excoriation, and private apology. If I show my ass in front of a bunch of people, the apology is not an apology, unless it's made in front of the same people.
willmadden 1y ago
That sounds more like a daycare skill, not a management skill. Good managers don't get distracted by "favors" for other departments or navel gaze after making mistakes. They have a clear vision of what needs to be done and execute on it aggressively, and aren't afraid to make mistakes when pursuing a goal. Good team members love this, and the rest fail out.
- junebash 1y ago
  Disagree. This sounds like a manager that would drive me absolutely insane.
  - Wololooo 1y ago
    Sounds like the typical know it all, drives the thing into the ground while not re questioning either the why or the how, then attempts to scapegoat the team and try to save their own skin.
  - n4r9 1y ago
    Likewise. This sort of manager would immediately trigger my instinct to "manage up" and start documenting every scrap of communication as they're likely to have an unrealistic understanding of current capabilities and will over-promise deliverables.
- dahart 1y ago
  Admitting mistakes isn’t navel gazing, it’s basic humility, and it’s valuable and underrated in many social situations. You have a good point about the rest, but it’s orthogonal to this article so there’s no need to crap on it. Strong vision and aggressive pursuit of goals can indeed sometimes be motivating, but it also takes humility or it can become overbearing. Lack of vision is certainly a common failing of many managers.
ThalesX 1y ago
Implementers are not babies and managers are not our mothers. I think the management skill nobody talks about is how managers should realize they are part of a team and their focus should be on whatever the team's goal is, not in finding the perfect way to apologize. As the article says: "Your job is to ship working software that adds real value to users, to help your team grow, and to create an environment where people can do their best work." I couldn't give a rat's ass if a manager doesn't apologize to me in a way that makes my eyes water, admitting his humanity in the process, if that manager doesn't insist on making the same mistake and getting in my way all the time.
- deleted 1y ago
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- richardlblair 1y ago
  The book referenced is not wrong, but it is too narrow. Repair isn't the core attribute of parenting. It's the core attribute of human relationships. This is generally accepted as common knowledge - it's not about the rupture, it's about the repair. Good for you if you consider yourself so emotionally detached from work that you can let go of the fact that work relationships are still human relationships. However, you sit comfortably in the minority. Most people carry the human aspect of their work relationships into work. Ignoring that is step 1 of being a really bad manager. This doesn't mean we don't set appropriate boundaries or avoid giving feedback. It does mean that a great manager navigates the nuances of work relationships and work itself. It also means a great manager will adjust their approach depending on the personal needs of each employee. For instance, if I was your manager and truly believed what you're saying here*, I'd just give you the brass tax feedback and keep everything about the work itself. * And I don't. From my experience most people who take this stance have been conditioned that emotions are bad. We are big emotional bags of meat. The people I've managed with this mindset tend to be the hardest to manage. Eventually something hits their feels, they can't handle it, and the erratic behavior begins. I much prefer people who are forward with their emotions. When something happens they can vocalize it appropriately allowing me to address it. When they have feelings about feedback received, making a mistake, or doing something bad I can easily acknowledge and validate those feelings while maintain the feedback & boundaries.
giancarlostoro 1y ago
I think this goes for Engineers as well. In fact, I say the biggest skill I want from a SENIOR developer regardless of years of experience is humility. Someone who "cannot do wrong" and is a toxic about it will poison the rest of the team with their toxicity. But the seniors who are more open to feedback even from Junior developers, those are the ones everyone else follows to hell and back because they're there with you through it all so you're there with them through it all too. We are all humans, not robots. Heck, even the LLMs mess up.
- watwut 1y ago
  LLMs mess a lot, they are very confident bullshitters. But, humbleness is punished and confidence is generally rewarded. That is why so many people refuse to be humble - they know it will affect them negatively.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
  > Heck, even the LLMs mess up. You can say that again. In another window, I am iterating with one for fixing my site CSS.
  - giancarlostoro 1y ago
    The best way for me to do CSS is always just live with the dev tools tbh I cant visualize it otherwise.
    - ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
      Same here. I was just scrubbing the CSS, It rearranged things, fixed a couple of typos, and removed a ton of redundancies. Took a couple of tries, though. The first run broke everything.
- BubbleRings 1y ago
  One thing I watched closely for in interviews is the moment when an applicant said “I don’t know.” I have not had great experiences with tech co-workers who are incapable of saying that.
RyanOD 1y ago
As a former teacher / coach this is definitely the approach I took to build strong relationships with kids. Too often such relationships are all about "I'm the infallible leader...you are the flawed pupils" and that doesn't support really connecting and understanding their unique needs. In any situation, I've always believed it is better to let people we're all human and it's ok to take risks and make mistakes.
ruslan_sure 1y ago
The title is misleading. It's not about management skills. It's also impolite to use "nobody" in it.
- mrbluecoat 1y ago
  Agreed. Cliff's Notes version: "Apologize when you make mistakes."
1121redblackgo 1y ago
Great points, taken to heart thanks.
sqircles 1y ago
People love to talk about management skills and how things should be, but in my experience the autonomy to have that freedom is greatly lost upon the manager. At every level of management you'll be barking down orders as a transitory and the main difference is how you do or do not get buy-in from your reports - and often it is next to impossible to gain that buy-in (more work! longer hours! emergency pragmatic fix for an administrative problem!), which is why you're the one presenting the task.
- deleted 1y ago
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selecsosi 1y ago
IME the gap in management between ICs is accountability. It's easy to say you are sorry, or say things won't happen again but good management, and what I strive to do is hold myself accountable. To me, that means 1. To identify the issue that occurred (especially when you caused it), and much more importantly, 2. Put systems into place that prevent it from happening again. Employees can feel very clearly when a manager lacks accountability and as part of mid and especially high level management (if your goal is actually improving both output and quality of people's lives) to not just say you did something wrong, but actually put your skin in the game ensuring what happened will not happen again (usually it means being better at saying no or aggressively managing prioritization rather than heaping additional tasks on people).
- datadrivenangel 1y ago
  Good systems thinking combined with an actual desire/incentive to continuously improve is a combo that results in good management.
  - MrDarcy 1y ago
    Also why neurodiverse people often make exceptional managers. The neurology often results in good systems thinking. The diversity results in lifelong disciplined improvement of social interactions.
    - _9ptr 1y ago
      Neurodiverse can mean a lot of things. And many of these things are probably detrimental to the manager role.
      - MrDarcy 1y ago
        Maybe. Maybe not. Both you and I are expressing personal opinions.
- bluGill 1y ago
  Mostly I agree with 2, but be careful not to get so many systems that nothing can get done anymore. Finding that balance is hard.
n4r9 1y ago
Someone posted a link on HN years ago to a set of google docs titled the "Mochary Method", which covers all sorts of management skills just like this. I have it bookmarked as it's the only set of notes I've seen which talks about this stuff in a very human way that makes sense to me (as a non-manager). Here's the doc for responding to mistakes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AqBGwJ2gMQCrx5hK8q-u7wP0T0ut3dr6kGUJ2pc5IpQ/edit?tab=t.0 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AqBGwJ2gMQCrx5hK8q-u7wP0... And here's a video with Matt talking about it in a little more detail: https://www.loom.com/share/651f369c763f4377a146657e1362c780 https://www.loom.com/share/651f369c763f4377a146657e1362c780 It's a very similar approach to the linked article although it goes slightly further in advocating "rewind and redo" where possible. EDIT - The full "curriculum" is here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/18FiJbYn53fTtPmphfdCKT2TMWH-8Y2L-MLqDk-MFV4s/edit?tab=t.0# https://docs.google.com/document/d/18FiJbYn53fTtPmphfdCKT2TM...
- Wololooo 1y ago
  Would you happen to have the links to all the docs? I feel like there might be done value at re-disseminating it, even if I am guessing most things are common sense, sometimes seeing things written down help to stop, reflect, and do better.
  - n4r9 1y ago
    Of course! I've added an edit at the bottom of that comment.
otikik 1y ago
Nah, obviously good managers don't need to repair because they don't make mistakes in the first place. And if they are really really good at not making mistakes they become executives, which are the closest we have to human perfection.
GloriousMEEPT 1y ago
My first boss told me that it's the primary role of a good manager to keep bullshit away from your most competent staff and 'manage' everyone else. I've worked for a number of organizations with different ideas of management since then, but that has been my guiding principle.
- corytheboyd 1y ago
  This meshes nicely with another comment that resonated with me about how it’s seniors that need to act like what the article talks about. The senior ICs are the squad leaders on the frontline with the rest of the team, knee deep in the same shit they are. It’s really THOSE people doing the constant day-to-day trust building, team leveling, shit getting done-ing, repairing… And so yeah, a good manager lets those seniors just go be good at that, not bogging them down with work that is a complete waste of their potential. It’s a bit of a symbiotic relationship really, because a manager with no such seniors on the team won’t have the firepower to crush goals, and a senior without a good manager will never be allowed to excel.
Normal_gaussian 1y ago
> The ~~Management~~ Skill Nobody Talks About. Getting on with people long term is often about making them feeling acknowledged and being clear about what makes them valued. The real trick to 'repair' is not to make hollow promises. Managers can be perceived as failing when an external event happens and they haven't planned for it, or they bet against it happening. This can kick off a whole chain of events, including pushing team members into crunch time or 'impossible positions'. Its rare that you can stop the external event or a similar one from happening, so promising it won't is hollow. The next hollow promise commonly made is 'when it happens I won't let X happen [to you]'. The problem here is often that you probably will. In two ways: either X happening is clear in hindsight but not with foresight, so you'll probably make similar decisions again; or, the team member ending up in an unhappy situation is the best of a bad bunch of options. I've had to place people in positions where they had insufficient support and excessive demands. Sometimes I knew this going in, and sometimes I did not. You also have to be careful about passing the buck - if you're the manager you need to be clear with yourself about what your job is and whose issue any given problem actually is. Do you help your team interact with third parties, or do third parties interact with your team through you? How much are you supposed to represent your teams needs to management (e.g. pushback) vs how much are you supposed to represent your management's desires to the team (e.g. pushdown). If you are caught passing the buck to shirk responsibility by your reports or by management you will lose a lot of trust and respect very quickly. You can always pushback or pushdown harder to appear 'good' to one party, but at some extreme that is going to lose you your job. Its your choice how to play this - so own the choice.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
  As a manager, my first priority was to project/protect the corporation interests. I always made that clear to my employees, but after that, my employees' interests generally came second (over my own). It seemed to work. I was a manager at the same company for over 25 years, and my bosses were really tough (but fair).
  - ozozozd 1y ago
    What does “tough but fair” mean? If you’re fair, what function does being tough serve? Or does being fair allow tolerating the shortcoming that’s being tough? An employee being tough - resilient, emotionally strong - sounds like a good idea. But manager being tough to reports? I fail to see the function/value.
neumann 1y ago
Oh no. Not another LinkedIn insight from a new dad about how managing humans in corp is just like parenting. Just fucking enjoy being a parent and don't apply your obvious empathy epiphanies to your career out loud.
- BubbleRings 1y ago
  The hostility of your reply seemed much more Facebook than OP’s post seemed LinkedIn.
- Apfel 1y ago
  Wowee! What an unpleasant response. As both a parent and an employee, I found the article extremely useful and shared it internally at my org. Maybe step back from the computer a bit.
billy99k 1y ago
I think the best skill is protection from executives. My best manager would tell the executives 'no' for ridiculous requests like cutting deadlines last minute or feature requests that didn't make sense. He also talked me up after an acquisition and I never ended up getting cut. He was also close to retirement and didn't care about moving up the ladder. Many bad managers do and will sacrifice you and the rest of the team to make themselves look better.
trentnix 1y ago
The article talks a lot about appropriate management behaviors that come from humility, but I don't think humility is a skill. The skill is having an accurate and effective self-awareness. If you are (accurately) self-aware then humility (and confidence, where appropriate) is an inevitable side-effect. And that means stuff like... Acknowledging what happened, taking responsibility, and reconnecting. ...is a reflex, not a tactic.
jackero 1y ago
I think this is a basic “being an adult” skill to be honest. We all know those friends that you can’t criticize because they’ll take it poorly.
sgallant 1y ago
> I recently read “Good Inside” by Dr. Becky Kennedy, a parenting book that completely changed how I think about this. She talks about how the most important parenting skill isn’t being perfect — it’s repair. Love this book! Just read it. Must read for parents, IMO.
ruslan_sure 1y ago
Reading comments. It seems like there are a lot of bad managers.
yakkomajuri 1y ago
This is not just about management but life overall. You will mess up with the people you love -- and repair is the way to go there as well.
- linsomniac 1y ago
  Absolutely, EVERYONE needs to figure out how to benefit from their mistakes rather than try to sweep them under the rug. This is one recurring theme I bring up with my kids: If you don't learn from your mistakes, you've made two mistakes. It is really hard to say "I messed up", but you can't live your life acting like you don't make mistakes. Learn from your mistakes, and then move on.
  - delichon 1y ago
    Not so sure. I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die, failed to sweep him under a rug, and now I've got the Folsom Prison blues.
    - IAmBroom 1y ago
      On the up side, your musical career just got a boost!
    - D-Coder 1y ago
      But at least you've learned to sweep the next ones under a rug!
boringg 1y ago
And then get skewered for their mistakes by others and get level capped in a competitive work environment. Lose lose situation. You can come out looking better and sometimes that works, and sometimes people lose faith in you.
geocrasher 1y ago
s/managers/humans/g
conception 1y ago
I think perhaps the largest change in American culture that I’ve seen over the last 50 years is that there’s nothing worse than being wrong. See it played out consistently in the public site and in the corporate world. I’m not sure what the solution is, but not allowing people to say I’m sorry and make amends and not holding those won’t say it accountable have been major pillars in a lot of our societal ills.
genghisjahn 1y ago
Two things I learned. As you move up the management ladder, the problems get harder. If they were easy, they would be solved already. Second, when things go poorly, accept responsibility. When things go well, give credit to the team.
agentultra 1y ago
This is great advice. It will work for introspective, self-reflecting managers who honestly want to do better. Such a manager is extremely rare. Most will be oblivious to their own biases and cognitive short-comings. I don't think most "bad managers," even know that they're bad at their job. There's no accountability, no metrics, no performance reviews, no studies on their productivity... mostly because their "job" is to be the proxy for the power of the shareholders. I applaud anyone who finds themselves an engineering manager and wants to be good at what they do and work for their team. It's hard to find a good manager. But the only recourse for an IC under a bad manager is to quit or find another team to work on.
- ahel 1y ago
  > But the only recourse for an IC under a bad manager is to quit or find another team to work on. Agree but nothing easy about that.
softwaredoug 1y ago
I wrote a list of dangerous things to look out for in toxic colleagues, trying to be objective, so as not to think anyone I'm annoyed by is "toxic" Inability to apologize / repair was near the top of the list. Everyone makes a lot of interpersonal mistakes. Most people can apologize. Another big one was "norms for thee, but not for me". As in the rules we create as a team don't apply to me. But apply to everyone else. The toxic person gets to use them as a cudgel, but they don't seem to be bound by them. Another one is being very thin-skinned. Easily jumping into a kind of victim mentality (surprisingly common even in leaders) where they are the ones being put upon. Being a victim, they are justified in doing whatever it takes to correct the situation Related to that last one, many of these folks feel like they're taking on more than their share and have to carry the team. They may have a narrative they are the brilliant person on the team that has to fix everyone else's screwups. Or the team can't live without their unique skills. Therefore they're "special" and get to act outside the rules / norms. And other leaders can feed into this when they think the special person is indispensable, turning a blind eye to their bad behavior.
zac23or 1y ago
Before my first job, I read many of these types of texts. When I entered the job market, I saw that the truth was very different. This is pure nonsense. In my 26 years of experience, I see managers and HR professionals as company advocates, with a single mission: to protect the company's interests. Whether managers admit mistakes or not is irrelevant; what matters is that they defend the company's interests, no matter the cost. Mistakes are passed on to the people who can do the heavy lifting, and they respond with dismissal or legal retaliation (when possible). Your HR exit interview is designed to find out if you harbor resentment toward the company and if there's a chance the company will be sued. I've tried every imaginable technique I've read in modern books. Politics are more important than anything, and nothing works.
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plemer 1y ago
I must be missing something - didn’t we all learn how to apologize and take responsibility in kindergarten? Granted, easier said than done.
- IAmBroom 1y ago
  You move in better circles than I do. I find most people struggle to do this, and the rest don't even try.
  - porsager 1y ago
    Do you follow their lead, or do you try to set a better example? Does it become harder to do what you know is best?
    - IAmBroom 1y ago
      Your question is massively generalized. A little bit in every bucket, but obviously I think I'm aiming for better. One of my newish mantras is: "Apologizing is what we expect of 9-year-olds. Older children are expected to make compensations or repairs. Adults are expected to modify their own behavior in the future."
      - porsager 1y ago
        I like that.
- porsager 1y ago
  Nope - it disappeared at the cost of "inclusion".
  - IAmBroom 1y ago
    So... was it the blacks, the Jews, or the trans people who ruined it all? Just curious.
reactordev 1y ago
The best managers I ever had were the ones they flat out said "I'm not an expert, what do you think?" or akin to. Being humble is such a skill. Those managers ended up building huge, amazingly successful teams. The managers that did it their way ended up failing up but at the expense of the team. Everyone who works with them is let go or fired or jumps ship. Great managers are able to touch on our humanity, which should inspire us all to rise up to meet them.
nayuki 1y ago
Good advice. The same thing applies to parents - they make mistakes, but owning up to them is what makes a good parent. Same with peer relationships as well (but there is no power dynamic).
bigmattystyles 1y ago
The worst mistakes to acknowledge and remedy for me have always been bad hiring. I’ve always been in the camp of ‘I can make this person work well’ but I’ve found myself questioning this approach. As my team has grown, bad fits are taxing. And it also is on other team members. I’ve shifted from doing ‘the right thing’ by giving people many chances before escalating to PIP, decided that I am just making it tough on myself and the rest of the team and to be quicker to start the process. But still, for me, it’s so much easier to acknowledge tech mistakes than dealing with employees not up to it for whatever reason, especially when they are good people. It becomes easier when they turn out to be difficult people though for me, it’s still hard.
- vjvjvjvjghv 1y ago
  I also used to think that you can coach people into becoming good performers. But experience has taught me that teams are more productive by magnitudes if everybody gets along and trusts each other. Even one bad performer can have a huge negative impact.
storus 1y ago
Based on this description I've never experienced a good manager, not even once.
gdw2 1y ago
In Deming's Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle, leadership often leaves off Study and Act of which "acknowledge" and "repair" are part of.
DrNosferatu 1y ago
Very seldom a German manager would ever do this.
kqr 1y ago
After reading just the title I was going to make a crack that the skills of parents and managers largely overlaps.[1] Turns out the author did also make that connection, and that's what spawned the article! [1]: I even have a draft article on similarly transferred learning: https://entropicthoughts.com/transparent-leadership-beats-servant-leadership https://entropicthoughts.com/transparent-leadership-beats-se...
j4coh 1y ago
The worst managers leave an endless trail of new process, approvals, and checklists for anything that has ever gone wrong since they joined the company.
couchdb_ouchdb 1y ago
I've tried do this a couple of times in the last year, but it always seems to backfire, specifically with Gen Z. After I apologize, they seem to think of it as an opening to continue to shit on me and bring up more of my shortcomings -- which is just bizarre to me. Because of this, it's made me really second guess acknowledging when I think I've made a mistake.
- fifilura 1y ago
  You will have to lead. The alternative is a race to the bottom.
  - couchdb_ouchdb 1y ago
    Thanks. I needed someone to say that to me. Appreciate it.
jbs789 1y ago
All people make mistakes…

308 points by matheusml 1y ago

harimau777 1y ago

I think the problem is that there's a difference between a good manager and a manager who keeps their job.

mettamage 1y ago
The incentive is more strongly aligned with the latter one than the former one. I'm going through a bit of a phase at the moment, so I'm biased. It's "show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome". I used to find that an interesting idea, not sure if true or not. Nowadays a few years later, I'm almost hyper focusing on it, because I'm noticing that it is mostly true. Like, there's some room for individuality but when things _matter_ (e.g. livelihood, etc.), then the incentive seems paramount for most people.
- giancarlostoro 1y ago
  Bad management trickles down from the top usually.
  - lazide 1y ago
    Also known as ‘a fish rots from the head’
- scubbo 1y ago
  > I'm going through a bit of a phase at the moment, so I'm biased. It's "show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome". I've been in that "phase" for several years now. It's rarely steered me wrong.
giancarlostoro 1y ago
I had one that fired everyone he hired, I was the last one and one other guy, I got the can for sticking up for the other guy, and the other guy got a demotion. Eventually when things at the company were bad enough the manager got the can with a ton of other managers. My friend who is still there says this is his last ever programming job, after that manager he wants nothing to do with this industry, and that is a shame.
apwell23 1y ago
despite talk of "great flattening" I've found that management seems to be strangely immune from layoffs compared to ICs. enterprises just love layers and layers of management. can't get enough of it. No CEO has ever seen a management layer he didn't like.
- game_the0ry 1y ago
  > management seems to be strangely immune from layoffs compared to ICs. This is super common and a very bad sign. As an employee, you are disposable in this type of culture, though it should go without saying. > enterprises just love layers and layers of management. can't get enough of it. No CEO has ever seen a management layer he didn't like. Bc more warm bodies in your org looks better on the resume. Managing 200 people on paper is more impressive than managing 20.
- matusp 1y ago
  True. Also paradoxically, managers are the most likely to have negative value for the company, running entire departments or projects into the ground. Yet you rarely see this being reflected.

botswana99 1y ago

My mantras in management: Love Your Errors It's not a failure, it's an opportunity for improvement No shame, no blame

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ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago

I have lived a life where I have to constantly be taking personal inventory, and when wrong, promptly admit it. I think that helped make me a decent manager. At least, my employees seemed to think so. But I could be wrong.

BubbleRings 1y ago
I’d rate this comment a “10”, ha. Good stuff, I’m with you on that road. I especially like OP’s point #1. “I know I did x, sorry about that” is so much more powerful than “Sorry you let yourself get upset that I did x”.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
  "I'm sorry you feel that way." is also another non-apology. Another important aspect is the context. A lot of people are good at public excoriation, and private apology. If I show my ass in front of a bunch of people, the apology is not an apology, unless it's made in front of the same people.

willmadden 1y ago

That sounds more like a daycare skill, not a management skill. Good managers don't get distracted by "favors" for other departments or navel gaze after making mistakes. They have a clear vision of what needs to be done and execute on it aggressively, and aren't afraid to make mistakes when pursuing a goal. Good team members love this, and the rest fail out.

junebash 1y ago
Disagree. This sounds like a manager that would drive me absolutely insane.
- Wololooo 1y ago
  Sounds like the typical know it all, drives the thing into the ground while not re questioning either the why or the how, then attempts to scapegoat the team and try to save their own skin.
- n4r9 1y ago
  Likewise. This sort of manager would immediately trigger my instinct to "manage up" and start documenting every scrap of communication as they're likely to have an unrealistic understanding of current capabilities and will over-promise deliverables.
dahart 1y ago
Admitting mistakes isn’t navel gazing, it’s basic humility, and it’s valuable and underrated in many social situations. You have a good point about the rest, but it’s orthogonal to this article so there’s no need to crap on it. Strong vision and aggressive pursuit of goals can indeed sometimes be motivating, but it also takes humility or it can become overbearing. Lack of vision is certainly a common failing of many managers.

ThalesX 1y ago

Implementers are not babies and managers are not our mothers. I think the management skill nobody talks about is how managers should realize they are part of a team and their focus should be on whatever the team's goal is, not in finding the perfect way to apologize. As the article says: "Your job is to ship working software that adds real value to users, to help your team grow, and to create an environment where people can do their best work." I couldn't give a rat's ass if a manager doesn't apologize to me in a way that makes my eyes water, admitting his humanity in the process, if that manager doesn't insist on making the same mistake and getting in my way all the time.

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richardlblair 1y ago
The book referenced is not wrong, but it is too narrow. Repair isn't the core attribute of parenting. It's the core attribute of human relationships. This is generally accepted as common knowledge - it's not about the rupture, it's about the repair. Good for you if you consider yourself so emotionally detached from work that you can let go of the fact that work relationships are still human relationships. However, you sit comfortably in the minority. Most people carry the human aspect of their work relationships into work. Ignoring that is step 1 of being a really bad manager. This doesn't mean we don't set appropriate boundaries or avoid giving feedback. It does mean that a great manager navigates the nuances of work relationships and work itself. It also means a great manager will adjust their approach depending on the personal needs of each employee. For instance, if I was your manager and truly believed what you're saying here*, I'd just give you the brass tax feedback and keep everything about the work itself. * And I don't. From my experience most people who take this stance have been conditioned that emotions are bad. We are big emotional bags of meat. The people I've managed with this mindset tend to be the hardest to manage. Eventually something hits their feels, they can't handle it, and the erratic behavior begins. I much prefer people who are forward with their emotions. When something happens they can vocalize it appropriately allowing me to address it. When they have feelings about feedback received, making a mistake, or doing something bad I can easily acknowledge and validate those feelings while maintain the feedback & boundaries.

giancarlostoro 1y ago

I think this goes for Engineers as well. In fact, I say the biggest skill I want from a SENIOR developer regardless of years of experience is humility. Someone who "cannot do wrong" and is a toxic about it will poison the rest of the team with their toxicity. But the seniors who are more open to feedback even from Junior developers, those are the ones everyone else follows to hell and back because they're there with you through it all so you're there with them through it all too. We are all humans, not robots. Heck, even the LLMs mess up.

watwut 1y ago
LLMs mess a lot, they are very confident bullshitters. But, humbleness is punished and confidence is generally rewarded. That is why so many people refuse to be humble - they know it will affect them negatively.
ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
> Heck, even the LLMs mess up. You can say that again. In another window, I am iterating with one for fixing my site CSS.
- giancarlostoro 1y ago
  The best way for me to do CSS is always just live with the dev tools tbh I cant visualize it otherwise.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
    Same here. I was just scrubbing the CSS, It rearranged things, fixed a couple of typos, and removed a ton of redundancies. Took a couple of tries, though. The first run broke everything.
BubbleRings 1y ago
One thing I watched closely for in interviews is the moment when an applicant said “I don’t know.” I have not had great experiences with tech co-workers who are incapable of saying that.

RyanOD 1y ago

As a former teacher / coach this is definitely the approach I took to build strong relationships with kids. Too often such relationships are all about "I'm the infallible leader...you are the flawed pupils" and that doesn't support really connecting and understanding their unique needs. In any situation, I've always believed it is better to let people we're all human and it's ok to take risks and make mistakes.

ruslan_sure 1y ago

The title is misleading. It's not about management skills. It's also impolite to use "nobody" in it.

mrbluecoat 1y ago
Agreed. Cliff's Notes version: "Apologize when you make mistakes."

1121redblackgo 1y ago

Great points, taken to heart thanks.

sqircles 1y ago

People love to talk about management skills and how things should be, but in my experience the autonomy to have that freedom is greatly lost upon the manager. At every level of management you'll be barking down orders as a transitory and the main difference is how you do or do not get buy-in from your reports - and often it is next to impossible to gain that buy-in (more work! longer hours! emergency pragmatic fix for an administrative problem!), which is why you're the one presenting the task.

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selecsosi 1y ago

IME the gap in management between ICs is accountability. It's easy to say you are sorry, or say things won't happen again but good management, and what I strive to do is hold myself accountable. To me, that means 1. To identify the issue that occurred (especially when you caused it), and much more importantly, 2. Put systems into place that prevent it from happening again. Employees can feel very clearly when a manager lacks accountability and as part of mid and especially high level management (if your goal is actually improving both output and quality of people's lives) to not just say you did something wrong, but actually put your skin in the game ensuring what happened will not happen again (usually it means being better at saying no or aggressively managing prioritization rather than heaping additional tasks on people).

datadrivenangel 1y ago
Good systems thinking combined with an actual desire/incentive to continuously improve is a combo that results in good management.
- MrDarcy 1y ago
  Also why neurodiverse people often make exceptional managers. The neurology often results in good systems thinking. The diversity results in lifelong disciplined improvement of social interactions.
  - _9ptr 1y ago
    Neurodiverse can mean a lot of things. And many of these things are probably detrimental to the manager role.
    - MrDarcy 1y ago
      Maybe. Maybe not. Both you and I are expressing personal opinions.
bluGill 1y ago
Mostly I agree with 2, but be careful not to get so many systems that nothing can get done anymore. Finding that balance is hard.

n4r9 1y ago

Someone posted a link on HN years ago to a set of google docs titled the "Mochary Method", which covers all sorts of management skills just like this. I have it bookmarked as it's the only set of notes I've seen which talks about this stuff in a very human way that makes sense to me (as a non-manager). Here's the doc for responding to mistakes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AqBGwJ2gMQCrx5hK8q-u7wP0T0ut3dr6kGUJ2pc5IpQ/edit?tab=t.0 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AqBGwJ2gMQCrx5hK8q-u7wP0... And here's a video with Matt talking about it in a little more detail: https://www.loom.com/share/651f369c763f4377a146657e1362c780 https://www.loom.com/share/651f369c763f4377a146657e1362c780 It's a very similar approach to the linked article although it goes slightly further in advocating "rewind and redo" where possible. EDIT - The full "curriculum" is here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/18FiJbYn53fTtPmphfdCKT2TMWH-8Y2L-MLqDk-MFV4s/edit?tab=t.0# https://docs.google.com/document/d/18FiJbYn53fTtPmphfdCKT2TM...

Wololooo 1y ago
Would you happen to have the links to all the docs? I feel like there might be done value at re-disseminating it, even if I am guessing most things are common sense, sometimes seeing things written down help to stop, reflect, and do better.
- n4r9 1y ago
  Of course! I've added an edit at the bottom of that comment.

otikik 1y ago

Nah, obviously good managers don't need to repair because they don't make mistakes in the first place. And if they are really really good at not making mistakes they become executives, which are the closest we have to human perfection.

GloriousMEEPT 1y ago

My first boss told me that it's the primary role of a good manager to keep bullshit away from your most competent staff and 'manage' everyone else. I've worked for a number of organizations with different ideas of management since then, but that has been my guiding principle.

corytheboyd 1y ago
This meshes nicely with another comment that resonated with me about how it’s seniors that need to act like what the article talks about. The senior ICs are the squad leaders on the frontline with the rest of the team, knee deep in the same shit they are. It’s really THOSE people doing the constant day-to-day trust building, team leveling, shit getting done-ing, repairing… And so yeah, a good manager lets those seniors just go be good at that, not bogging them down with work that is a complete waste of their potential. It’s a bit of a symbiotic relationship really, because a manager with no such seniors on the team won’t have the firepower to crush goals, and a senior without a good manager will never be allowed to excel.

Normal_gaussian 1y ago

> The ~~Management~~ Skill Nobody Talks About. Getting on with people long term is often about making them feeling acknowledged and being clear about what makes them valued. The real trick to 'repair' is not to make hollow promises. Managers can be perceived as failing when an external event happens and they haven't planned for it, or they bet against it happening. This can kick off a whole chain of events, including pushing team members into crunch time or 'impossible positions'. Its rare that you can stop the external event or a similar one from happening, so promising it won't is hollow. The next hollow promise commonly made is 'when it happens I won't let X happen [to you]'. The problem here is often that you probably will. In two ways: either X happening is clear in hindsight but not with foresight, so you'll probably make similar decisions again; or, the team member ending up in an unhappy situation is the best of a bad bunch of options. I've had to place people in positions where they had insufficient support and excessive demands. Sometimes I knew this going in, and sometimes I did not. You also have to be careful about passing the buck - if you're the manager you need to be clear with yourself about what your job is and whose issue any given problem actually is. Do you help your team interact with third parties, or do third parties interact with your team through you? How much are you supposed to represent your teams needs to management (e.g. pushback) vs how much are you supposed to represent your management's desires to the team (e.g. pushdown). If you are caught passing the buck to shirk responsibility by your reports or by management you will lose a lot of trust and respect very quickly. You can always pushback or pushdown harder to appear 'good' to one party, but at some extreme that is going to lose you your job. Its your choice how to play this - so own the choice.

ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
As a manager, my first priority was to project/protect the corporation interests. I always made that clear to my employees, but after that, my employees' interests generally came second (over my own). It seemed to work. I was a manager at the same company for over 25 years, and my bosses were really tough (but fair).
- ozozozd 1y ago
  What does “tough but fair” mean? If you’re fair, what function does being tough serve? Or does being fair allow tolerating the shortcoming that’s being tough? An employee being tough - resilient, emotionally strong - sounds like a good idea. But manager being tough to reports? I fail to see the function/value.

neumann 1y ago

Oh no. Not another LinkedIn insight from a new dad about how managing humans in corp is just like parenting. Just fucking enjoy being a parent and don't apply your obvious empathy epiphanies to your career out loud.

BubbleRings 1y ago
The hostility of your reply seemed much more Facebook than OP’s post seemed LinkedIn.
Apfel 1y ago
Wowee! What an unpleasant response. As both a parent and an employee, I found the article extremely useful and shared it internally at my org. Maybe step back from the computer a bit.

billy99k 1y ago

I think the best skill is protection from executives. My best manager would tell the executives 'no' for ridiculous requests like cutting deadlines last minute or feature requests that didn't make sense. He also talked me up after an acquisition and I never ended up getting cut. He was also close to retirement and didn't care about moving up the ladder. Many bad managers do and will sacrifice you and the rest of the team to make themselves look better.

trentnix 1y ago

The article talks a lot about appropriate management behaviors that come from humility, but I don't think humility is a skill. The skill is having an accurate and effective self-awareness. If you are (accurately) self-aware then humility (and confidence, where appropriate) is an inevitable side-effect. And that means stuff like... Acknowledging what happened, taking responsibility, and reconnecting. ...is a reflex, not a tactic.

jackero 1y ago

I think this is a basic “being an adult” skill to be honest. We all know those friends that you can’t criticize because they’ll take it poorly.

sgallant 1y ago

> I recently read “Good Inside” by Dr. Becky Kennedy, a parenting book that completely changed how I think about this. She talks about how the most important parenting skill isn’t being perfect — it’s repair. Love this book! Just read it. Must read for parents, IMO.

ruslan_sure 1y ago

Reading comments. It seems like there are a lot of bad managers.

yakkomajuri 1y ago

This is not just about management but life overall. You will mess up with the people you love -- and repair is the way to go there as well.

linsomniac 1y ago
Absolutely, EVERYONE needs to figure out how to benefit from their mistakes rather than try to sweep them under the rug. This is one recurring theme I bring up with my kids: If you don't learn from your mistakes, you've made two mistakes. It is really hard to say "I messed up", but you can't live your life acting like you don't make mistakes. Learn from your mistakes, and then move on.
- delichon 1y ago
  Not so sure. I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die, failed to sweep him under a rug, and now I've got the Folsom Prison blues.
  - IAmBroom 1y ago
    On the up side, your musical career just got a boost!
  - D-Coder 1y ago
    But at least you've learned to sweep the next ones under a rug!

boringg 1y ago

And then get skewered for their mistakes by others and get level capped in a competitive work environment. Lose lose situation. You can come out looking better and sometimes that works, and sometimes people lose faith in you.

geocrasher 1y ago

s/managers/humans/g

conception 1y ago

I think perhaps the largest change in American culture that I’ve seen over the last 50 years is that there’s nothing worse than being wrong. See it played out consistently in the public site and in the corporate world. I’m not sure what the solution is, but not allowing people to say I’m sorry and make amends and not holding those won’t say it accountable have been major pillars in a lot of our societal ills.

genghisjahn 1y ago

Two things I learned. As you move up the management ladder, the problems get harder. If they were easy, they would be solved already. Second, when things go poorly, accept responsibility. When things go well, give credit to the team.

agentultra 1y ago

This is great advice. It will work for introspective, self-reflecting managers who honestly want to do better. Such a manager is extremely rare. Most will be oblivious to their own biases and cognitive short-comings. I don't think most "bad managers," even know that they're bad at their job. There's no accountability, no metrics, no performance reviews, no studies on their productivity... mostly because their "job" is to be the proxy for the power of the shareholders. I applaud anyone who finds themselves an engineering manager and wants to be good at what they do and work for their team. It's hard to find a good manager. But the only recourse for an IC under a bad manager is to quit or find another team to work on.

ahel 1y ago
> But the only recourse for an IC under a bad manager is to quit or find another team to work on. Agree but nothing easy about that.

softwaredoug 1y ago

I wrote a list of dangerous things to look out for in toxic colleagues, trying to be objective, so as not to think anyone I'm annoyed by is "toxic" Inability to apologize / repair was near the top of the list. Everyone makes a lot of interpersonal mistakes. Most people can apologize. Another big one was "norms for thee, but not for me". As in the rules we create as a team don't apply to me. But apply to everyone else. The toxic person gets to use them as a cudgel, but they don't seem to be bound by them. Another one is being very thin-skinned. Easily jumping into a kind of victim mentality (surprisingly common even in leaders) where they are the ones being put upon. Being a victim, they are justified in doing whatever it takes to correct the situation Related to that last one, many of these folks feel like they're taking on more than their share and have to carry the team. They may have a narrative they are the brilliant person on the team that has to fix everyone else's screwups. Or the team can't live without their unique skills. Therefore they're "special" and get to act outside the rules / norms. And other leaders can feed into this when they think the special person is indispensable, turning a blind eye to their bad behavior.

zac23or 1y ago

Before my first job, I read many of these types of texts. When I entered the job market, I saw that the truth was very different. This is pure nonsense. In my 26 years of experience, I see managers and HR professionals as company advocates, with a single mission: to protect the company's interests. Whether managers admit mistakes or not is irrelevant; what matters is that they defend the company's interests, no matter the cost. Mistakes are passed on to the people who can do the heavy lifting, and they respond with dismissal or legal retaliation (when possible). Your HR exit interview is designed to find out if you harbor resentment toward the company and if there's a chance the company will be sued. I've tried every imaginable technique I've read in modern books. Politics are more important than anything, and nothing works.

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plemer 1y ago

I must be missing something - didn’t we all learn how to apologize and take responsibility in kindergarten? Granted, easier said than done.

IAmBroom 1y ago
You move in better circles than I do. I find most people struggle to do this, and the rest don't even try.
- porsager 1y ago
  Do you follow their lead, or do you try to set a better example? Does it become harder to do what you know is best?
  - IAmBroom 1y ago
    Your question is massively generalized. A little bit in every bucket, but obviously I think I'm aiming for better. One of my newish mantras is: "Apologizing is what we expect of 9-year-olds. Older children are expected to make compensations or repairs. Adults are expected to modify their own behavior in the future."
    - porsager 1y ago
      I like that.
porsager 1y ago
Nope - it disappeared at the cost of "inclusion".
- IAmBroom 1y ago
  So... was it the blacks, the Jews, or the trans people who ruined it all? Just curious.

reactordev 1y ago

The best managers I ever had were the ones they flat out said "I'm not an expert, what do you think?" or akin to. Being humble is such a skill. Those managers ended up building huge, amazingly successful teams. The managers that did it their way ended up failing up but at the expense of the team. Everyone who works with them is let go or fired or jumps ship. Great managers are able to touch on our humanity, which should inspire us all to rise up to meet them.

nayuki 1y ago

Good advice. The same thing applies to parents - they make mistakes, but owning up to them is what makes a good parent. Same with peer relationships as well (but there is no power dynamic).

bigmattystyles 1y ago

The worst mistakes to acknowledge and remedy for me have always been bad hiring. I’ve always been in the camp of ‘I can make this person work well’ but I’ve found myself questioning this approach. As my team has grown, bad fits are taxing. And it also is on other team members. I’ve shifted from doing ‘the right thing’ by giving people many chances before escalating to PIP, decided that I am just making it tough on myself and the rest of the team and to be quicker to start the process. But still, for me, it’s so much easier to acknowledge tech mistakes than dealing with employees not up to it for whatever reason, especially when they are good people. It becomes easier when they turn out to be difficult people though for me, it’s still hard.

vjvjvjvjghv 1y ago
I also used to think that you can coach people into becoming good performers. But experience has taught me that teams are more productive by magnitudes if everybody gets along and trusts each other. Even one bad performer can have a huge negative impact.

storus 1y ago

Based on this description I've never experienced a good manager, not even once.

gdw2 1y ago

In Deming's Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle, leadership often leaves off Study and Act of which "acknowledge" and "repair" are part of.

DrNosferatu 1y ago

Very seldom a German manager would ever do this.

kqr 1y ago

After reading just the title I was going to make a crack that the skills of parents and managers largely overlaps.[1] Turns out the author did also make that connection, and that's what spawned the article! [1]: I even have a draft article on similarly transferred learning: https://entropicthoughts.com/transparent-leadership-beats-servant-leadership https://entropicthoughts.com/transparent-leadership-beats-se...

j4coh 1y ago

The worst managers leave an endless trail of new process, approvals, and checklists for anything that has ever gone wrong since they joined the company.

couchdb_ouchdb 1y ago

I've tried do this a couple of times in the last year, but it always seems to backfire, specifically with Gen Z. After I apologize, they seem to think of it as an opening to continue to shit on me and bring up more of my shortcomings -- which is just bizarre to me. Because of this, it's made me really second guess acknowledging when I think I've made a mistake.

fifilura 1y ago
You will have to lead. The alternative is a race to the bottom.
- couchdb_ouchdb 1y ago
  Thanks. I needed someone to say that to me. Appreciate it.

jbs789 1y ago

All people make mistakes…