When I started working as an Engineering Manager (EM) I had the assumption that to be a good EM I had to teach everything I knew to the developers I led, and to do that effectively, every moment had to be a teachable moment.

You may have felt the same or seen it in people who don’t want to let any interaction go wasted by not having a lightbulb moment.

That assumption put unbelievable pressure on my shoulders because every 1:1 had to be a crucial step in the developer’s career, every code review had to show a good insight on my part, and every conversation had to be insightful and productive. Suffice it to say I was not a very effective manager.

Over the years, after many hours of learning and much frustration, I started changing my expectations and thus changed how I approached working with my team. These are some of the hard lessons I learned

It takes time

Any serious learning takes trust and time. You can’t rush it. You can share your knowledge and your experience but you can’t really transfer it, the other person needs to take it in, assimilate it, accept it, internalize it, and ultimately live it. More, importantly, they need to be willing to do that.

And that won’t happen overnight. It definitely won’t at first when you and they are still getting to know each other. Be patient and allow the trust to grow organically.

I don't control everything

Years ago I read this quote, often attributed to Galileo Galilei

We cannot teach people anything; we can only help them discover it within themselves

It’s the first part that stuck with me: I cannot teach people anything. For me, it means that it is not about me, it’s about them. It’s not my job to make every moment a teachable moment. My job is to be there, share my experience, and ask questions.

When they are ready the learning will happen.

It’s not about teaching, it’s about learning

This is what I struggled the most in accepting about myself, although I see it quite clearly with some of the leaders I worked with in the past.

What I taught, I don’t know was once said to me by a leader I had in my early years of professional development when we were reminiscing about that time.

It took me a while to understand what he meant. It took me years, it took me to become a leader myself and experience it on my own to give meaning to what he said.

For me it means that you don’t need to do a conscious effort to teach someone something, I would even argue that if you do, you’re probably not helping. How do they learn from you if you are not “actively teaching”? They learn by looking at what you say and do, looking at how you connect ideas, and looking at how you help them realize the knowledge they had within them.

It is counterproductive

This seems like it must be wrong. Why would focusing on making sure each interaction teaches someone something and makes a difference in someone not be beneficial? Because it puts the focus in the wrong place.

When your goal becomes coming up with insights in every situation, you stop caring about whether those insights are actually helping the other person because the goal is no longer to help them but to keep the counter going. This is not necessarily something conscious and it doesn’t make you a bad manager or leader for doing that. It’s natural I think to confuse quantity for quality.

I will say though that what would make you a bad manager or leader is to not be aware of doing that. It is your responsibility to put the needs of people you lead always in front of your desires.

Closing thoughts

If you are a new EM and you think you need to be showing wisdom every time you say or do something, cut yourself some slack, and don’t be too hard on yourself. Expecting every moment to be a teachable moment will lead to failure and frustration, simply because it is not entirely up to you.