One of the hardest things to do as an engineering manager is to stop letting what you think is right be the driver of your team. Instead, actually, you have a bunch of perspectives on your team that are all valuable – and they often can formulate their own opinions. As a result, a lot of managers struggle with having really hard opinions.
Enter: coaching questions. I refer to this blog post every month when I think about the kinds of questions that I want to ask to improve my team.
Nothing makes you feel like Coach Ted Lasso than whipping out a few of these insights.
Some highlights include:
“What will you need to know, to know that you have achieved it? What milestones will you set up?”
“Who are the key stakeholders you need to get on board? Who is impacted by what you want to do?”
“On a scale of 1-10 how motivated are you?
What prevents this from being a 10?”
“What skills would you prefer to be using?”
Connor MacDonald 