According to Sun Tzu, the two most powerful warriors are patience and time.
And as an introvert, you have a clear advantage in those two areas – you aren’t quick to take action. Especially when working (or debating!) with other managers, this pondering, calm, and thoughtful approach gives you peace of mind, something that can be underrated.
Software engineering is a very stressful field, as you know. High pressure, high stakes, and constant deadlines. Adding even more stress to your daily life by:
- Never asking for help from other managers
- Turning cross-functional meetings into battlefields
- Or feeling unhappy about your team’s agenda or resources will only contribute to eventual burnout
And it doesn’t have to be like that. You can and should use your introverted skills to make your work as an engineering manager (EM) more enjoyable and help other managers feel that way, too, if you can.
A quick note about this post
Every section contains a link to a more detailed exploration of that section’s content. You can read each section in this post and come away with something valuable. But if you’d like more, you can find it through those links.
Advocating for your team
One of the most common sources of stress and tension with other managers is advocating.
In a meeting where everyone might want something different, it can be hard achieving the balance between the following:
- Defending your team
- Admitting they’re at fault
- Making upper managers happy
- And achieving the company’s goals
One way to make these meetings even worse is the fear of advocating for the wrong team member and wondering whether or not what you saw in them as their leader was real in the first place.
While time and patience will help you see clearly who’s worth advocating for, you should pay attention to red flags like attitude at work, never following procedures, and a lack of accountability and responsibility.
When it comes to the actual meeting, following the Pain, Dream, Solution formula makes everything else easier:
- The pain: Start by telling them what you’ve done well and what you need to continue to do so you don’t, for example, miss targets (use numbers and data to make this more persuasive – humans tend to trust numbers and percentages more and see you as an authoritative figure because of them)
- The dream: Then tell them what could go even better if everything was possible
- The solution: Present them the step-by-step solution you need to achieve not the dream, because that’s usually unrealistic, but your actual goals that will now seem more doable by comparison to the dream you just presented (and the resources it cost)
Navigating cross-functional meetings
Cross-functional meetings have their own name for a reason. They can go very well and speed up problem-solving or generate new brilliant ideas, but they can also go very wrong, with conflicts getting out of control.
Knowing what you bring to the table as an introvert by understanding which type of introvert you are helps you prepare beforehand, whether you’re a:
- Social introvert
- Thinking introvert
- Anxious introvert
- Or restrained introvert
With this knowledge, you just have to lean on your type’s strengths and find creative ways to adapt to your weaknesses to survive cross-functional meetings.
Also, keep in mind that being successful doesn’t mean being the best participant ever – it simply means achieving your goals.
Collaborating with other managers
If every time you don’t know something, instead of asking someone who does, you try to figure it out by yourself, your life will become a nightmare.
Instead, try promoting an open-door culture by being the first to not only open your door to other people but also knock on other manager’s doors and ask for help.
Collaboration is nothing more than that – working together to achieve great results.
And if asking for help from someone you don’t know very well feels strange, introduce yourself and offer your assistance to others. It’s the best way to become acquainted with other managers and have a reason to talk to them more frequently.
They might even offer you their help in return, so you won’t have to ask first!
Influencing organizational culture
If asking openly for help is not the norm in your company, you can change that. As a manager, you are one of the decision-makers now, and even though you can’t fully transform a company’s culture overnight, you still have some power.
To convince other managers to adopt your new ideals or versions of what a healthy workplace should be, I recommend starting with your team. After successful stories and testimonies, it’s easier to show them it works.
This is possible even with remote teams. Remote work only brings to light problems that in-office teams already had, and no one knew about.
So, to influence organizational culture on a managerial level (and influencing your team too in the process), these are the steps you can take:
- Setting boundaries: figure out what works for everyone, build them, and stay consistent
- Enforcing standards: take the same steps as you would for boundaries
- Asking people to change: if people don’t know what’s on your mind, they can’t take action
- Leading by example: follow everything you ask others to do, or they won’t
- Letting go of control: there’s only so much you can do, and your goal is to influence, not command
- Interfering more: document everything, monitor progress, ask for feedback, and so on
Handling conflict between managers
The book Who Moved My Cheese? is a great story that illustrates how different people react to change. When creating change, either in organizational culture or simply advocating for your team, not everyone will react positively.
Disagreeing with other managers or even moderating conflicts between two fellow managers will be part of your day. Therefore, shutting down during a tense situation can no longer be an answer.
Especially while mediating, you will be expected to:
- Listen and understand both sides
- Stay patient
- Create opportunities for all sides to save face
- Treat it like a collaboration
- And make your own decisions if necessary
Ultimately, try to get both sides to acknowledge their part in the conflict, apologize, and work together toward a solution.
Dealing with the obstacles these situations will throw at you is a learning process for you as a person and an EM, as well as for everyone involved. Be patient and remember that you already have what it takes.
Leveraging written communication in manager interactions
As introverts, it’s easy to second-guess our abilities in hard situations like conflicts.
The good news is that we have an innate super ability that comes in handy in almost every interaction as introverted EMs – communicating async.
Here’s how to make it work better for you:
- Include all the necessary information and context: A more complete message leads to better answers and fewer questions on the receiving person’s end.
- Number multiple questions or list items: This creates a more organized flow of information.
- Don’t repeat information from previous messages: Shorter and more concise information leads to less confusion.
- Include links: Short, clickable links to documents or other important files make the conversation easier.
- Always be patient: Texts and emails don’t convey emotions. Even if you don’t get emotional, others might and could take messages as attacks. Remind everyone to make the intent clear (such as with emojis), clarify further when needed, and ask more questions.
By guiding and teaching others to apply those, too, over time, you’ll show other managers (and your team) the value of async communication.
Some will resist it no matter what, either because they struggle with it or dislike change. That’s okay. Do what you can, and accept the results that will come from that, even if they seem little.
Dealing with dominant personalities
One last thing to keep in mind when working with other managers as an EM: the more dominant the personality, the harder it will be to handle.
There are multiple definitions for dominant. They can be dominant because they take over meetings and talk too much or because they’re authoritarian and literally want to dominate everything around them.
As a manager, you likely are a little bit like the second type. Good dominants dominate because they care and want to change things. The world doesn’t move forward without these “do-ers.”
You have more in common with them than you might realize at first and your attention to detail perfectly complements their usual tendency to disorganization.
With the first type, though, it can be harder to connect. They are engineers’ opposites, and learning to catch their attention and keep it will be challenging.
But because they are also very empathetic, it’s possible to meet them in the middle, even though it won’t be an easier task due to your different communication styles.
However, learning to deal with these different personalities will allow you to work with people who complement your skills. Everything you don’t do very well, they likely know how to do it. And vice-versa.
The short version: better together!
Working with other managers as an introvert might seem scary at first and uncomfortable, but pushing yourself to do it will make your job easier as an EM.
Here’s what to know:
- You can advocate for your team: Explain the dream scenario, the pain preventing it, and the solution to bring about the realistic alternative.
- Navigating cross-functional meetings is possible: Use your unique personality to make these more productive while respecting your own boundaries as an introvert.
- Collaborating with other managers will make your life easier: You can do everything alone, but you don’t have to. Create a culture where the norm is to collaborate and ask for each other’s help.
- You can influence organizational culture: You have more than a title as an EM – you have the power to shape things around you. It’s easier to start with your team’s habits and procedures and then convince other managers that your culture works with proof. However, the steps are the same.
- Handling conflict between managers is in your wheelhouse, too: Either because of a not-so-great culture or because of natural disagreements, conflicts will happen around you. Mediating these situations keeps everything on track.
- Leveraging written communication puts the ball in your court: Not everything has to be done the hard way. Learning how to improve your spoken communication is important, but using the written communication skills you already have is smarter. As the Portuguese saying goes, hunt with cats if you don’t have dogs available.
- Dealing with dominant personalities is also possible: After knowing what exactly a dominant personality is and what characterizes them, you’ll know how to transform your relationship from an exhausting interaction to a complementary, mutually beneficial relationship.
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Originally published on Medium.com
