Resilient Leadership

The pace of growth and change in modern business is staggering. This pace makes the work of engineering managers exciting, with new challenges and solutions every day. At times, the constant change can become a burden, disruptive to ourselves and our engineering teams. We may ask ourselves, what can we do as engineering managers to produce good outcomes for our teams when it feels like the sands are always shifting beneath our feet?

In Part 4 of this book, we will dive into the role of managing change within software teams and businesses, starting with how to build resilient teams. In your career, you have probably seen colleagues react to change in all sorts of ways. Change can have destructive effects, or it can allow us to reinvent and revitalize. As engineering managers, we can better support our teams by ensuring that they can adapt when changes come along.

In this chapter, you will learn how to prepare teams for inevitable change by making them—...

Introducing resilient teams

Software development teams face change every day. These changes range from the micro level, such as adjustments to project requirements, to the macro level, such as changes in company direction or goals. When teams overreact to change with emotion by losing confidence, motivation, and momentum, those teams are described as fragile. When teams are more adaptable and react to change with curiosity and open-mindedness, they are resilient teams. The level of change a team can adapt to indicates how fragile or resilient that team is.

The most fragile teams are easily disrupted by relatively trivial changes. They have a limited comfort zone in which they are capable of working. They cling to the familiar and react to change with fear, annoyance, and other strong emotions. They may have an overly rigid view of their workplace and role.

The most resilient teams can consider and navigate significant changes. They can focus on the big picture and take into account...

Preparing your team for change

During their work and communications, engineering managers have the opportunity to prepare for future change before it comes along. First, you need to prepare yourself for uncertainty and change. Next, you must work on developing the right team emergent states to form a resilient culture on your team. Finally, you must introduce practices and processes to create resilient habits. Let’s go through each of these.

Managing yourself

When you think about preparing your team for future change, it can be easy to forget that you are a part of that team and must prepare yourself. Good engineering managers often think about their team’s needs before their own, but since change connects us with deep emotions that are not always obvious, we must take measures to manage and care for ourselves so that we can effectively provide for our teams. To begin, let’s review some ways in which we can deliberately increase our resilience.

What is...

Preparing change for your team

There are right ways and wrong ways to carry out changes in your team. During a change scenario, the leadership you demonstrate can make the change easier or harder for your team members. You might be leading the change yourself, privy to changes in advance of your team, or changes may become known to you and your team simultaneously. In each of these cases, your team will be watching you closely to see how you handle the situation. There will be no second chances for these moments, so be prepared to handle the situation in a way you are satisfied with.

Change communication

Whether the change is completely under your control or outside of your control, being able to communicate it clearly can make a big difference in producing a successful transition. Ideally, you should be able to include each of the following change characteristics in your communication:

• Vision: A high-level understanding of what is changing and why
• Strategy: The plan...

Summary

The pace of change in business is rapid. Engineering managers that use resilient leadership to navigate and embrace change scenarios gain a competitive edge for themselves and their teams:

• Engineering teams with resilience react to change with curiosity rather than fear and emotion
• Engineering managers increase resilience in their teams by simultaneously preparing their teams for change and preparing change for their teams
• Prepare your team for change by managing yourself, building a resilient team culture, and building resilient team habits:
  • Manage yourself through affirming your purpose, building a support network, practicing self-care, modulating your energy levels, and avoiding taking on too much due to bias
  • Start building a resilient culture with foundational team characteristics: trust, compassion, the ability to lift each other up, candor, empowerment, humility, confidence, shared mental models, improvisation, and shared values
  • Encourage resilient behavior...

Further reading

Self-care:

• See Franklin Covey’s Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw (https://www.franklincovey.com/habit-7/)

Hyping yourself up and calming down:

• How to Pump Yourself Up Before a Presentation (or Calm Yourself Down) by Nancy Duarte (https://hbr.org/2018/07/how-to-pump-yourself-up-before-a-presentation-or-calm-yourself-down)
• How to Psych Yourself Up Before Your Next Big Thing by Vanessa Van Edwards (https://www.scienceofpeople.com/psyched-up/)
• The Debate of Power Posing Continues: Here’s Where We Stand by Kim Elsesser (https://www.forbes.com/sites/kimelsesser/2020/10/02/the-debate-on-power-posing-continues-heres-where-we-stand/)

Resiliency qualities and practices:

• 3 Practices That Set Resilient Teams Apart by Keith Ferrazzi and CeCe Morken (https://hbr.org/2022/03/3-practices-that-set-resilient-teams-apart)
• 7 Strategies to Build a More Resilient Team by Keith Ferrazzi, Mary-Clare Race, and Alex Vincent (https://hbr...