Everyone knows — good engineers are not necessarily good managers. 

In fact, some great engineers turn out to make terrible managers. 

So, how do we know if an engineer is tracking to a leadership role?

We use the following questions to help assess whether an engineer is ready for a management or team leadership role:

1. How does the engineer provide leadership from their current position as an individual contributor?
2. Is the engineer recognized as a leader among peers on the team and on other teams? 
3. Prioritization - Do they have a good sense of what is critical vs what is somewhat important.  Do they cut through the noise (non issues) to focus on the critical issues?  (vs they are distracted by less important issues)
4. Do they dispatch obstacles effectively and efficiently?
5. Time management - Are they using their time effectively?
6. Organization - Do they know how to organize and plan?
7. Peer relationships - Are they collaborative?  Do they have good working relationships with their peers and managers?  Do they help others succeed?
8. Self aware - Are they aware of their weak spots?  Do they know their strengths?
9. Learner - Do they know what they don’t know?  Do they listen and learn from others?
10. Driving for results - Do they effectively balance focus on objectives and results with engineering and technical considerations?
11. Dealing with ambiguity - Are they flexible?  Do they handle incomplete direction or information effectively? 
12. Judgment / decision skills - Do they make good decisions?  Do people ask for their opinion?
13. The drama factor - Do they operate without creating distractions and disruptions on the team?

Identify your future leaders.  Develop them to do these things well.

-Donny

Many companies are implementing Forced Distribution — the practice of forcing a prescribed distribution of ratings during the performance review cycle (sometimes called the bell curve).

In my org, everyone is above average.

Advantages of Forced Distribution include:

• Rewards higher performers; stops peanut-butter spread of compensation
• Creates focus on results
• Encourages a higher level of effort; discourages coasting
• Can be used to stop negative/disruptive behaviors
• Can curb grade level inflation

Some problems with Forced Distribution programs:

• Hurts managers that are more skilled and successful at selecting and developing top caliber employees
• Fosters some bad behaviors: information-hoarding, passive (or aggressive) resistance, unsupportiveness, short-sightedness, unhealthy one-upsmanship, not-invented-here, redundant systems and unnecessary complexity. Employees quickly figure out that supporting someone else’s project and long-term improvements don’t translate to promotions and the top rankings.
• Tremendous subjectivity in ranking process. Rating sessions can quickly become group-think exercises as the managers latch on to any reasonable-sounding rationale for pushing an employee to a lower bucket.

If your company practices Forced Distribution:

• Identify clear criteria for differentiation
• Adjust distribution targets based on team performance
• Create incentive for long-term contribution
• Apply evenly at each level. Otherwise, lower grade levels receive a disproportionate number of lower ratings.
• Implement effective leadership development programs for all levels of management

Forced Distribution can be performed annually, but setting a target percentage of lower performers to manage out each year is not sustainable. Returns diminish and turn negative quickly, generally after a couple of years. (There are certainly times when low performing employees have to be managed out. This topic is discussed in a different post.)

Forced Distribution drives important performance behaviors, but is not a silver bullet for performance management. It’s easy for a company to implement Forced Distribution badly and do more harm than good. And companies that implement Forced Distribution without investing in leadership development for all levels of management won’t see the performance returns they expect.

-Donny

Let’s say you’re interviewing candidates for a technical position. Beyond the right set of technical skills, what do you look for in a candidate?

If you’re building a high performance team, you want more than strong technical knowledge and experience. You’re looking for the best of the best. You need a candidate that will raise the bar in your organization — the type of person that makes everyone better. You’re looking for the Total Package.

The candidate’s technical skills are the foundation of the total-package candidate. The candidate must demonstrate that they can perform the technical responsibilities at a high level.

But in addition to strong technical capabilities, total-package employees:

- Team at a high level and have strong customer focus skills
- Cut through noise; they zero in on the things that lead to success
- Push through the work items and navigate obstacles to deliver on the commitment
- Know how to deliver value

To assess total-package capabilities, ask the candidate about some of their accomplishments. Do they have a history of using their technical skills to deliver big accomplishments? Dig and probe into the details of the story. What were the obstacles, and how did the candidate handle them? What were the conflicts, and how did the candidate respond? What types of actions did the candidate take to understand the needs of the customer? How did they handle competing priorities?

You’re looking for specific details here: situations, actions, results. Generalities don’t help you assess the candidate’s performance. You may need to discuss two or three of the candidate’s accomplishments to develop a solid assessment of their total-package skills.

Mediocrity, or Worse

There are candidates out there that meet your technical requirements AND possess the total-package skills you need to help you build your high performance team.

You accept mediocrity when you settle for strong technical candidates without assessing total-package skills.

Or – in the worse-case scenario – you bring down a team by choosing a technically-strong candidate that doesn’t cooperate with their teammates, sows mistrust and distracts your org from the mission with other negative behaviors. Assessing candidates for total-package skills helps you avoid this disaster.

-Donny