When I first started as a manager, I was taught that I should be a 'shit-umbrella' for the team. So the upper management throws shits on us, and my job is to deflect it, so the team will have a quiet environment to work in.
I've stuck with this approach for a long time, which resulted in a thick dissappointment frontier.
I tried to make my people believe that each bad decision was the last one, and we are right on the verge of a change, while not believing it myself.
In my current company, we had 2 rounds of layoffs. The first one was surprising for the team, as I just didn't share that much about the business situation. After that experience I started to become much more transparent.
Still, there is a thin balance. I do feel there is a place for such a frontier, it should just be very small. I'm sure there are some things my manager is not telling me right away.
Thanks for sharing your insights, Anton. It's really hard to do this well in practice. Especially with layoffs — sometimes you know, sometimes you don't; sometimes there are rumors to quell, sometimes it's out of the blue.
Thinking about it, I feel that the "shit umbrella" still has a place. Especially when it's a "secrecy umbrella" too. I think it can exist separately to the disappointment frontier. I'm struggling to articulate this well, though. It reminds me of something I wrote a long time ago on "wobble" and containing it: https://www.theengineeringmanager.com/growth/wobble/
When I first started as a manager, I was taught that I should be a 'shit-umbrella' for the team. So the upper management throws shits on us, and my job is to deflect it, so the team will have a quiet environment to work in.
I've stuck with this approach for a long time, which resulted in a thick dissappointment frontier.
I tried to make my people believe that each bad decision was the last one, and we are right on the verge of a change, while not believing it myself.
In my current company, we had 2 rounds of layoffs. The first one was surprising for the team, as I just didn't share that much about the business situation. After that experience I started to become much more transparent.
Still, there is a thin balance. I do feel there is a place for such a frontier, it should just be very small. I'm sure there are some things my manager is not telling me right away.
Thanks for sharing your insights, Anton. It's really hard to do this well in practice. Especially with layoffs — sometimes you know, sometimes you don't; sometimes there are rumors to quell, sometimes it's out of the blue.
Thinking about it, I feel that the "shit umbrella" still has a place. Especially when it's a "secrecy umbrella" too. I think it can exist separately to the disappointment frontier. I'm struggling to articulate this well, though. It reminds me of something I wrote a long time ago on "wobble" and containing it: https://www.theengineeringmanager.com/growth/wobble/