Reading about management is like reading about bungee jumping
Welcome to Keeping Steady, field notes for engineering managers in the thick of it.
Before the story, a quick hello. I write Keeping Steady for the manager who’s in over their head and quietly wondering if they still want the job. If that’s you, you’re in the right place. Here’s a little of how I got here.
Four months into a new job, I was already sweating.
I’d joined as an individual contributor on a 15-person engineering team, everyone reporting straight to the CTO. Leadership was about to insert a management layer, three EMs, five reports each, and I wanted a seat. I’d left a bigger company where I’d been tech lead across multiple teams, I’d had some great managers (and some not so great), and I’d spent years reading the management canon, preparing for this moment.
Turns out, reading about becoming a manager is like reading about bungee jumping, or riding a roller coaster — it doesn’t quite capture the lived experience.
The first challenge I had to face was performance reviews. Leadership was rolling out new career ladders, which meant telling engineers, some for the first time, that they weren’t meeting the bar. I am conflict-averse to my core, so this was a considerable stretch assignment.
What scared me wasn’t the conversation itself. It was the aftermath: being disliked, judged, found wanting by someone I’d still have to work beside tomorrow. So went back to my preparation playbook and tried to read my way toward competence. Crucial Conversations. Difficult Conversations. Nonviolent Communication. I even attended a workshop on delivering feedback that lands.
It was the steepest learning curve of my life, and it was the biggest step-wise change in my communication skills I’ve ever experienced. I use these skills daily, at work and everywhere else that feedback matters.
Books only got me partway, though. The rest came from people who had already built these skills, and who were willing to talk through the challenges I was facing. I had a deep bench of friends and mentors who helped me try out different approaches, and even rehearse the conversations I was dreading the most.
I remember starting a new role once, inheriting a team with a clear underperformer already on it. My approach is always to build trust before delivering hard feedback, but this time there was no runway for that. I asked a colleague for their advice.
Her advice: skip the choreography. Just tell the person, “normally I’d take time to build trust before saying this, but I’d be doing you a disservice if I didn’t tell you now, there’s a real gap that needs to close.” It was a great reframe, and got me out of my own experience enough to see that giving feedback isn’t about me — its about the person receiving it, and it could change the trajectory of their career.
Of course, managing for performance is different from coaching. Coaching is about partnership, which is harder when there is a power dynamic between a manager and a direct report. When I coach people, I’m not using the feedback delivery skills I worked so hard to hone. I’m asking simple, open ended questions that help guide someone towards knowing themselves better and solving their own problems.
At the start of goal-setting sessions, I ask, “What will it mean for you to have achieved this goal?” One client went super quiet, and it was clear she hadn’t really thought about it. When she finally answered, it revealed more about what she values, what she believes makes a good life, and what is really motivating to her.
That’s the pattern I keep finding. Connect someone to their why, and goals become clearer and more achievable. Skip it, and even a clean, achievable goal will not be satisfying, or will be put down the moment it gets hard.
So if a burned-out manager caught me in a hallway with sixty seconds to spare, I’d tell her to find her why again. Maybe that means returning to the reason she chose this path in the first place. Maybe it means finding something entirely outside work to fill the well instead. Either way, the fire needs to be stoked.
This is what Keeping Steady is about: honest field notes from someone who’s sat in your chair. No hustle-porn, no five-bullet wisdom. Just what actually helped, and what I wish someone had told me sooner.
If you’re leading through something hard right now, come along. Subscribe below, and hit reply to tell me: what’s your why, and when did you last feel connected to it? I read every response.
Thanks for reading Keeping Steady. I’m Katie, an engineering manager turned coach, writing for the people doing the hardest version of the job.
If this one resonated, two easy next steps:
• Subscribe so the next note lands in your inbox.
• If you’re in the thick of it and want a steady partner in your corner, coaching is exactly what I do. Grab a free, no-pressure discovery call here: cal.com/katie-leonard-northvine/discovery-session
And if a manager you know needs to hear this, forward it their way. That’s how Keeping Steady finds its people.