Don't be too hard on yourself
Domain-specific struggles don’t mean you’re a bad leader - you can bounce back from them stronger.
👋 Hey, it’s Stephane. Welcome to my weekly newsletter where I share lessons, and stories from my journey to help you lead with confidence as an Engineering Manager.
I almost quit my job because I was convinced I was bad at it.
As an EM today I’d like to think that I am good at a few things. Over the past decade I have been working hard to understand and sharpen the skills great leaders possess. One area that I am working on improving though is influence across the business.
It is not a very straightforward one and requires the combination of loads of different actions to come together. It’s fine, I am working on it!
Two years ago I was working with a team and organization that needed a lot of that. To an extent that I hadn’t experienced before.
Couldn’t get people from different teams to see what I am seeing, couldn’t get internal moves that I thought were vital to be made, and so on.
I was clearly bad at influencing the business as I needed to!
So my confidence took a hit.
I couldn’t stop thinking “I am bad at my job”.
Domain specific vs General confidence
Domain-specific confidence is how you feel about one skill or area. Like cooking. Or leading incident calls. Or roadmapping.
General confidence is how you feel about yourself as a person. As a leader.
When you fail in one area (like I did two years ago) you might start to question your worth overall.
Don’t!
That’s a dangerous path to go down.
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The EM job isn’t one - it’s many disguised as one
My VP of Engineering describes it best.
EMs should be able to do anything the team needs and decide what needs attention to work on depending on the period.
That means being able to code, mentor, coach, negotiate with other teams, form plans. Everything that a team might need.
Roughly broken down, the domains that make up an EM’s responsibilities:
People & Team Management
Technical Execution & Delivery
Product & Stakeholder Alignment
Strategy & Roadmapping
Process & Operations
Performance & Metrics
Communication & Influence
It’s a lot.
And if we are very honest, nobody is world-class at all of these.
Some EMs are amazing at the people management side of things. Some have more delivery expertise. Some are by nature planners.
How you can build your domain specific confidence
Planning
Make a plan. You know what you need to be good at. You know what you’re not confident in.
Make a plan.
Work with your manager to set goals for how to improve on your influence if you’re like me.
Don’t allow domain specific failures to influence your general confidence.
If anything, you want to be excited to learn about new domains as you grow. And as we all know, we’re bound to suck at new things before getting good at them.
Embrace it!
Buddy up
Bring a buddy with you in the journey.
Practice showing vulnerability and be honest. Tell your PM, your TL, or anyone you work with and you trust:
I am not comfortable in this skill and I want to improve on it. This is what I’m doing this period. Can I have you with me in this journey?
They’ll be delighted to help - I promise!
And you’ll build a stronger relationship with them.
It might only be in your head anyway
Sometimes we think we’re not good enough in a specific area, because:
we’re too hard on ourselves
or worse, we use this as an excuse to avoid addressing other blind spots
You don’t want either of the two.
Share your thoughts with people around you and get their feedback. People love giving feedback if you create the space for it.
Don’t ask “do you have any feedback for me?” - this is just terrible.
Be more specific. Ask for advice. No matter who you’re talking to, people will have a lot more to say on it.
“This period I am working on improving my influence across the company, what advice do you have for me to get better at it?”
It shows you value their opinion.
Framing it as advice is less scary for people to want to share as opposed to “feedback” which might be scary to some.
You’ll get the insight that you’re looking for.
Win, win, win!
One last thing
Next time you mess up any specific domain, don’t allow it to affect your overall confidence.
As Kobe Bryant said:
Doubt is such a strange thing.
There will be times when you succeed and times when you fail. So wasting your time doubting if you'll be successful or not, is pointless.
Just put one foot in front of the other, control what you can control, and then see what the outcome is.
If you win, great, you're going to have to wake up the next day and do the journey all over again.
If you lose, sucks, but you'll have to wake up the next day and do the journey all over again anyway.
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See you in the next one,
Stephane Moreau
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I’ve experienced that moment of feeling “bad at my job” and letting it chip away at my general confidence. I struggled to seek feedback because I was stuck in a loop of self-criticism, thinking that being harder on myself would fix things. It didn’t—it just eroded my confidence further.
Thanks for sharing this article, it’s a powerful reminder that growth starts with embracing where we’re at.