Manager practice, leadership paths, and listening
Practical notes on 1-on-1s, engineering leadership, pulse surveys, and psychological safety for people who lead teams.
People context
Working styles, manager readmes, and shared profiles so teams collaborate with less guesswork.
- Working style assessment questions: a practical questionnaire for engineering teams
- How do you like to be managed? Interview answers and manager questions
- Personal user manual for work: template and examples for engineers
- Manager readme examples and template: how you lead, in writing
- Working with me document: template inspired by practical team norms
- Communication styles at work: a manager’s guide for engineering teams
- Communication preferences for remote engineering teams
- Team working agreement template for engineering squads
- Managing introverted engineers: when quiet in meetings is not disengagement
- Personality tests at work: what DISC and MBTI can and cannot do for managers
- Getting to know a new direct report: week-one questions for managers
1-on-1 practice
Turn recurring meetings into coaching with better agendas, listening ratios, and shared context.
- Better 1-on-1s with shared AI profiles
- Why your 1:1s feel like a waste of time (and how to fix them)
- High impact engineering 1:1: a framework for elite leadership
- Mastering one on one meetings: a comprehensive briefing
- What should I talk about in a 1-on-1 with my manager?
- How often should 1-on-1s be: weekly, biweekly, or monthly?
- How do you give constructive feedback without demotivating someone?
- What do you do when your report says "everything is fine" in every 1-on-1?
- First one-on-one with a new employee: agenda and questions
- New manager first one-on-one: questions that build credibility
- One-on-one meeting template for managers (copy-paste structure)
- One-on-one questions to ask employees: a question bank for managers
- One-on-one meeting notes template: shared action and context
- One-on-one meeting agenda template for recurring 1-on-1s
- One-on-ones with many direct reports: cadence without burnout
- Remote one-on-one questions for distributed engineering teams
- Skip-level meeting questions: what to ask (and avoid)
- Managing engineers more senior than you: influence without title
- One-on-one action items: follow-up that reports actually trust
- One-on-one with a disengaged employee: scripts and structure
- How to prepare for a one-on-one with your manager
- One-on-one meeting invite subject lines that set expectations
- One-on-one meeting mistakes managers repeat (and fixes)
Engineering leadership path
IC to lead transitions, EM vs tech lead choices, agentic AI roles, time design, and multiplier habits.
- Agentic Engineer: role, skills, and frameworks for 2026
- EM vs tech lead: the ultimate guide to choosing your leadership path
- The fork in the road: IC path vs engineering management
- Tech lead strategic playbook: from technical excellence to multiplicative leadership
- Senior engineer to tech lead: when the promotion feels like a mistake
- Why your coding skills are now a liability (for engineering leads)
- Technical leadership assessment: evaluating the multiplier effect
- The architect of time: maker and manager schedules for tech leads
- Mastering the maker-manager divide for engineering leads
- Stop being a Super Doer: 5 truths about the jump to leadership
- What is the impact of poor leadership training?
- Mastering the team leader role in 2026: 10 essential strategies for high impact leadership
- Why do you want to be a leader? How to build your philosophy and land the role
- Beyond the title: 5 surprising ways to answer why do you want to lead
- The Hersey-Blanchard Situational Leadership Framework
- What is a skip-level meeting, and how do you run one without undermining managers?
- How do you manage an underperforming engineer?
- You just inherited a team: what should you do in the first 30 days?
- Managing managers: skip-levels, standards, and coach-the-coach
- Span of control for engineering teams: sizing manager load
- Mistakes new managers make (and how senior leaders prevent them)
- Managing up with your own manager: alignment without politics
- Difficult conversations at work: scripts for engineering managers
Listening, safety, and engagement
Pulse vs annual surveys, psychological safety questions, burnout design, and manager quality research.
- Beyond the rating: 5 questions to build psychological safety in your next performance review
- Why your brain won't let you rest: the counter intuitive science of open loops and high performance recovery
- The architecture of belonging: 7 surprising lessons from the world's best onboarding programs
- How long can onboarding take? Beyond the welcome kit: 5 surprising truths about the first 90 days
- Mastering psychological safety surveys: 30+ questions to build high performing teams
- Annual survey vs pulse survey: building a continuous employee listening strategy for 2026
- Employee engagement, remote work, and return to office strategies
- Beyond the title: 5 truths about leading high performance teams
- Architecting resilience: solving the engineering burnout crisis and the future of strategic leadership
- Google Project Oxygen: what it found about managers (and why it still matters)
- 1 in 10: Why true management talent and leadership are rare
- How do you measure manager effectiveness?
- Stay interviews vs exit interviews: which actually reduces turnover?
- What goes in a 30-60-90 day onboarding plan?
- Our engagement survey scores dropped. What now?
- Pulse survey questions for employees: short sets that drive action
- Anonymous employee survey questions: when anonymity helps (and hurts)
- How to analyze employee survey data: from scores to manager actions
- Engagement survey follow-up meeting: a manager-run playbook
- How to increase employee engagement survey participation
- Onboarding survey questions: 30, 60, and 90-day listening
- eNPS score: what it misses for engineering managers
- Signs of burnout in engineers: what managers notice first
- Employee feedback examples for managers (specific, fair, actionable)
AI and the future of management
Agentic engineering, AI-assisted teams, productivity measurement, and ethical use of AI in manager prep.
- Will AI replace engineering managers?
- How do you manage a team that ships with AI coding agents?
- How do you measure developer productivity when AI writes the code?
- Is it OK to use AI to prepare for 1-on-1s?
- Using AI to be a better manager—without replacing judgment
- AI notetakers in one-on-ones: privacy, consent, and trust
- Using AI to write performance reviews: guardrails for fair feedback
- AI as a career coach for your team: useful limits
- AI skills gap assessment for engineering teams
- AI agents in HR and people ops: what actually works in 2026
- Manager AI prompts for 1-on-1 prep, feedback, and pulse follow-up
- Rolling out AI tools to your team: adoption without resentment
- What AI cannot do in a one-on-one (and what managers still must)
- Code review in the age of AI agents: standards for engineering managers