This article is Part 1 of the Blog Post Series: “The Delegation Odyssey: Navigating Leadership Success”

Image showing an engineering manager working at her desk and her dog looking at her. Image generated by DALL.E2

It is a grey and gloomy day in September.

Scene 1:
Zoe, an engineering manager at ‘StarCoders,’ has just logged in. She looks at her calendar and finds a day full of meetings. This meeting trend has been ongoing on for a while now. Her calendar is often double-booked and triple-booked. Any time left in between meetings is meant for follow up actions from the calls attended earlier.

Zoe wants to make a difference in the team she leads. She has got a list of innovative ideas, technical debt to address, metrics to measure, documentation to tidy up and much more. She wants to add value, ensure her team delivers quality work on time and make meaningful impact on the career of the people she line manages.

How does anyone get time to do all this? Whom should I ask for help? Chris left the job two weeks ago. He was my hiring manager but didn’t give me a hint when I joined that meetings are gonna creep up like this. How many places can I be at once? 🙄

The all-too-familiar Teams notification chimes in.

Have I zoned out?

It’s time for another meeting…

Scene 2:
Zoe joins the meeting rather reluctantly. Arthur from product team has joined. After exchanging pleasantries, complaining about the gloomy weather and joking about if the earth is gonna end they discuss the product roadmap. Arthur has a request before they can end the meeting.

“Arthur: Can you give me the latest API document? The Head of Product asked for it so make sure it is up to date please.’”

“Zoe: Sure, that won’t be a problem. When do you need it?”

“Arthur: Actually can you send it by end of day today? We are having a workshop tomorrow and would need that. Sorry for the last minute request.”

“Zoe: No worries, Arthur. On it already” 👩‍💻

Zoe hurries to reschedule her next meeting. She sets up another meeting (surprise…) with one of the senior engineers in her team, Marvin . Zoe starts to explain Arthur’s request.

“Zoe: Hey Marvin, Can you send me the API document?”

“Marvin: Yes, but it’s not up to date.”

“Zoe: Can you update the diagram in that and send it to me? Make sure to use the right font size and align the icons properly”

“Marvin: Ok!”

“Zoe: Actually, can you also verify the end points listed are correct? You can get the list from Swagger”

“Marvin: Sure”

“Zoe: Can you also make sure to update the version num… ”

(thinking to herself 💭 - it is probably much easier and faster if I do this than explain it to Marvin).

“You know what Marvin, leave it to me. I will update it and send it. Bye!”

Marvin leaves the meeting, feeling paranoid and depressed. “Does Zoe think I’m not qualified to do this? Is she going to give me a poor rating in the appraisal? Only two months until the end-of-year appraisal.” 😫

Scene 3:
Zoe checks the time in the top left corner of her Macbook. It is 3 pm already. Zoe reschedules the rest of her meetings including the one to review the technical strategy deck and the release guild meetings.

Fast forward to 6 pm. Zoe’s dog, Murphy is eagerly looking at her hoping she would take him for a walk. Zoe has just emailed Arthur the updated API document and is feeling proud and elated. 🥳 She is about to close her Macbook screen when something pops up on the screen. Zoe opens her Macbook again.

“Murphy : woof (hoomans.. no amount of cuteness is enough to make them move from their work desk…sigh…)” 🐶

An email invitation arrives, inviting Zoe to sign up for a speed mentoring session. Somewhere in Zoe’s mind, there is a warm feeling about this. She hurriedly signs up and logs off.

Zoe and Murphy go for a walk, each thinking about how tiresome their day has been. 👣🐾

---

Let’s look at some problem areas in Zoe’s approach:

• Zoe has work overload and is finding herself overwhelmed with meetings and tasks
• Zoe has micromanagement tendencies and is trying to control the finer details when she explains the task to Marvin
• Zoe is neglecting professional development of Marvin by not making time to coach him to do a new and complex task
• Zoe is increasing team bottleneck by skipping strategy meetings where her input is more valuable than spending her time editing a document
• Marvin has lost his morale because he thinks Zoe doesn’t trust him with a complex task.
• Zoe, Marvin (and Murphy) have increased stress and burnout at the end of the day

What should Zoe do about this? We will find out in Part-2.

P.S. Any character resemblances to ‘The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ are purely intentional 🪐