Episode 14: Naturally growing into a managing managers role with Alexandra Sunderland
Feb 3, 2024
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Alexandra Sunderland, an engineering leader with over a decade of experience, shares tips on being a manager of managers in a remote environment. She discusses the differences in responsibilities, the challenges of making critical decisions without direct control, and the importance of transparent and standardized processes. The episode also covers the significance of communication, the value of retrospectives, and the process of growing engineers into managerial roles.
Alexandra emphasizes the importance of building emotionally intelligent processes, sharing knowledge, and continuously developing leadership skills.
Alexandra discusses the benefits of promoting from within the company for manager development, highlighting the advantages of engineers transitioning into management roles.
Deep dives
Leading a Remote Team and Transitioning into Management
Alexandra Sunderland shares her leadership journey, starting as an engineer and transitioning into management. She highlights the opportunities for growth in early-stage startups and explains how she gradually took on managerial responsibilities as the team expanded. Alexandra emphasizes the importance of building emotionally intelligent processes, sharing knowledge, and continuously developing leadership skills. She also discusses the benefits and challenges of remote work and provides insights on effective remote management practices, including intentional communication, setting up regular check-ins, and maintaining transparent channels of collaboration.
Managing Managers in a Remote Environment
In this part of the podcast, Alexandra Sunderland talks about managing managers in a remote work setup. She emphasizes the need for clear and effective communication, creating strong team cultures, and resolving conflicts in remote teams. Alexandra shares the importance of open and honest feedback in remote settings and how it can be challenging to perceive emotions and conflicts through video calls. She also discusses the benefits of public channels in Slack, team meetings for socializing, and the value of remote one-on-ones in fostering deeper conversations, note-taking, and time management.
Developing Managers and Assessing Success
Alexandra Sunderland discusses the development of managers at FellowApp and the importance of promoting from within the company. She highlights the advantages of hiring engineers who transition into management roles, given their familiarity with the team, codebase, and existing trust. She emphasizes the significance of mutual respect, ongoing support, and coaching for managers. Alexandra also explains how she assesses the success of managers based on the team's achievement of goals and high-quality project delivery, as well as the team's happiness and overall satisfaction.
Recommended Resources and Reflections
In the last part of the podcast episode, Alexandra Sunderland recommends her book, 'Remote Engineering Management,' as a resource for remote managers. She also suggests 'The Making of a Manager' by Julie Zhu as an insightful book for new managers. Additionally, she reflects on her own experience and advises her younger self to be more involved with the managers reporting to her and not hesitate to ask questions or provide support. Alexandra shares her passion for helping managers develop their skills, maintain strong team collaboration, and create a positive work environment.
If you’re interested in what it means to be manager of managers in a fully remote environment, this episode is for you. As author of the book, “Remote Engineering Management”, Alexandra shares some tips of what to focus on in a manager of managers role. We explore how she naturally grew into her first managing managers role and she shares where she spends her time and what she focuses on in her role.
Guest Biography:
Alexandra Sunderland is an engineering leader with over a decade of experience working in both hybrid and remote roles, at companies ranging from 10-person startups to public corporations. She is currently a Director of Engineering at Fellow.app, where she is helping to build the future of work. She prides herself on building emotionally-intelligent processes for teams, and sharing her knowledge of management through conference talks and written works. Alexandra is the author of the book “Remote Engineering Management”, the guide for empathetic and people-first management in a remote world.