Thread by @mipsytipsy

btw ... going from line manager (managing engineers) to director (managing managers) is almost as much of a career change as going from engineer to manager.

you will suck at your job again, and you will have to rewire your brain's reward mechanisms again.

the metaphor i use is, as an engineer you get to use your hands to build a ship. as manager, you walk along the pier coaching and lending a hand.

as a director, you get a mission ("build 2x larger ships!") and a rusty fishing rod to wave at the managers to convey what you want.

almost all line managers rely on their personal charisma or subject authority to get their team to do things in some unique and unreplicable way.

once you become a director, you can't lean on instinct. what worked for you will not work for the managers who report to you.

so you have to learn to dissect and unpack the role, and how to communicate it in a thousand different ways, to help managers run teams effectively using their own particular chemistry instead of trying to impose yours on them

basically you're just a therapist. and you're responsible for results while being so far removed from the knobs that make things go, you have to develop some pretty robust internal systems for dealing with that helplessness. and the dehumanization that comes with your power.