I talked about this a bit in the Engineering Management introductory post, but it deserves its own category as something worth explaining.

Entering management as a technical person – engineering, sciences, technician, maintenance, whomever – can be a shock to the system. I realize the myth that engineers can’t write and have no social skills isn’t always true, sure, but the concept exists for a reason: because often the focus in our education is so much on the fundamental equations and understanding rather than what I’ll call “soft skills” in a way that’s not at all meant to be demeaning. Soft Skills include things like communications arts, empathy, the ability to listen — even in non-technical degrees, these are things that don’t (and maybe can’t) end up being taught.

And even if the employee/manager in question has developed these skills, there’s an incredibly good chance that they’re going to run into someone in their career who hasn’t. Reaching beyond our own social anxieties is one thing; learning to reach even farther, around another person’s, is a different thing entirely.

On top of the soft skills, and the things I’ve mentioned before – learning to be an accountant, a finance manager, a counselor, a systems administrator, etc – there are also the secrets of management that need some discussion.

As you move up, you’ll find yourself seeing more and more of what goes on in the “background” of a company. And it’s the kind of stuff no one talks about. Your manager “suggests” to you that an employee of yours isn’t meeting expectations and needs to be “managed” — what do you do? A fellow manager comes to you with complaints about one of your employees, citing behavior you’ve never seen. A fellow manager goes to your boss citing your behavior, spun at just the right angle to make you look bad. Your boss tells you parts of the company plan that you need to interpret for your department’s long-term plan, but can’t tell anyone else about.

There’s a lot of overlap in this category: managing technical people, toxic environments, sick systems, hiring and firing. I want to pull the veil back a little, show the kind of secrets that can hide in upper management and become your problems to deal with.