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I think "facilitate wellbeing" is more than just a feel-good aphorism, because it really does help when there's a difficult decision on your desk, at least for
by TameAntelope 5y ago
I think "facilitate wellbeing" is more than just a feel-good aphorism, because it really does help when there's a difficult decision on your desk, at least for me.
My instinct is to push hard, let "the most correct" idea win, and not really give a shit about how it impacts others. All, as you know, awful, very bad, no good ways of managing. Being reminded that one of my primary jobs is to "facilitate wellbeing" helps keep me grounded.
Let someone take the day off even if there's a deadline looming, be cool with a later start date than would be perfect, take that vacation week and really don't plug in, a) for yourself and b) to show that as acceptable behavior for your team to do as well.
None of this is how I, naturally, would behave, and I need to be reminded and continually work at doing things like that, for the sake of the health of my team. None of this is theoretical in my view, I see it as specific and practical advice.
- hitekker 5y agoWhat you're speaking of is "Prioritize Wellbeing" which is a worthy belief to hold and to remind ourselves as engineering managers. However, the specific word used by the OP is "Facilitate" which gives managers the leeway to be weak and lazy. A manager can say "I let my team take PTO a few days each quarter, I facilitated their well-being!" while they passively allow their stakeholders to dictate the workload of their engineers, with zero pushback. In practice, "Prioritize" basically means conflict and action, "facilitate" means whatever the manager wants it to mean. Going further: most "principles" like the kind the OP wrote are designed for a manager's self-therapy. Beliefs that justify decisions the manager has already taken, dressed up in nice-looking words, the kind of drivel that influencers peddle on LinkedIn. Whereas real principles that the GP refers to are meant for self-discipline. Beliefs that call into question decisions, and force the manager to really think their next steps through carefully.
- TameAntelope 5y agoI just don't see how you can read "facilitate wellbeing" and be this upset about it, especially given how you feel about "prioritize wellbeing".
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- acjohnson55 5y agoFWIW, what you wrote here is very similar to the situation I had and the mistakes I made that led to the lesson learned and that sentence being in the piece.
- JamesBarney 5y agoBut for every manager like yourself who naturally over prioritizes correct ideas there is a manager who is over prioritizes harmony.