Onboarding is for promotions too
You’ve just promoted someone on your team to a leadership position. They are capable, highly performant, and with established potential to continue growing. Everybody is excited. They are pumped to get started in the new role and have increased impact and responsibilities. You are delighted to have someone to shoulder more of the work that needs to be done. Fast-forward a few months, and things might not be looking so exciting anymore. Moving from an individual contributor role into management requires learning a whole new skillset and mindset. If you’re not careful, our newly minted manager might go from being excited, to feeling overwhelmed, burned out, and incapable of leading people.
There are many benefits for a solid onboarding practice, and not for new hires only. It can also be beneficial for internal promotions. It can help new managers understand what is expected of them. For example, that they do not need to be an expert on day one. Or that they do not need to be an expert at all but instead work with, and amplify their team. A strong onboarding practice will help settle new managers into their role better. It will help redefine how you two work together.
You can read more about this topic and a few relevant ideas to consider when creating an onboarding guide for internal promotions in the full article on our site.
~ Nicola
What’s been happening?
Leading engineering teams workshop in March
We were extremely busy at the end of 2023 and we failed to update our website with the date of the next workshop and link to the booking site. And we only discovered that last week. So for the last couple of months now, it was not easy to purchase a workshop ticket from our website. With that in mind, we decided to push the workshop a few weeks out. The new dates are March 18-21. To learn more about the workshop and how you can become an effective leader, visit https://blackmill.co/coaching-training/workshops/leading-engineering-teams
Organisational coaching with IECL
Last month Elle and Lachlan participated in IECL's Level One Certification coaching course. It was literally the last thing we did before we closed the year. This course taught us the essential foundational skills of organisational coaching including the tools, techniques and understanding of how to conduct high performance coaching sessions that get results.
Do you find that as you are promoted and become more senior, there are less people around you that you can learn from and go to? Or to serve as a sounding board to help you with decision making? If you are curious to learn more, drop us a line or book a chat with us to see if we can help and if we are a fit.
Community of practice
Do you find it hard to find peers at work that you can turn to? What about having appropriate professional development at your career level?
Our Community of Practice program is structured around your busy work schedule to provide you maximum learning with very little investment. You will address actual challenges at work, reduce your risk by reducing your blind spots, gain perspectives from others, and build a support network of trusted peers.
Our next cohort starts in February and we are still looking for one experienced product engineering leader. If that is you, or someone you know, you can check out to apply at https://blackmill.co/coaching-training/community-of-practice or book a chat with us to learn more at https://meet.blackmill.co/blackmill/30min
What are we reading?
- Estimation Sucks. Let's fix it — by Tom Ridge. The TL;DR is keep your stories small enough that deviation because of unknowns is no longer an issue
- Community Health Analytics in Open Source Software — a project focused on creating metrics, metrics models, and software to better understand open source community health on a global scale.
- Engineering + Product kicking ass together! — this is a writeup of Kate Lanyon's talk for Product Anonymous. Kate spoke about the relationship between product and engineering. She provides tips and insights to help create better working relationship.
A cuppa with Ali Killaly
1. What do you do? And what do you like about your work?
I’m a career counsellor and the founder of Workpants. We specialise in supporting workplaces and employees with career counselling for new parents. There are plenty of practical, physical and emotional challenges sitting at this particular intersection of life and career. I like the variety and flexibility in my work. I love meeting people and hearing their stories, I also enjoy working with our brand and sharing the purpose behind what we do.
2. What aspect of your work do you find most challenging?
One of the most challenging parts of my work at Workpants is facing the reality and the devastation of pregnancy loss. We’re not grief counsellors, but working with new parents means we see some people go through this heartbreak close-up. It’s unfair, it can’t be fixed and there is never a right thing to say, so you have to do your best and hope to help however you can. It is challenging but it is also important so it has to be done.
3. What are you passionate about?
We have often believed that careers are designed and controlled by employers, leaders, the economy, and society - which is partially true - but alongside all those external factors is our individual power. I think when it comes to our work we should wear the pants. That’s why I’m passionate about giving people the tools they need to navigate their own careers.
4. What are recent accomplishments you are happy with?
At Workpants, we’re measuring the impact of our career counselling services and participants are reporting increased confidence in navigating life and career. I’m proud of this result because I hear from a lot of new parents that they believe they have a skill challenge to overcome when they return to work but often on exploration it’s a confidence challenge.
In life, I’ve just graduated. I’m a late-night last-minute kinda person but with two little kids and my husband and I both running businesses, this study was extra tough. It was also very rewarding and I’m happy I did the uncomfortable thing.
5. What is one mistake that you will never make again?
My biggest mistakes tend to emerge with inflexible thinking, so I’d say I’ll stay curious and never say never.
6. How do you manage stress?
I often manage it poorly but when I manage it well, I notice that laughter is an excellent remedy.
7. What is the best advice you can give?
My advice is regular experimentation because it is such a great way to keep learning. Experimentation can help you overcome a fear of failure too because failure is inevitable the more you try new stuff. That’s also how you make discoveries.
8. What one thing would you change about our society?
Just the one thing is it? Okay, I’d change the way ideas become reality. We’ve built our society on the ideas of such a narrow group within it, and not all those ideas are good ones. How much better could things be if we encouraged and supported innovation from a wider range of thinkers? I reckon a lot better.
9. What are your goals or aspirations for this year?
Professionally I’d like us to have a wider impact with Workpants with more workplaces offering our services to new parents.
Personally, I would like to claw back more of my wasted time (mostly on screens) and reinvest that time back into my wellbeing.
What are we cooking?
Ali shared a family recipe!
Nonna’s Pasta Sauce
This one has been passed down at least three generations and probably modified a little each time.
Ingredients
- Olive oil
- Gravy beef
- Garlic
- Canned tomatoes
- Tomato paste
- Basil
- Parmesan
- Spaghetti (or any pasta)
- Salt and Pepper to taste
Instructions
- Heat some olive oil in a casserole dish. I use a big cast iron pot but any pot or pan with a lid would work.
- Brown the meat and a few garlic cloves in the dish.
- Add in your canned tomatoes and fry a little, then add water until the meat, garlic and tomatoes are covered (it's going to reduce).
- Add a tablespoon or two of tomato paste and mix it in, then cover the pot and allow everything to simmer for a few hours on low heat.
- Add full stalks of washed basil to your pasta sauce about 20 minutes before you serve.
- Boil your pasta water and cook your pasta.
- Grate heaps of parmesan while you wait.
- You can serve the meat and sauce with the pasta and add your parmesan and some fresh basil or you can create two courses with meat and salad as one dish, and pasta and sauce as another.
NOTE: Whatever you do, don’t skimp on the parmesan. The picture doesn't have any because you wouldn't actually be able to see the dish once appropriate amounts of parmesan have been applied.
And we’re out
Thank you for showing an interest in our newsletter and we hope that you enjoyed the read. Feel free to contact us if you have any feedback, a burning question, or just a recipe that you would like to share.
Until next time, keep learning!
Everyone at Blackmill