Collectively, I believe that we, the engineering leadership community on the Planet Earth, have done a poor job supporting each other. I think for every manager who has taken the time to find and regularly meet with a mentor, there are 20 managers who like the sound of mentorship, but haven’t done anything about it because they have no time. And even if they did, they wouldn’t know where to start.

I think that there are well-intentioned HR teams who are building leadership training without partnering with their engineers. Similarly, I think there are legions of engineering managers who have been asked very politely by their HR teams to partner on building said programs and those managers have politely and repeatedly said, “I’m too busy.”

I blame everyone. We can do better.

Rands nails it again. And, he proposes a simple survey to research and mine for solutions. I’ve filled in my response.