Mgmt Feedback Signal

When each of your team is working on the most important tasks, then each completion brings relief and joy.

This week, I found myself genuinely whooping with excitement when my team would let me know they were finished with their work. I realised that it was because each new task marked as done reflected either meaningful progress along the critical path of their project and/or new knowledge that helped de-risk unknown timelines or ideas as part of some research.
Basically, their priorities were aligned with my priorities, which I organised to meet the expectations of our portfolio's main stakeholders.
It was a sweet symphony of harmonised focus and momentum.

But Ruskin, you work as an engineering manager so aren't you just describing doing your job competently?

Maybe. However, matching the warm emotional response to the closing of each task as a signal feels novel.
There are often long stretches where you don't receive much feedback on your "management" efforts. The more easy to recognise measure of success is typically in the absence of incidents or failures or drama. Not only does any insight derived from that absence feel frustratingly subjective, but it doesn't happen frequently enough to allow you to course-correct towards excellence on a daily basis.
So I'm happy to have identified a small marker of being on the right trajectory.