Scenario 1—You don’t know what is really going on

An engineering manager takes on the leadership of an engineering team. The new leader is quickly overwhelmed with the amount of work to be done, and they carefully go about their day reviewing project requirements, grooming a backlog, participating in planning ceremonies, reviewing code, running builds, and handling unexpected events and cross-functional needs. There are never enough hours in the day. The manager works to treat everyone with respect and fairness. The manager doesn’t have as much time to connect with the team on a one-on-one basis as they would like but believes anyone would come to them with any serious concerns. Then, one day out of the blue, there’s a resignation letter waiting in their inbox, and the manager is blindsided. This is a valued member of the team with years of institutional knowledge. It turns out the engineer was fed up with something happening on the team that the manager...