Rebecca Spainhower's README

Personal readme page for Rebecca Spainhower, Support Engineering Manager, GitLab

My Role and Responsibilities

For a quick summary of everything I feel is important as a Support Engineering Manager, please see this article by Lena Reinhard, VP of Product Engineering at CircleCI.

Tips on Excellent Management

A new manager’s guide to growing into your role – from Atlassian blog on Leadership The 25 Micro-Habits of High-Impact Managers – amalgamation of many useful ideas about daily behaviors for managers Crucial Conversations: Having crucial conversations on an all-remote team – GitLab blog Crucial Conversations: Why we take this approach at GitLab – GitLab handbook entry Crucial Conversations: Crucial Learning – official website for CC training

Tips on Managing Yourself and Your Emotions

The art of not taking things personally – factors to consider when people on your team (including you!) have outsize reactions

Questions I Ask Myself

These questions are drawn from Gay Hendricks’ book The Big Leap:

  • What work do you do that doesn’t seem like work?
    • career development - for teammates and myself
    • process improvements - thinking systematically and asking questions about alternatives
    • document reviews and revamps (I love to read!)
  • In your work, what produces the highest ratio of abundance and satisfaction to the amount of time spent?
    • 1:1 meetings with teammates - building connection
    • creating processes, documents, and guidelines that enable others to achieve work goals
    • any activity that brings together diverse viewpoints and geographically distributed teammates
  • What is your unique ability?
    • fostering team camaraderie that endures over time