Managing Team Execution

As a manager you're ultimately responsible for the execution of the team, which means getting the most out of your engineers and delivering meaningful impact on the business. Managing execution involves a combination of short-term planning and long-term strategy.

What they're looking for

Great managers are able to translate a company strategy into concrete goals and motivate their team to reach those goals, and execution questions assess this.

Many team leadership questions are asked directly, such as "How do you keep a team motivated?" or "Tell me about a time when you were forced to make an unpopular decision." Prioritization and execution questions are also common, such as "How do you manage multiple requests to your team?" or "How do you deal with competing priorities?" These all come down to team-building and leadership skills. These questions give you a chance to demonstrate your ability to execute in good times, motivate in bad, and handle everyday management challenges.

Let's spend more time on each of these.

Prioritization and execution

Much of an EM's day is spent on prioritization and execution. Requests never stop flying in — how do you separate the signal from the noise and execute on what's truly important? We recommend taking time each day to think on overall business goals, and on your team's personal and individual goals. It's not always possible to keep every engineer working on his or her dream project, but thoughtfully assigning work according to impact and personal preferences goes a long way towards making your team (and your bosses) happy.

These skills will be critical for any EM role you interview for. Therefore, be sure you can demonstrate smooth communication with cross-functional peers and other EMs. You don't want to duplicate work or cause confusion. Make sure you demonstrate:

• Knowledge of key team members' specific professional interests and skills so that you can assign them appropriate tasks when available.
• A very clear understanding of the direct relationship your group has to greater business goals, and other departments that depend on you.
• Ability to make tough decisions considering the big-picture. Discussing trade-offs is a great way to do this.
• Saying no. The majority of requests will unfortunately be out of scope for your engineering team. Can you protect your engineers from lower-priority work so that they can focus on the important, company-driving goals?

Motivation

As hard as you try to keep your team engaged, sometimes you'll be stuck assigning tasks that seem boring or mundane. Other times, your group may be overwhelmed with work, or reluctant to take a new direction decided by upper management. It's these times that your leadership and motivational skills will be put to the test. Interviewers know these situations will happen, and they'll want to gauge your behavior. Here are a few tips for answering motivation questions:

• Display calm, logical decision-making.
• Showcase your understanding of each of your team members and how you were able to appeal to them as individuals.
• Give examples of ways in which you were able to decrease the workload / re-frame the task at hand, or otherwise came up with ways to change the situation for the better.

Team leadership sample questions

You'll face a ton of team leadership questions during your interview. These three were recently asked at Facebook:

• How would you motivate your team to perform better?
• Tell me about a time you had to mediate a conflict.
• Describe a tough situation in which you had to step in and lead.

Let's analyze each of these.

How would you motivate your team to perform better?

Great EMs know that business growth is tied to personal growth. It's your job to create an environment where your team can grow — where individuals can take on greater and greater responsibilities, experiment with new ideas, and aren't afraid to fail. Your interviewer is looking for you to acknowledge this, and show that you'll do the work to understand what drives each team member, and do your best to make their goals attainable within the framework of business objectives.

Tell me about a time you had to mediate a conflict.

Empathy is a critical management characteristic. If you don't understand your people, you won't be able to solve team cohesion problems. Your interviewer is looking for examples of empathetic behavior and good judgement. In the best case, you'd be able to give both parties what they wanted while still meeting business objectives. This isn't always possible, so if things didn't go your way, explain what you learned or how you'd have handled things differently.

Describe a tough situation in which you had to step in and lead.

You'll face adversity as an EM. Projects derail, and objectives change. Your interviewer wants to assess how you react to tough situations, and how your leadership affects your team. They want to see bias for action and thoughtful, high-quality decision-making which doesn't step on toes.

Tip: Be careful not to step in to make decisions too often or too early. Teams need to feel autonomous to function well. Take the reins too often, and your team may come to expect this which will slow you down and create extra work.

Practice real interview questions

Before you move on, here are a few more example questions and exercises to try out that have been asked in recent EM interviews. Take a moment to answer these on your own, or record yourself giving example answers:

• Give me an example of a time when you motivated others.
• Tell me about a time you had to lead a team through a re-organization.
• Describe a time when you anticipated potential problems and developed preventive measures.
• Tell me about a time you received guidance from your manager and had to get buy in from your team.
• What do you do when a team completely disagrees with the founder/VP on the direction of a product?

After you've tried these out yourself, continue to the next lesson to see some example answers and our recommended approach for questions like these.