Engineer managers (and middle managers in general) have a bad reputation: there’s no point in denying it and you can see it’s true from the sheer number of articles around about what good and bad management is.

I’ve experienced that bad reputation many times when I started working with a new team or new team members, and it would take some time for them to trust me and see that I was actually invested in helping them grow in their careers and in the company, with things like improving past performance scores or shaping their role to what they felt more comfortable.

Strangely, they would be skeptical when I told them that my goal was to help and grow with them, nothing more. It was almost as if they would doubt my intentions.

Honestly, I don’t think their doubts and skepticism were out of place. Personally, over the years I have worked with many managers who were nice people, nice to talk to over a beer or coffee but when it came to the work, they looked disingenuous to me, which made it very difficult to take their feedback seriously and therefore, it made it very difficult for me to trust them

If as a manager you look disingenuous to people, they will find taking your feedback seriously very difficult and won’t trust you.

I struggled to understand why but eventually I realized there are attitudes, behaviours, and actions that make a manager look disingenuous.

When they provide negative feedback, is very specific, almost calculated

And if you ask questions about it, they tend to become defensive or vague. Normally this is because that feedback is not coming from them but from someone else, they are just repeating it. They haven’t noticed it and thus they don’t have any useful information or action points for it.

When they provide positive feedback, it is very broad and non-specific

Again, this is normally because this feedback is not coming from them or because they are just mentioning projects you worked on without having something useful to say. In order for positive feedback to be useful, it has to be specific.

They don’t take a stand

One of the first things I had to learn when I started managing a team was not to own other people’s problems (which, to be honest, I still struggle with it).

On the other hand, many managers take the opposite approach which I’ll refer to as never taking a stand.

By never taking a stand I mean that when there are issues on the team or when you share with them a problem you’re having, although you’re not expecting them to solve it for you, it’s very refreshing and helpful to hear their point of view, what they think about the problem from their position and maybe to hear something from their experience that relates to the situation. A manager that doesn’t do that, to me at least, is showing that either they don’t care or that they are not experienced enough to be handling those problems and managing people.

They don’t get dirty. Instead, they facilitate.

Don’t get me wrong, being a facilitator is a very important (and difficult to master) skill but not enough. For me, it is a sign of a manager who doesn’t want or can’t use their own experience to influence change and show better ways of working. Instead, they prefer to stay on the sidelines without getting dirty.

They speak with jargon

Speaking constantly with jargon gives the idea of being able to deal with complexity and being knowledgeable but in reality, it leaves team members feeling alienated and disconnected. In their attempt to appear knowledgeable, these managers might inadvertently create a facade that obscures their true intentions and abilities. Effective leadership demands clear and transparent communication, and relying solely on jargon can undermine trust and authenticity in the workplace.

They say the right things but don’t follow through

As the saying goes, talking is cheap, and this is particularly true when it comes to managers who consistently articulate the right words but fall short of delivering tangible actions. Inevitably, this gap between words and actions undermines trust and credibility within a team. A manager’s ability to follow through on promises is more than an indicator of competence but a crucial component of integrity and trust.

Conclusion

Here’s my list of things that make a manager look disingenuous. Do I think that if you fall into one of these areas then you are disingenuous? No, of course not, I don’t think it is that linear. I do see it as a pattern though. Most of the managers I worked with which I consider disingenuous ticked many or all of these descriptions.

If you’re worried that your team may look at you this way, I would recommend having an honest conversation with them, asking them for feedback on how perceive your help and behaviors.