An innate ability to compromise. Development managers realize that the most important mandate is to maintain development momentum with an eye always on making a safe, marketable product. Products that reach the market are the result of compromises. This places the engineering manager in the decision-making position of saying when a design fulfills the requirements. The ability to celebrate incremental steps in the design process.
Seasoned leaders recognize that good products come about through the hard work of the team.
Teams require positive feedback to reinforce their accomplishments. Leaders call attention to everything that signals progress, teamwork, and individual creativity. It's difficult for engineering managers to achieve high scores in both dimensions all the time. Each takes a great deal of time and, short of working 70-hour weeks, too much attention to one set of skills shorts the other. Post them in our Members' Discussion Forums .