Exposure over theory
Why watching, reading, and discussing real-world management is your best teacher
In many disciplines, engineering, economics, medicine, there's a clear path to improvement: study the established material, practice the techniques, and apply the best practices. The resources are there, and progress comes from working with them deliberately.
Management, however, is different.
Ask a group of engineering managers how they learned their craft, and you'll rarely hear them cite a single book or course. More often, they'll say they learned by watching others, imitating great managers, avoiding the habits of bad ones, and figuring things out through trial and error.
This isn't just folklore. It reveals something important about the nature of management itself and why developing as a manager requires something more than theory.
This article explores why management can't be taught the way other skills can, and how the most effective way to grow is by exposing yourself to real situations, real people, and the choices managers make in the moment.
The material
Every craft has its material.
For a carpenter, it's wood.
For a musician, it's sound.
For a mathematician, it's numbers.
And while these materials are complex and full of nuance, they're also deeply abstracted so that people can actually work with them.
Take wood. Every piece is unique; grain, density, moisture, even how it responds to a tool. But in practice, we don't obsess over those differences. We categorize it by tree type: oak, pine, mahogany. These broad categories are useful enough to make decisions. What to use for a floorboard, what to carve into a chair leg.
The same goes for music. Sound exists on a continuous spectrum, but we don't treat it that way. We break it into notes and scales. We agree that an A is 440Hz, and we build instruments and songs on top of that simplification. It’s not the full reality but it's enough to work with.
And numbers? There are infinitely many of them. But we've built layers of abstraction; digits, notations, number systems, formulas so we can reason about the infinite without being overwhelmed by it.
In all of these disciplines, complexity is simplified into usable forms. The uniqueness of each unit, each board of wood, each note, each number, doesn't stop us from working with them, because we've learned how to generalize them just enough to be productive.
But management doesn’t work that way.
People
As a manager, your material is people. And people don't follow the same rules.
Every person is different. Genetically, emotionally, and experientially. Like snowflakes, no two are exactly alike. Even identical twins raised apart develop distinct personalities, preferences, and perspectives. That uniqueness isn't surface-level, it runs deep, shaping how each person thinks, feels, communicates, and responds to pressure.
Of course, we've tried to make sense of this complexity. We've built frameworks to help us generalize people such as:
These models are useful. They give us a vocabulary for tendencies and behaviors. They can highlight communication styles or help structure feedback.
But they are simplifications, not the reality.
You can't manage someone solely based on their DISC type. You can't assume two engineers with the same MBTI will have the same needs, fears, or blind spots. These tools give you a starting point, but they don't replace the need to actually understand the individual in front of you.
Because in practice, people resist generalization. They surprise you. They grow, regress, mask their emotions, contradict themselves.
And because people are your material, their uniqueness becomes your challenge.
You're not just managing tasks or processes, you're managing emotions, expectations, and motivations that are specific to each person. One team member might flight when facing conflict. Another might become more vocal. One might crave autonomy, while another needs reassurance. Even if the surface problem is the same (say, missing a deadline) the underlying cause and best response may be wildly different.
This means that every issue you face as a manager comes wrapped in the specific context of the individual involved. There's no standard playbook. No generalization that holds for long.
Each person brings their own texture. And every conversation, every problem, every decision is shaped by that texture.
Embrace variety
If you're working with people, you can't standardize your way out of complexity. You can't reduce every challenge to a framework, and you shouldn't try to.
The reality is: there is no universal playbook. The same management tactic that motivates one person might backfire with another. A direct conversation might build trust with one team member and shut down another completely. What worked last time might not work next time, even with the same person.
This variety isn't a bug. It's the nature of the material. And the only way to become better at working with it is to embrace the variety, not resist it.
The best managers I know aren't the ones who've memorized the most models or frameworks. They're the ones who've seen the most. They've been exposed to a wide range of people, situations, and reactions. They've built judgment not through theory alone, but through experience.
You may not have a team of twenty. You might only manage three or four people right now. But that doesn't mean your growth has to be limited. You can still expand your exposure by working closely with other managers, by reflecting deeply on the situations you do encounter, and by studying real examples from the field.
Management isn't about applying the right rule. It’s about recognizing patterns in real people, and the only way to get better at that is to see more of them.
Practice pair management
One of the most effective ways to broaden your exposure is to manage in pairs.
This doesn't mean you co-manage a team full-time (though that can work). It means creating deliberate opportunities to observe how other managers think, and to let them observe you in return.
You can do this in a 1:1 peer setup or in a small group of fellow engineering managers. The mechanics are simple but powerful: take notes after a tricky 1:1 or team situation, and bring that scenario to your peer or group. Walk them through what happened, what you did, and where you felt uncertain. Then ask: What would you have done?
This kind of debrief builds your pattern recognition. You'll start to see how other managers approach similar problems. What they focus on, what they ignore, what questions they ask. And in the process, you'll start to refine your own instincts.
The benefit compounds when your peer does the same. Now you're learning not just from your own experience, but from theirs too.
Pair management isn't about finding the one right answer. It's about building a richer mental library of situations, reactions, and possibilities so you're better equipped when the next one comes along.
Borrow experiences
You won't encounter every kind of situation in your own team. But you don't have to.
The second-best way to increase exposure, after direct experience, is to read about what other managers are going through. Real examples. Real people. Real stakes.
Books are a good starting point. Many great management books share stories from the author's career, offering a glimpse into how they handled complex or ambiguous situations. But remember: you're still only seeing one person's experience.
To truly benefit from variety, find places where multiple managers share real problems and perspectives. One of the best resources I've found is the Rands Leadership Slack4. There, managers of all levels post daily about situations they're dealing with from performance issues to hiring dilemmas to conflict within their teams.
Some channels worth following:
#hiring-and-interviews
#management-craft
#leaving-a-job
#firing-people
#help-and-advice
What makes this so valuable is the range of reactions. You'll see five different takes on the same scenario, each shaped by different values, teams, and personalities. Over time, you'll build a more flexible and nuanced sense of what "good management" can look like.
You may not live through every situation yourself. But you can borrow experience from those who have.
Shadow and be shadowed
One of the most underrated ways to grow as a manager is to sit in and observe how someone else handles the exact same job, but in their own way.
You don't need to do this regularly, just occasionally, and with intent. Ask a peer if you can shadow them during a specific kind of meeting: a 1:1, a performance review, or a team discussion. Then, return the favor. Invite them to sit in on one of yours.
When done respectfully and with consent, this kind of shadowing is a goldmine You'll pick up subtle differences in tone, phrasing, pacing, and even body language. You might notice how they defuse tension, ask follow-up questions, or bring someone back on track. None of this tends to show up in books but it's where the craft of management really lives.
What's more, you'll begin to see that there's no one right way to manage. Different personalities, different styles, and different teams all shape what “good” looks like. And by seeing more of those possibilities in action, you'll expand your own range and confidence.
This isn't about copying someone else. It's about learning from their version of the same job.
Sometimes, watching one conversation is more educational than reading ten case studies.
Conclusion
You won't find a universal framework that works for everyone. You'll never reach a point where you've "seen it all". But you can get better.
Watch how others manage. Talk through real situations. Read about the choices others have made and the trade-offs they faced. The more examples you absorb, the better your instincts will become.
So if you want to grow, don't look for perfect answers. Look for more examples.