How Authentic Communication Revolutionized My Management Style

As I enter 2025, I am not the person I was a year ago. What started as a challenging period in my role as an engineering manager evolved into something unexpected: a transformation in how I approach leadership, all pivoting around one simple truth I had been missing. Through the ups and downs of 2024, I discovered that the key to my leadership wasn't in new frameworks or methodologies – it was in how openly I communicated. Through this journey of growth I realized the transformative power of open communication with my supervisor.

1 on 1 meetings

LeanIX fosters a culture of open communication through structured 1:1 meetings across all engineering levels. These bi-weekly touchpoints connect engineering managers with their teams, and extend through all layers of management. More than just status updates, these meetings create a dedicated space for problem-solving, career development, and honest dialogue about challenges and opportunities or sometimes just offering a listening ear.

At their core, these conversations acknowledge a fundamental truth: before we are engineers, managers, or leaders, we are human beings. Our lives don't pause when we open our laptops, and our effectiveness at work is inherently linked to our whole human experience. While maintaining professional boundaries is important, pretending that our personal lives exist in a vacuum separate from our work creates artificial barriers to genuine leadership.

My own journey with these 1:1s revealed their true value. Early in 2024, I found myself navigating the challenges of being a father to a newborn while leading my team. Despite countless sleep-deprived nights, I kept this struggle to myself, believing one does not impact the other. Looking back, this belief actually limited my effectiveness as a leader. The positive impact I experienced later in the year, when I embraced greater transparency, taught me an important lesson: in leadership, over-sharing often yields better results than under-sharing.

My initial approach

My supervisor can only help me as much as I allow him to by providing information - a simple truth that took me months to fully grasp. Looking back at the first half of 2024, I can clearly see how my limited sharing created unnecessary blindspots. It started in the first quarter of 2024 when my team's velocity dropped by 10% compared to the previous quarter. I hadn't yet learned to fully leverage my supervisor's experience and insight to address performance issues. The problem I needed to solve was misalignment within my team on product priorities, and with clearer communication, my supervisor could have helped identify and address these challenges earlier. This period of struggling in silence ultimately became my catalyst for change - I realized that my role as a leader wasn't to have all the answers, but to create the conditions for finding them together.

The breakthrough

The latter half of 2024 marked a significant shift when I embraced radical transparency, going from sharing the bare minimum to openly discussing all problems and my emotional state. As our team grew, I noticed a shift in team dynamics, which resulted in less polished features. I used the 1:1 meeting format to discuss this issue at length with my supervisor. This new approach quickly proved valuable. The team slowly returned to its previous performance level, as if nothing had happened.

Similarly, besides an increasing number of bugs, I also noticed disagreements arising between team members. I took the same approach, immediately engaging with my supervisor to develop comprehensive solutions. Together, we could evaluate approaches before implementation, leading to more successful conflict resolution. Even better, the team members' relationships improved significantly. From this point on, task delegation became much easier.

This proactive communication style proved its worth again when there was misalignment between other team members. I quickly reacted, drawing from my experience with these situations. I engaged with my supervisor, ensuring he was well-informed so that we could swiftly implement effective strategies to prevent escalation. The situation, which could have reached top management, was efficiently resolved at our level, maintaining team harmony and productivity. Product development began moving more smoothly, deadlines were met more consistently, and team morale noticeably improved. When challenges arose, we had a strong foundation of trust and understanding to address them effectively.

The toughest challenge came near the end of the year when one team member sought a promotion. I sat down with him and explained why a promotion was not viable at that point, providing concrete facts to support my reasoning. However, he still felt entitled to it. After my initial attempt wasn't successful, I collaborated with my supervisor to approach the situation differently. All three of us talked openly about the situation. While the outcome remained the same, our unified front helped the team member better understand and accept the decision. Thankfully, this approach kept our working relationship intact, and he continued to perform at the same level.

Key victories and learnings

The year 2024 transformed my approach to leadership. By embracing open communication, I not only strengthened my relationship with my supervisor but also created a more resilient and aligned team. The results speak for themselves:

Improved team dynamics and faster conflict resolution
Polished features and faster delivery
Strengthening trust across all levels of relationships through more engagement
Handling sensitive situations more effectively by easily finding the essence of the problem

This experience reinforced a universal truth in leadership: regardless of your role - whether you're an engineer, lower or upper management - transparent communication nearly always yields better outcomes than keeping things close to the chest. What started as a challenging year ended as a masterclass in the power of open dialogue and collaborative leadership. The greatest victory wasn't just in solving immediate problems, but in discovering a sustainable approach to leadership that will serve me and my team well into the future. Sometimes our biggest growth comes from challenging our own assumptions about how things should be approached. I am committed to continuing this open communication approach and encouraging others to do the same.

The question now isn't whether we should communicate openly, but rather: What potential are we leaving untapped by not doing so? As leaders, we must ask ourselves: Can we truly lead if we're holding back? The power to transform our teams, our organizations, and ourselves lies in the conversations we're brave enough to have. So, I challenge you – what conversation are you avoiding today that could change everything tomorrow?

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Jernej Klancic

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