Some mistakes I made as a new manager
> I asked people for feedback. I found that if I just asked “do you have any feedback for me?” people often wouldn’t, but if I asked more granular questions—“was that meeting useful?”—I would usually learn a lot from it.<p>This part is good.
I think generally as engineers, a manager simply asking "do you have feedback for me" just feels like a trap.  I don't know man, there's plenty of things you do that annoy me but like.. can we be more specific here?<p>The other side to this is - don't ask for feedback if you don't plan to action any of it.  I worked for a guy who must have read a book that told him to ask for feedback, but he was so rigid that he would vehemently defend against any feedback he was given.  Not like personal stuff either, but structure/length/schedule of meetings, standups, etc.<p>The "strong ideas loosely held" type guys need to be careful when they become management, because while it may work with peers (if they also love arguing), it doesn't work with a power imbalance.  All your "strong ideas" will become "permanently held", congrats.