I have been "problem manager" for many large outages. I use the term "problem manager" to remind people that an outage is something you manage just like any other kind of project, except on much shorter time scales.
Everything you learned about project management applies to dealing with outages.
> Sometimes an investigator needs to go silent for a while to chase down a hunch, or collect some data, or research some question. As long as such a silence is negotiated in advance, with a specific time to reconvene, it can serve a crucial purpose. I call this functional dead air.
Hey, if you are the kind of project manager that talks and does not listen to your team... that's a problem.
My ideal stance on those occasions is to present myself as somebody who "wants to be educated about the issue". I think it is more helpful and creates less stress. As I am asking questions I am trying to not seem to be interrogating them but instead emphasise I am a noob on the topic but need to learn quickly.
My ideal is this scene from Margin Call: https://youtu.be/Hhy7JUinlu0?t=67
This usually is actually true, btw.
There is no single way to do it right but as a manager it is your job to maintain good information flow between you and your reports and on an outage, your reports are essentially everybody involved.