A team leader who can – who is he?

If you often go to interviews, you can often come across guys whom HR introduces as team leaders, but at the same time they show 10 red flags out of 10 already at the greeting stage. And the question arises, why were these guys appointed as team leaders if this is clearly not their job.

Perhaps the problem is that in IT it is common to appoint some cool engineer as a team leader, give him books like: “How to herd cats” or “Mom, I'm a team leader.” And then hope that the person will somehow learn Zen and be able to do the work of a team leader.

However, what if you need to find the right person, rather than training someone who is not worth training?

The year is 2006

It's 2006, Dota Allstars 6.27b has just come out, you and the guys have tried it and liked it. You've started to notice that guys have started to appear in the computer club and have started to play for money with each other, and the admin has posted an A4 sheet of paper that a 5×5 championship is planned for a month. You want to be part of this action, you want to win.

Hiring, onboarding, offboarding

You realize that you have only one friend who plays Dota, you need to find three more people. You start talking to classmates who can play, you ask the guys in the salon who can play and is free. You conduct test games, talk to the guys, find out if they plan to leave the city or stay here.

At some point, you find five guys and start to see if it works or not. Someone starts to fall out of the team (no motivation, different study schedules), you have difficult conversations with this person, exclude him from the team and look for a new person to replace him.

And after a few iterations, you get together five people who can go to a computer club two or three times a week and train.

Distribution of roles, training, work with motivation

Once you get the guys and a stable schedule, you start making arrangements with other teams to have joint training sessions. Sometimes it's easy and simple, sometimes you have to call and negotiate with everyone. But nevertheless, interaction with other teams is established.

You begin to understand which of the guys behaves more aggressively by nature, and he should be put on the initiator, someone likes to focus on farming gold and put him on the carry, and someone is for the movement and he should be put on the playmaker.

After that, strategies are honed, when after each game you sit down with the guys, analyze the mistakes and determine what went wrong, what needs to be changed, who needs to improve their skills.

After each defeat, you need to discuss the situation with the guys so that they don't get demotivated. Set them up for a new game and start everything from scratch, despite the defeat.

Discussing strategies with opinion leaders

You start communicating on forums with other players, where you discuss strategies, figure out how to play each stage of the game correctly, and improve your understanding of the game. You begin to understand that if you get stuck somewhere, you can discuss the problem within the team, and in case of a bigger problem, turn to an outside opinion.

Tournament day

You agree with the guys where you will meet, who can take how much money for the entry fee. You agree with the guys how you will act in this or that situation.

There are a lot of emotions during the tournament, you make sure that one of your team members doesn't get drunk, doesn't argue with other tournament participants and doesn't get called out, you monitor your motivation and do everything possible to show the best game regardless of whether you win or lose.

After the tournament

After the tournament, you discuss how everything went, find positive moments and prepare yourself for the fact that at the next tournament you will show an even cooler game. If one of the guys is leaking, then you prepare the guys that he will need to be replaced. And if everything is good, you win.

As a result

It's 2006, you're 14, you're doing the job of a team leader without reading a single book. And the captains of other teams participating in the tournament are doing the same. Wouldn't it be easier to appoint guys who are naturally capable of playing this role as team leaders?