The art of keeping a team together and not ruining the situation
After I became a senior software engineer, I took on some management tasks, such as organizing work flow and participating in meetings with product managers.
So, I led my own mixed team. Some of us knew each other well, but for other guys I was a completely new person who had to “lead” them. As they say, the first impression is important and I would like not to spoil it. Your ultimate goal is to develop good relationships with each team member over a long period of time.
This article has been translated from English with some adaptations within the Simulator–course “Team Lead, team leader”.
What to do when you have a new team?
Schedule your first one-on-one meetings to get to know each other in person. There may be a lot of information ahead and people will have a lot of questions and concerns about their daily work.
The more information during changes, the better. This will eliminate the “uncertainty” that automatically arises when a reorganization is announced. So I repeated the same details over and over again one on one. I think we did a good job and started to adapt.
The reorganization process was quite difficult, but I quickly realized one important thing
EXPECTATIONS ARE EVERYTHING… or at least very important.
Technically, your performance, tasks, and everything you do in life is tied to expectations to some extent. You may be upset by the outcome of a project or a movie in the theater, but only because you expected something different.
In your work environment:
Your employer likely expects you to complete your daily tasks.
Your manager/lead expects you to treat them in a certain way.
And you expect to get something in return.
Make no mistake, employee expectations go beyond just fair pay. This could also include reasonable work hours, some benefits, remote work, some flexibility, etc.
Essentially, there is a triangle of expectations:
Activity growth: company level
The larger the company, the more “level charts” and other official documents you have. Typically, tier charts detail the requirements that a company places on a particular skill set, area of activity, and responsibilities. Junior employees can be expected to correct small errors in a reasonable time with the help of more senior employees, and senior employees can be expected to work three times faster than junior employees with high quality without much supervision.
In real life, these expectations are more “general guidelines” than strict rules, but they still provide some insight and basic information. Additionally, you may encounter some rules or actions based on these levels. For example, staff engineers may be required to organize at least one major development process improvement initiative once a year. And you wouldn't demand something like that from a junior employee. Knowing the company's levels and expectations will help avoid surprise when such a policy is suddenly announced. (Unless no one uses it at all…)
Increased activity: expectations of team members
Each team member, as an individual, has his own reasons, motivations and approach to work. If you take this into account when creating some processes, it will not only increase team member satisfaction, but also improve the overall “health statistics” of the team. Or at least it won't make it worse.
Here I should note that you don't need to blindly follow everyone's wishes, as things can go wrong very quickly. Everyone has their own personal problems, so don't think that work is everything. It may be worth trying to find the perfect balance between what you can change to meet the person's needs.
Increased activity: expectations from team management
As a team leader, you are typically responsible for the “health” of the entire team, the big picture, planning, making sure everyone is in place, and the overall results. Perhaps you want people to be more independent and do things without you. (Though I recommend checking “what's going on” from time to time, just in case.) Or, if you want to be actively involved, you may want to have the final say in the process and have full context. The decision is yours and usually depends on your specific situation.
The team leader's expectations deserve special mention. Company expectations are usually quite general and ambiguous. More often it's something like:
Perhaps the remaining 5% could be done more slowly. Right?
The team leader's expectations will add context to this, something like:
I want to be able to evaluate your problem, decide what action needs to be taken to solve the problem, set up the necessary meetings/calls without outside help, document my findings in some way, and implement the solution. Then report the results to the team.
Make no mistake, there are many ways to change this expectation. Perhaps the approval of the team leader is needed, perhaps the manager for some reason wants to closely monitor the implementation of the solution, or there are some other reasons that limit the independence of the senior engineer.
All structures are valid. What I mean is that it's important to choose the way you want your team to solve the problem and communicate it to them. One-on-one meetings are best, and the sooner the better.
Expressing your expectations will not remove every obstacle in your path. In any case, you will encounter difficulties, but there will be fewer of them.
Solution: Practical Balance
Each team and each employee has their own responsibilities. It is important to find a balance between all these expectations. You can change some of the company's expectations to better suit the team.
Make sure you know, or at least try to understand, exactly what YOU want from the team, and over time you will develop an idea of what you want from each of them.
Don't forget to be flexible. It is always important to revise your expectations based on progress and new information. It takes time to get to know people, their behavior and their expectations of you.
End. Thanks for stopping by. To be continued…
This article has been translated from English with some adaptations within the Simulator–course “Team Lead, team leader.” Demo lesson is already available on our website!
