Leading teams and career progression
Jordi was born in Spain (or in Catalonia, depending on who you ask). Faizan was born in Pakistan. Jordi is a bit hyperactive, is always jumping from one topic to the next one while keeping a perfect balance between them in his head. Faizan looks more relaxed on the outside, but as you start talking to him, those million ideas being processed at the same time soon come to the surface. Jordi is a loving father, always caring for "los niños". Faizan can't stand being away from his blue-eyed jewel.
Jordi is my current team lead in ThoughtWorks, and I remember in one of the first one-on-one's we had, he mentioned he didn't really like being a team lead. Faizan was part of my former team in Outfittery and thought becoming a lead was the natural next step in his career progression.
Despite their different backgrounds, they have a lot in common, including the same conversation with me: what is expected from someone in a lead position?
Every individual has different expectations about their leaders or about themselves as TL's. I can't talk for everyone, but I can summarise some of the expectations I have about myself in three topics.
Organisation vs execution
As I said on another post, moving from a developer position to a lead position requires a mindset reengineering. Not only responsibilities change but also the way you measure your own productivity and how you manage your time.
And in a lead position, I've found that I measure my productivity through my team. In other words, I'm as productive as my team is.
If they struggle to understand what needs to be done and cannot make informed decisions without me, that means my work is not being done well. If they keep reworking on a task over and over, most likely the task needs to be refined or broken down into smaller bits. If they need to check with me before releasing any piece of work that means I've become the biggest impediment to the team's productivity.
So, before committing myself to work on something, I try to first make sure everyone on the team:
- Has something to pick up next;
- Understands what's the end goal for each task and their restrictions;
- How each task connects to the bigger picture.
Optimisation
Once the team has a solid understanding of what is planned to be done, then I turn my attention to how much better we can do it.
What motivates someone? How to make them want to come out of their comfort zone? What makes them eager to work? What are the rough edges that need polishing? How can I help them bring their best version to the office every day?
Those are the questions I always ask myself as a lead and there's a myriad of actions that can be put in place for that end. Let me talk about a couple of examples from the past.
One of the best teams I've ever led once experienced a drop in their motivation and productivity during a period of crisis in the relationship with our client in Petrobras. The problem: they wanted so hard to code and find a solution, that every time they had to attend a meeting on which they'd barely open their mouths their motivation would drop by orders of magnitude. The solution: let them work on the solution and I'd focus on client relationship and establish smoother communications with other teams that we depended on. The outcome: project delivered on time and everyone looks back at that team as one of the best they had.
One of the most engaged developers I had in Outfittery seldom had anything to discuss on our 1:1’s and always said everything was fine. The problem? Everyone perceived him as an accommodated person that just went through the day. The solution? Give him more responsibilities (in an agreed manner) and increase his exposure. The outcome? Unanimous maximum evaluation on his performance review, a salary increase and a promotion.
But to get to that point, to find that sparkle that ignites someone, it takes 3 things: time, communication and discipline.
Time to get to know someone better little by little, day after day; proactive communication, asking the hard questions and actively listening to what they have to say; and discipline to do this on a regular and repetitive basis.
I find it impossible to get to properly know someone by having water cooler conversations every once in a while. I prefer planning recurring 1:1’s with everyone on my team, giving them a space to talk about what they need on a regular basis and taking action on it.
And I saw that happening in practice also in Outfittery. On the first 1:1 I had with one of the developers, he had tons of complaints, all of them fair. We kept on having 1:1’s on a monthly basis and I'd follow up on the points he'd presented on that first occasion, and on our third iteration he had no more complaints. From tons to zero in 3 months, and the most valuable outcome to was his motivation and his joy to work on a team he enjoyed.
Behaviour
There's no way around it, your team will most likely follow the standards you set.
Whatever practices (or the lack of them) you put in place, that's the rule book your team will play by. If you're afraid to release in production, your team will probably think "What do I know? If the most senior person in the team is afraid to do it, I'm not doing it!". If you continuously skip writing tests, soon enough no one else in the team will be doing it.
What can be done then? It's actually quite simple: I behave the way I'd like my team to behave.
If someone is afraid to go live with something, I tell them to go ahead and do it, while we monitor it together. And if going live is really that bad or hard, I'll sit with the team to plan improvements to the release process that will make us feel safe.
If I'd like my team to hear what each other has to say, as opposed to fighting for being the first one to speak up, I sit back and refrain from being the first one to talk. It also helps in behavioural shift: instead of waiting for ready made answers, this fosters a discussion inside the team where each one comes up with their own train of thought and shares them with the team. And yes, feedback is part of it, so I contribute to the discussion with my thoughts about the suggestions, so that everyone learns from it and we come to a better solution in the end.
If I think having regular 1:1s is important, then I'm the first person to make sure they happen, even if there's nothing super important to talk about. And if those 1:1s start to fall into a pattern of awkward silences, I try to come up with different approaches, to not only get to know that other person better, but also to build a development plan together and avoiding both of us from relaxing in our comfort zones.
Is leading teams the natural path in career progression?
Ok, now this is an important one, and also possibly quite controversial: Becoming a team lead is not career progression (if you ask me).
My reasoning is that, as a dev, I usually don't worry (or try not to) about the team having enough tasks to work on, I trust others will be worrying about it while I focus on delivering a feature. Or I don't put so much attention on what motivates others, I focus on my motivation and expect others to give me exciting assignments. In a nutshell: concerns are different in nature and in scale.
Yes, you want to make more money and I want to make more money. And stepping up to a leadership position is the easiest way to get a better salary. But is it the best choice?
And to help you think about that question, I'll ask:
- Do you like writing down tickets and planning sprints?
- Do you enjoy sneaking into someone's head to find a way to motivate them?
- Does it make you feel good to hold back your competitive instincts and make space for others to grow and shine?
If you said "no" to any of those questions, maybe leading teams is not your thing. And it’s alright if you’re not into it! Not everyone enjoys worrying about those topics. Everyone has their own preferences and tastes.
Leading teams to me is not career progression, it's career change. Instead of code and architecture, it's a shift towards organisation and motivation. It's a completely different animal. And then, if you're thinking about becoming a team lead for the money, you might as well consider how much money is worth the frustration you'll feel by being pushed to do something you don't enjoy on a daily basis.
What should you do to make more money? Well, that's a question only you can answer. You can push for a change in salary bands in your company. You can go work somewhere else. You can move to another country where salaries are better. You can do remote work for a company that pays better. You can invest in your new career as a team lead to get satisfaction out of it. There are many options out there, each one with their trade-offs, and only you know which ones fit your reality best.
And to make that decision, I recommend you talk to yourself, to your friends, to your family, to those who know you best and ask them if they think this is a good fit to your personality. Perhaps you're already good at it and just can't see it. Perhaps it's not really a road you should tread. They'll give you a better picture of who you are and what are the options out there.
