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Yesterday you were responsible for managing the bits and bytes of your life that constitute the code you created. Today you are responsible for a group of people’s well-being, career growth, and regulation.
That’s right, you have ascended to the leadership level, where it’s more than jumping in to save the project and lead the Team through the late-night battles, more than volunteering for the adamant project. What’s more, you cannot go into the cave when something needs to get done by you, the one-person tiger team.
Today, you are the face that your Team will look to for guidance, Leadership, and teaching.
Do your shoulders feel a little heavy right now? Did you think it would be an all “let’s keep writing code as a team” and “if we keep our collective heads down, we’ll all be happy” type of thing? What about when people start to irritate one another? Were you hoping to slide between them to get to the espresso machine?
Getting started as a new Development Manager is a daunting task – yes, it IS a daunting task, not CAN BE – it takes a lot of work to do it right and well. I remember my first day after it was announced I was a newly minted manager of a new team. A slew of emails flew into my inbox from HR – objective reviews, manager meetings, training requests, etc. – and I was dying for guidance on what to do next, how to get started, and where to start!
My Director sent me a great email, which sadly I’ve lost, but hopefully, the spirit remains true here with some added thoughts of my own. But make no mistake, the position might be Manager, but the path is Leadership. If you want to be great, be a leader; if you want to be good, be a manager.
It’s about the People
If you think your new role is about shipping code, then you are sorely mistaken for the Team Lead. The Manager is focused on the people more than the code – the people who think of, create, imagine and deliver the code – without the people, you have no regulation, no product. It would help if you focused on building a great team because a great team is what begets a great product. Was your Team handed to you? No picksies?
No problem; now it’s time to figure out who does what, how, what they are good at, where they need help, and how you can help them. I have sat down with many people over the years, and every interaction is always different and always has to be. A great way to interact with your Team is via monthly one-on-ones. It doesn’t have to be formal, and they work better if they are not. The value is you give each person time to sit down with you, and they hear your thoughts, and you pick theirs, you adjust your plans, rinse and repeat.
Your Team is not a Factory.
It is straightforward to fall into the trap of thinking that you are now running a production factory focused on delivering goods and services to the world. Yes, you write code and produce software (or perhaps some other interest), but how you have this is just as important. The most significant part of being a developer is the creativity to imagine new approaches to resolving problems.
If you take over all the fun design stuff or give it to someone else, you are taking that element of fun away from your Team. Every job has an element of fun to it, and in software, this is the most significant part – coming up with new ideas, leveraging new frameworks, and trying out new ideas.
As their leader, you should be very concerned when you see the number of new ideas from your Team dropping because it means they aren’t engaged, don’t feel empowered, and, even worse, are simply going through the motions to get their work done. Don’t turn your Team into a factory focused on producing code by specific dates; turn them into a team that churns out great ideas month over month. Those ideas will win every day.
Be Open
It is okay not to know everything. Newsflash – you don’t, I don’t – we only know what we can learn. You don’t have to be the perfect leader for your Team; whether you’ve been on the job for a few days or years, there is no threshold for perfection. Be honest with your Team about what you know, where things are, what is next, what you are unsure of, and where you need some help and clarification.
These are all great ways to show your humanity to your Team. Sometimes you can’t tell them everything, sometimes you can only mean some people bits and pieces, but be open and honest on what you can share. The most rewarding response from a team is when you are available, and they rally beside you to help you through it.
Help them Leap
So now you’ve met everyone, found out their likes and dislikes, what works, what doesn’t, where they want to go and don’t – now you need to think of how to grow them. Think of your Team as plants, and you want to grow them into trees. How do you do that? You listen to what they want to do and where they want to go, look at where the company is and where it wants to go, and help them build those career paths.
“Waiting for someone to die” to take their position is not a career path; that is a career line, where they have surrendered themselves to waiting behind you (or someone else) for their career to happen. There is always a path and a direction, but not everyone can see it – and that is where your job is so critical.
Trust
This seems obvious, right? Trust your Team to do the right thing. Make the right call. Step up to the plate when you are not there. My biggest “tip of the hat” has always come when I’ve taken sick for a big meeting, presentation, deployment, etc., only to come in the next day and see it go off without a hitch. Where I thought I was a linchpin, I wasn’t.
The Team realized the importance of what needed to be done (because I was open); they might not have known what was to be done today, but they came up with some ideas to make it happen (because they are not a factory), they weren’t afraid to jump in and try something new (because they know how to leap) and they knew they could handle this (because we discuss more than their work) and THEY MADE IT HAPPEN.
Trust does not happen overnight, and it evolves; it grows. To get there, you need to focus on honing your skills on the above traits to make it happen, each day, with each person, fostering that consistent message so you can get there.
A Culture Aside
Do you want a great culture like Hubspot, Valve, or some other culture child of the day? Fantastic. Was that built overnight? No. Culture is not a transplant process, just as you cannot transplant someone’s soul into another person’s body. You can transplant parts and pieces but not the raison d’etre. It’s an evolutionary process, a growth that happens over time driven by your commitment to the above tenants.
You cannot create passion when it is not there; it is either there or it is not; some people fall into the wrong jobs by accident, and it’s up to you to make sure they wake up wanting to get up and put both feet forward to help your Team reach their goals.
Remember the individuals, nurture the Team, be open, and help them leap and build trust. If you can do those five things, day after day, you will do more than become a manager; you’ll become a leader.
