5 Whys is a blog about technical leadership in the software world.

Team Leader Manifesto - Take #3

As team leaders our goal, and the way we measure our work, is the overall growth in skills of self organization and self maintenance of each person of our team, and the team as a whole. To that end:

We accept that the team’s needs from us change continuously based on their skills for handling the current reality of work, so:

  • We embrace a continuously changing leadership style, over a one-style-fits-all leadership approach

 

We believe in challenging ourselves and our teams to always get better, so: 

  • We create slack time for the team to learn and be challenged 
  • We embrace taking risks for our team over staying safe 
  • We embrace fear and discomfort as learning new skills over keeping people within their comfort zones
  • We embrace experimentation as a constant practice over maintaining the status quo 
    • With people 
    • With tools 
    • With processes
    • With the environment

 

We believe our core practice is leading people, not wielding machines, so:

  • We embrace spending more time with our team than in meetings 
  • We embrace treating software problems as people problems 
  • We learn people skills and communication techniques

 

Team Leader Manifesto - Take #4

Should you grow even a short-term consultant in your team?