<story><title>When you&apos;re in a team that I lead, there are 3 things that I&apos;d like to ask you</title><url>http://kkovacs.eu/teamwork-ground-rules</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>cletus</author><text>I don&apos;t necessarily disagree with the points the author raises but to paraphrase JFK &quot;ask not what your people can do for you, ask what you can do for your people&quot;.&lt;p&gt;I&apos;ve been in team leading positions before and my approach is this:&lt;p&gt;1. Lead by example. You should be working at least as hard as anyone else who&apos;s reporting to you. Never make a fuss about it. Never complain about it. Just do it;&lt;p&gt;2. Shield your people from crap. Part of your job when you&apos;re in a leadership position is to shield them from crap. And by crap I mean things like management BS, customer requirements and so forth. Let them get on with getting the job done. Your job, at least in part, is to deal with these  (typically overblown if not outright imagined) exigencies that customers tend to have. Likewise, your people should spend very little time in meetings, particularly with people outside your team;&lt;p&gt;3. Appreciate that every developer is different. We all like to work in different ways. Some of us are good at (and like)  sailing through uncharted waters. Some like a far more structured environment. It&apos;s your job to cater to that to get the most of your people; and&lt;p&gt;4. Make sure each person knows how what they do fits into the big picture. This can be as simple as &quot;you&apos;re writing this component so when the reporting falls over, which happens because of X, Y or Z, the system recovers&quot;. People work better, in my experience, when they have a level of understanding about where their piece of the puzzle goes and why it&apos;s important. Again, different people want/need different levels of detail here.&lt;p&gt;Too often management also thinks that team leadership just happens. In my experience, depending on the project and the size of the team, it can take as much as 25-50% of your time. Too often you&apos;re still expected to produce work as if you were spending 100% of your time programming however.</text></comment>
<story><title>When you&apos;re in a team that I lead, there are 3 things that I&apos;d like to ask you</title><url>http://kkovacs.eu/teamwork-ground-rules</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>run4yourlives</author><text>Sorry, but this is horrible, and simply not how leadership works.&lt;p&gt;It&apos;s the team lead&apos;s job to answer all of these questions on their own, by &lt;i&gt;interacting&lt;/i&gt; and &lt;i&gt;communicating&lt;/i&gt; with the team members. The role of the leader is to take up the communication slack of the team members because they are to &lt;i&gt;focus on getting the work done&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;Now, that&apos;s not to suggest that members shouldn&apos;t be communicating at all, but this is presented in such a way that if all team members followed it properly and consistently, they are basically self governing and don&apos;t require a leader at all.&lt;p&gt;The whole point of the leadership position is to account for each of these failures in human nature.&lt;p&gt;There was an old saying that was used in the Army that I remember fondly:&lt;p&gt;&quot;If the student hasn&apos;t learned, then you have not taught.&quot;&lt;p&gt;In other words - it&apos;s always the teacher (or leader&apos;s) fault, because it is the job of the leader to &lt;i&gt;adapt to the personalities on the team&lt;/i&gt; not the other way around.&lt;p&gt;It&apos;s easy to be a leader of all-stars, all you need to do is stay out of the way (topic for another day). Being a good team lead is about achieving all-star results with normal people.</text></comment>