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What Qualities are Necessary in a Good Team Lead?
Midnight Thunder asks: "We have all had our share of team leads and some of us have been in
the position ourselves. I would be curious to know what things you have appreciated from your team leads and what you didn't like. Also,
for those of you who have been in the position how you found it. The main reason I ask is because this offer has been given to me as a carrot and I would like to make the right choice, and if I take
it learn from other people's experience how to be a good lead."
the ability to effectively run interference for the team, allowing them to focus on their tasks at hand is *very* valuable trait for a leader to have. there are some terrific books on leading technical teams - Debugging the Development Process (Steve Maguire), and Peopleware (Timothy Lister and Tom DeMarco) come to mind.
I'd recommend the advice in The Career Programmer: Guerilla Tactics For An Imperfect World. If you do this (and help the members of your team to do the same), you'll avoid many of the problems that typical programmers have dealing with the realities of a corporate environment.
More than anything, you need the human qualities: humility, forgiveness, optimism, caring. Being good at the technical side: scheduling, risk management, and so on, is a necessary but not sufficient condition for being a good leader. The human side is the other condition.
Books about the technical side:
Here's a book about scheduling: Slack by DeMarco.
Another DeMarco book: The Deadline. It appears to be a book about managing a factory. It's not. It very much applies to software.
Don't forget Peopleware, again by DeMarco (really, read everything DeMarco writes). This one is very much about software, and is right on.
Back to the human side of being a leader, be sure to read Managing from the Heart. I hope you aren't put off by the title; it explains better than I can how being humane is good for you, good for your employees, and it's even good business.
All good points. Unfortunately, there's always the bad apples where ...
There's no way to get across the idea that they shouldn't be IM'ing their friends all day long in the middle of a busy period - without them thinking you're a jackass.
There's no way to get across the idea that they need to grow as an employee, and that might require some effort when they aren't at the office - without making them feel disrespected.
There's no way to get across to them that everybody else has somewhere they'd rather be, as well (family, outside interests, etc.) and yet those people aren't letting the team down.
There's no way to get across that their lead respects them, doesn't feel he/she is being a jackass, and knows that there's more important things to life than a job, there is still a job to do.
I my brief stints as "lead," I've hated it because there's always the ones that are never satisfied. That no matter how soft the kid gloves are, they'll still be fragile. And they'll take the opportunity to walk over you. Not all team members are like this, but invariably, there's always on in the bunch. Even the best managers run into this problem.
I'm actually taking a class titled "Engineering Leadership and Organization Management" right now. Without practically giving away my notes, I would say go take a look at General Bill Creech's The Five Pillars of Tqm: How to Make Total Quality Management Work for You. This applies to almost any leadership position, from small teams to entire organizations.
With that said, I can recommend several articles from the Harvard Business Review as well. If you're really interested, I'd highly suggest that you look into getting them either through your company, or just for yourself.
Someone damn well better read these links, since I spent the past 20 minutes weeding through articles, picking these out! By the way, if you cringe at the price, here's a hint: The executive summaries in the "previews" will give you a VERY good idea of what's in the article! Also, keep an eye out for the "OnPoint Enhanced" articles, as the "Idea in Brief" and "Idea in Work" give you a very effictive executive summary of the article's text.
Daniel Goldman, "What Makes a Leader?"
When asked to define the ideal leader, many would emphasize traits such as intelligence, toughness, determination, and vision--the qualities traditionally associated with leadership. Often left off the list are softer, more personal qualities--but they are also essential. Although a certain degree of analytical and technical skill is a minimum requirement for success, studies indicate that emotional intelligence may be the key attribute that distinguishes outstanding performers...
John Kotter, "Leading Change"
In the past decade, the author has watched more than 100 companies try to remake themselves into better competitors. Their efforts have gone under many banners: total quality management, reengineering, right sizing, restructuring, cultural change, and turnarounds. A few of those efforts have been very successful. A few have been utter failures. Most fall somewhere in between, with a distinct tilt toward the lower end of the scale. The lessons that can be learned will be relevant to more and more organizations as the business environment becomes increasingly competitive in the coming decade...
J. Sterling Livingston, "Pygmalion in Management"
Experiments and studies conclude that managers' expectations have a direct impact on their subordinates' productivity. High expectations on the part of managers lead to the development of a "super-staff"; low expectations and the resulting damaged egos cause subordinates to behave in a manner that increases the probability of failure...
W. Chan Kim , Renee A. Mauborgne, "Fair Process: Managing the Knowledge Economy"
Unlike the traditional factors of production--land, labor, and capital--knowledge is a resource that can't be forced out of people. But creating and sharing knowledge is essential to fostering innovation, the key challenge of the knowledge-based economy. To create a climate in which employees volunteer their creativity and expertise, managers need to look beyond the traditional tools at their disposal. They need to build trust...
Thomas Donaldson, "Values in Tension: Ethics Away from Home"
What should managers working abroad do when they encounter business practices that seem unethical? Should they, in the spirit o
Michael C. Hollinger
"I don't know." Stand in the mirror and practice saying that every morning. The most dangerous kind of lead is the lead who thinks he knows everything. The next most dangerous kind is the kind who thinks he should know everything. It's your job to know how to get things done and how to find answers. Learn which people on your team are good for what kinds of answers. Don't even begin to pretend you know everything yourself, you dick.
Wow, lots of good advice from somebody who seems to have a lot of experience with bad leaders :-) .. but I have to disagree with this one. A leader should never say "I don't know". Maybe "I need more information", or "What do you think?" but never "I don't know".
When a tough decision needs to be made, people will come to the leader .. "What should we do?" they'll ask. When you say "I don't know", you are useless as a leader. You don't want that. You want to either have the answer, or you want to facilate a process that leads to the answer .. get people talking, doing research, thinking for themselves. And always be ready to change your mind.
That's my opinion.
Heck I don't like it when *anybody* says "I don't know" unless it's quickly followed by "but I know how to find out".