Leadership Principles: Reciprocal Loyalty

I am reading a book called “The 12 Leadership Principles of Dean Smith” by author David Chadwick. I found the book buried upstairs in the guest bedroom and decided to give it a read.

The book is written by David Chadwick, a former student and player of basketball coach Dean Smith. Chadwick has distilled what he thinks are the 12 leadership principles that allowed Smith to be one of the most successful college basketball coaches of all time.

I am currently reading the first chapter on the first leadership principle, and I can say that so far I am not super impressed. It is not that the leadership principle of “reciprocal loyalty” is a bad principle, on the contrary, but I am not sure we need a full chapter on the concept.

Loyalty to your team, your management, and yourself is a core quality of a leader, or for that matter of a follower. If you are loyal to your team, it goes a long way to your team being loyal to you. The same goes for being loyal to your boss.

How do you demonstrate loyalty?

You can demonstrate loyalty by:

• sticking up for your team and protecting them from attempts to unfairly target or smear them.
• treating your team with respect, and go to bat for them when needed even if it means that you need to “go against the flow”
• accepting honest criticism and own up to your mistakes, but don’t accept people pointing fingers, nor point them yourself even when it is you or your team that made a mistake.
• not talking behind your team's back, scratch that, don't talk behind anyone's back.

All this being said however, make sure learn from the mistakes so they don’t happen again.

If you are loyal to your team, and you stick up for them and yourself, your team will reward you with loyalty in kind by sticking up for you if someone is talking behind your back, or perhaps working late to meet a tight deadline.

Be a loyal leader, and your team will be loyal.

A Tree Named Performance

What does reactive mean to you? And by reactive I mean in the situation or person sense and not in the chemical sense :)

I found this great definition for reactive over at the Business Dictionary. Being reactive means:

"Behavior that is not internally motivated but manifests in response to a situation or the actions of others."

So is being reactive a good thing, a bad thing, or something in the middle?

In some cases it is indeed a good thing. Reacting to changing and fluid situations to put the right people and processes in place to solve a problem is a good thing.

Unfortunately being reactive tends to create a feedback cycle if you are not really careful. You get so wrapped up in being reactive, and responding to the needs, wants, and desires of those around you that you stop being proactive because you run out of time in the day.

You start losing sight of the forest as all you see are these trees blocking your way, and sooner or later you hit one of those trees. You hit it hard, and it really hurts, your head starts to swell and you see a bunch of stars, birds, and moons rotating around your head. A perfect storm that rips up all the trees and spins them faster and faster around, creating a massive feedback cycle that becomes harder and harder to break. You are spending all your time dodging trees.

You see, when a team is in reactive mode, and they are juggling requests as they come in from multiple sources, things get missed. Priorities get messed up, you lose sight of the big picture, and worse, your definition of done changes.

You no longer put the fire out, wait for any flare-ups from fires still burning in the root system, and then finishing off with some nice landscaping to restore the beauty of the forest. No no no, when in reactive mode you just stamp out the fire with your feet and move onto the next one as the hair is singeing on your arm.

So how do you break this cycle?

By making behavior internally motivated, not externally.

They are lots of ways to make behavior become internally motivated:

• Make sure you create an atmosphere where your team will take a high degree of pride in the work they do (I don't want my teammate to find a bug in my code)
• Enable your team to take ownership in your product (I have a vested interest in the success, I suggest features and improvements)
• Identify and immediately correct issues before they become a problem (bad behaviors, bad processes)
• Invest in paying down the technical debt (No more, hey this piece of code already does it that way so what's the big deal)
• Make sure "done" is actually done
• etc

Most of the above is related to strong leadership and management and deserve posts all on their own. One quick and relatively "pain free way" is can be taken straight from the Agile cookbooks, change the definition of done. For example, make sure done means that:

• All features have been tested by the developer
• The acceptance tests have been successfully executed
• No regressions in the automated builds
• You have checked for memory leaks
• You have done some performance testing to make sure you understand the characteristics, and are getting the most bang for your buck
• etc

A proper definition of done is crucial to being proactive and not reactive. Sure you still might hit performance issues, bugs, or missing features, but you are now forewarned and forearmed with the information to narrow down any issues, and you can answer something other then “I will have to look into it”, or worse, "I am not surprised".

When working with your teams, make sure that everyone agrees to a complete definition of done, and that everyone buys into the definition.

Rotating Scrummasters - A good practice?

In many Scrum teams a practice has emerged to have the Scrummaster role played by a different team member each sprint. The ideas behind this are many and varied:

1. Rotating the Scrummaster allows more people to learn Scrum in-depth
2. Each team member adds new ideas to how to run the Scrum project
3. Builds skill redundancy for the team. If the Scrummaster gets sick, or quits someone can take over without too much lost velocity
4. Helps empower the team, everyone gets to participate at all levels
   
5. Helps prevent people just reporting status to the Scrummaster
6. etc

But is this really a good idea?

Most of these benefits can be achieved with other means, and some are caused by the Scrummaster doing a poor job at leading the team. For example with number two, that can be accomplished by having a really great and open team atmosphere, or even good, dynamic introspections. You don't need to be "in charge" to bring forward ideas.

Depending on the context I think it could beneficial to rotate the Scrummaster role around. However, not every single Sprint. It makes more sense to allow at least three Sprints to elapse prior to rotating out the Scrummaster. It will take at least three Sprints for that person to get comfortable in their role and get their mind into the Scrummaster space.

Don't force every single person on the team to take on the Scrummaster role! Not every single person has the personality to do the job well and there is no point in setting someone up for failure.

Even if you don't rotate the Scrummaster role around, it is very important for that Scrummaster to train his replacement. People should always be able training one of their peers to do their job. In the military this is institutionalized for very good reasons, but many companies don't factor in the "bus factor" in their contingency plans. This can seriously harm a company or a release cycle.

What do you think? Should the Scrummaster role be rotated? If so what best practices do you have? Or should the Scrummaster role be assumed by one person so that they can master it?

10 Things a Janitor Can Teach You About Leadership

Col. James Moschgat wrote an article about the ten leadership lessons he learned from his janitor at the United States Air Force Academy, an unassuming Medal of Honor winner from the Second World War.

There are some excellent lessons here:

1. Be Cautious of Labels - Labels don't define people, actions do.
2. Everyone Deserves Respect - Golden rule stuff.
   
3. Courtesy Makes a Difference - Goes with the above rule, respect begets respect.
   
4. Take Time to Know Your People - Strengths, weaknesses, motivations, etc.
   
5. Anyone Can Be a Hero - Save the day, save the project.
   
6. Leaders Should Be Humble - Don't be like "modern" leaders like self-aggrandizing sports heros and the like.
   
7. Life Won’t Always Hand You What You Think You Deserve - You need to work hard to get it.
   
8. Don’t pursue glory; pursue excellence - Be great at what you do, even if it isn't "sexy", but love your job at the same time, life's too short for anything else.
   
9. Pursue Excellence - See above.
   
10. Life is a Leadership Laboratory - Examples of great leadership are all around, you just have to look.

Number eight and nine are pretty much the same, I would have pulled the following point into a numbered lesson "No job is beneath a leader". This lesson is one that I can really relate to.

In one particular example, about a year ago, one of the teams I was leading was working on a Java web project that was running a little late. OK, a lot late. The whole team had pulled together to put the final touches on the acceptance build. It was 10pm at night we had to get the build out the door before the end of the day. QC was many timezones away (India) and not yet in the office. We had 3 browsers to test, and only two hours to do this.

The solution was to import that QC test plans into Google docs, then have the entire team run through the test plans collaboratively in real-time. Executing test plans isn't part of a developers normal job, sure they run their own tests, but they not responsible for running sanity tests on builds that are on there way to the customers. But we didn't think twice, we all pulled our socks up and got the job done. Developers, Project Leaders, and Project Managers all worked together to get the testing done.

This allowed us to get the sanity testing done on all the supported browsers done in a fraction of the time it would have taken a single QC person to do it. When the QC started their day a few hours later, they spent their day running their more detailed test scripts against our drop to see if we had missed anything, but the Project Leader and I had confidence that what we were sending the customer didn't have any big functionality or rendering bugs.

When I look back at this example, I see three leadership principles demonstrated:

• Lead by example
• No job is beneath a leader
• Rewarding the team for their sacrifice (reward followers)

Lead by example
In this instance I was able to lead by example by implementing functionality and fixing bugs quickly. By submitting good patches, and performing good code reviews. By working nights and weekends for those four weeks or so, I could show that I too was making sacrifices to my personal time, I tried to ensure that I arrived with the team and left with the team during that time. I wasn’t just dictating that overtime was to be done, I was actually doing overtime. After the project, several of the team members came up to me and thanked me for my contribution, and said that it helped motivate them to work extra hard and get the project done.

No job is beneath a leader
It wasn't in my job description to write code, review patches, or run test scripts, but I did it anyway because it helped the team accomplish the mission. If someone had to go out and pick up supper from the office, I did it. What was really great was that everyone did whatever had to be done. This was a great attitude to see on a team.

Rewarding the team for their sacrifice
I made sure to thank the members of the team personally nearly every night when they signed out for the day. At the end of the project I made sure they were compensated for their time, and provided little thank you gifts to everyone. Doing a few little things to thank them for their time and effort can mean a lot.

When projects run late, teams can easily get de-motivated, leading by example, doing whatever it takes to finish the project even if it’s “beneath” your position, and showing appreciation for the team’s sacrifices are three ways that can help show the team that you are with them and that you support them.

Remember that leadership is about influencing people, hence it is more of a service then a command. You need to influence your team to go the extra mile by being a good leader that your team will look up to, and be inspired from. These three principles honestly applied can help you become that leader.

Great Principles to Live By

Patricia Sellers posted an article up on her blog a few days ago about David Ogilvy, called by some "The Father of Advertising". In the article she shares the business advice David once told her. All of these are great, most of them strike to heart of humanity and leadership. Here are ones that relate most to me:

1. Remember that Abraham Lincoln spoke of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. He left out the pursuit of profit.
2. Remember the old Scottish motto: “Be happy while you’re living, for you are a long time dead.”
3. If you have to reduce your company’s payroll, don’t fire your people until you have cut your compensation and the compensation of your big-shots.
4. Define your corporate culture and your principles of management in writing. Don’t delegate this to a committee. Search all the parks in all your cities. You’ll find no statues of committees.
5. Stop cutting the quality of your products in search of bigger margins. The consumer always notices — and punishes you.
6. Bear in mind that the consumer is not a moron. She is your wife. Do not insult her intelligence.

I have six of the seven posted. I am not in advertising so I don't relate to that one specifically, the rest however are all great. They seem very relevant in today's tough market, with companies downsizing or looking to penny pinch. At the end of the day, good leaders will inspire others to to success.

Which ones do speak to you the most? Which ones would you add?

Lead, don't follow

It's been a rough 6 months, heck, for many people it has been rough for a lot longer than that. The global economic crisis, economy melting faster then ice cream on a hot July summer day in Ottawa on Bank Street. Admittedly that is not saying much with this summer's unseasonably cool weather.

The fact remains, many people are feeling very uncertain about their jobs, job satisfaction is at an all time low for many people, fear for the safety of their jobs, or the stability of their employer is weighing heavily on many people throughout the country.

With all this doom and gloom what is a leader to do?

There is little a leader can do about the economy, and there is little a leader can do to create job security where there is none, but a great leader can do many little things to reassure his followers, and to bring some light to these difficult times.

Self-motivate
A good leader must be able to self-motivate when he is feeling sad, insecure, sick, or tired. This means that you are smiling, positive, and upbeat where ever you can be. This doesn't mean you are to be dishonest, or not genuine, just remind everyone of all the good things that are going on right now. If you cannot motivate yourself to get up, and get going then no one else will be able to.

Celebration time
Celebrate all victories, even the small ones. You don't have to throw a lavish party in Las Vegas (though if you do, please invite me), but a thank you card, a small get together after work, or even the a verbal pat on the back can do a lot to motivate people. Rewarding people in an ad-hoc manner with small little things will do wonders for morale, and little to your pocket book.

Invest in people
Don't stop investing in people. Don't stop investing in the tools and software your team needs to do their job. In the grand scheme of things, most of these things are "pretty cheap", but mean a lot to those that need them to do their jobs. This will help improve someone's job satisfaction. If you can improve your company's benefit package without busting the bank then go for it.

Communication
Keep the lines of communication open. Communicate the good, the bad, and the ugly with everyone in your company. Get up and out of your desk or cubicle. Talk to the people you are leading outside of your day to day job. Talk about the weather (rain), talk about sports, talk about the vacation you just had. Just talk. People will get comfortable with you and may talk about more then just trivial things, perhaps you will learn something that might keep that key player at your company.

These are four simple things that can help improve the morale of those on your team. There are many more small, simple, and yet thoughtful things that can be done to help your team's morale flourish.

What do you look for a leader to do in these tough times?

Leadership in hard times

It is much easier to be a leader when times are good, when business is plentiful, when the sky seems the limit. The strains put on a leader in bad times are much greater, and this is where you you separate the leadership wheat from the chaff.

A co-worker of mine sent me a newsletter that had a great article on how to lead when times are hard. I hunted around a bit to get the corresponding web page for this article so I could share it. If you are leading people in a company highly recommend that you read this article. If you are not responsible for leading anyone, read this article.

When Macadamian recently had to make some hard decisions, I agonized on how to communicate this to the teams that worked with me. I spent hours thinking about how to effectively communicate the rationale, the plan, and how we can together move forward and succeed. It was the hardest thing I have ever done and I am glad I spent the time to prepare for it.

Is your company experiencing hard times? What are you doing to be an effective leader during this time? What behaviors have you changed?

Just Lead It

Oh Nevermind! I will just do it myself. It will be much easier, you think to yourself.

How many times have we said this to ourselves, or worse, to someone on our team? How many times have we thought it would be less stressful to just do the task/project ourselves instead of trying to explain the problem to someone else?

Now be honest.

Often? Yeah, me too.

This is a common anti-pattern, especially in the global context when explaining a task with little overlap in time zones. This is where it feels like it will take more time and energy to explain the task then to actually do it yourself. You rationalize this in the name of efficiency. You are being more efficient. Efficiency is good.

Don't fall for this trap! It is an anti-pattern. You cannot be more efficient then a high calibre, well motivated team.

This anti-pattern will have a negative effect on your team's morale as they will see you as a micro-manager. Or worse, they will perceive that you don't trust their abilities. Furthermore, if you don’t take the time to mentor your team members, or provide new and interesting tasks for them to improve their skills on, they will never get better at their jobs, and their morale will suffer. The team will never improve and you will be stuck in a rut.

As a manager your job is to ensure the task is completed as efficiently as possible. Your job as a leader is to look out for their well being, and do what you can to inspire them. A simple rule is to try very hard not do things that will affect your employee's morale; a well motivated and happy employee is a productive employee. A productive employee is an efficient employee. Efficiency is good.

Another part of this anti-pattern is that if you are heads down implementing features, who is leading and managing? Who is looking out past today, or maybe this week? Who is reporting status to the customers, identifying potential risks, building relationships with the customer, or even looking out for the next opportunity? No one is, since you are now focused on the tactical instead of the strategic.

You are creating “project debt” by “doing” instead of leading. Sure it might feel good to make progress on your project, to contribute to the critical path. Maybe get it out the door sooner, perform some technical kungfu. However, you are incurring a lot of “project debt” to do this. At some point “project debt” comes due, and it might be paid for with a missed opportunity, or an unhappy customer due to a mismanaged relationship.

So we recognize that this is an anti-pattern, how do we assign and explain tasks efficiently?

1. In a push task management model, assign tasks several days in advance, and instill a mindset that the team reviews their tasks as soon as they are assigned, even if they don’t plan on starting the task right away. This will allow the team to look at their tasks and seek clarification or answers ahead of time, before they are actually trying to perform the task. Sometimes their questions will flush out missing requirements that might need to be thought about with the customer or product owner as well.
   
2. The same thing applies in a pull task management model, encourage your team to pull the tasks ahead of time, so they can ask any questions they may have before they are blocked for a day waiting for you to answer their questions, or in some cases, wake up.
   
3. Explain the tasks in person, or over video/voice. Follow up with a written explanation. Email works, but a wiki is better. There will be more transparency to the rest of the team, and it will be easy to keep the wiki up to date when things change. We all know things will change right :)
   
4. After you explained the task in person, ask questions to make sure they understand, especially around requirements and any time sensitive pieces.
   
5. In some projects, we use a concept of a “design patch”, in it the developer explains their development approach, basically how they will implement the feature, and how long they think it will take. This isn’t to micro-manage, but often will highlight any lack of understanding. It also has the benefit of improving the teams planning skills and ability to do top down design.
   

Those are five quick ideas I have, how do you delegate tasks?

How savvy organizations motivate and inspire

Earlier this week I have talked about how to create an atmosphere of innovation, and longer ago how it is important to never stop learning.

In that post I talked about creating an atmosphere where informed risk taking is encouraged, and employees are not punished for mistakes they make when taking informed risks. This article further strengthens my point.

Dr. Gary Latham of the Rotman School of Business at the University of Toronto encourages employees to make errors. "The research coming out of organizational psychology says that if you want risk-taking and you want people to be excited and energized about trying new things, such as embracing change, they've got to feel comfortable that they can make mistakes and learn from them." When it comes to motivation, Dr. Latham says people want just three things: "They want a sense of challenge, they want to grow, and they want to feel valued and appreciated."

Three key take-aways in that quote are:

1. Employees want a sense of challenge
2. They want the ability to grow their career
3. To be valued and appreciated.

Number 1 is a leadership challenge. Well, everything could be distilled into a leadership challenge, but for the sake of argument leadership will be confined to an employees immediate manager. With number 1, a manager or leader needs to assign projects and tasks that are challenging, both technically, and by business domain. Of course not every single project in the world is interesting and challenging, but trying to mix it up for your team can be very beneficial with regards to productivity and morale.

Number 2 is an organizational challenge, sure there are aspects of leadership in this, as in the leader needs to understand how the employee wishes to grow their career, and giving him the tasks or challenges to accomplish that. But, at the end of the day, no matter how much a leader may want to advance the employees career, where the advancement means moving up the org chart, this may not be possible in every company do to existing issues, or lack of growth in the company.

Number 3 is clearly a leadership issue, yes, pay and benefits have something to do with this but where the rubber meets the road it's all about leadership. Thanking your employee for their hard work, or them going out of the way to finish a task, or recommend an improvement. At Macadamian our employees are our IP. We make a conscious effort to ensure that our employees feel looked after, both at an organizational level and at the manager level. A simple "Thank you, we couldn't have done it without you" can be a powerful statement on how you value your employees. Of course, it has to be sincere.

Performance Reviews

It’s that time of the year again, annual performance review time. The time of dread for employees across companies, all sectors, and all over the world, cue ominous music.

Yes I have talked about this before, but it is a very important topic.

Why is this? Why are reviews so stressful for the employee and even the reviewer? Does it have to be? Couldn't the entire process be much less stressful? Perhaps even enjoyable?

Without a doubt.

Communication between leaders and their employees is essential to the success of projects, the professional relationship, all individuals involved, and the companies themselves. Communication breakdowns affect everyone involved. Esprit-de-corps decreases, productivity decreases, and the all important employee satisfaction decreases. Leaders need to deliver timely, accurate, and effective feedback to employees all year, not just at performance review time, though performance reviews do play an important role in this continuous process.

So why are performance reviews so disliked?

Most people don’t like to receive constructive criticism, and most people don’t like to give it. The manager and the employee need to set aside at least an hour to discuss the good and the bad of the year. For the manager, especially the new manager, it can be one of their most daunting tasks. For the employee, they stress about their performance, and the salary/bonus numbers that may also come with it.

How do you make performance reviews less disliked?

You need to tackle the problems of performance reviews, and work hard to alleviate them.

Problem 1 - The surprise review

A common problem, and a huge cause of stress for employees. Basically, the manager doesn’t schedule the review in advance, leaving the employee to stress about it—in some cases the employee doesn’t even know a review is due. Then WHAM, one day when the manager has 20 minutes, the manager pulls the employee into a surprise review. Or, even if the review is scheduled, the employee doesn't know what to expect, and not sure of the feedback he will receive.

When this happens, the employee walks into a big, stressful unknown. But it’s an "easy" one to solve.

Managers need to get into the habit of keeping their employees informed all year long of progress towards their goals, and how well they are performing their jobs.

If they are doing a great job, tell them so! Throughout the year, you want to praise and reward good performance to reinforce it and encourage more of the same. And if the performance isn't so good, you need to let your employee know as soon you realize this. It’s only fair to the employee. And it’s good for you because it allows them to correct their behavior as soon as possible. It’s the manager's job to mentor them, ensuring they have the tools, training, and opportunity to succeed. It will also be easier on you, the manager, as you can work with the employee to improve the performance before it gets to the point where it is critical.

Another key benefit of keeping your employees informed of their performance throughout the year is that you can focus more on their goals and career planning during the review, after all, they already know how they did. It will be an opportunity to build relationships and discuss the future.

Problem 2 - The last 2 month review
Annual reviews are, well, annual. They need to encompass the whole year, or at least the time since the last review (if you do twice yearly reviews). It is often easy to focus on only the last few months since that’s what you remember best. But that’s unfair to your employees.

One trick I use is to keep notes on all the people I work with throughout the year. Not because I‘m keeping track of them, but because it lets me remember the significant and not so significant events throughout the year. This helps the manager or leader when it comes time to write the review and makes the review more honest and objective.

It’s easier to remember the bad than the good, and it is easy to focus on just the bad to the detriment of the good. Keeping notes will help alleviate this. It would not be fair to the employee who had a stellar year, but made a mistake in the last month of the review cycle to focus on just that mistake.

Another benefit of keeping notes throughout the year is to ensure "data integrity" as you won't be struggling to remember the facts. Of course when in doubt, double-check your facts.

Problem 3 - The unprepared manager
Nothing is worse for an employee to see the manager "wing it" during the review. Perhaps they are writing it front of the employee during the review, or are not prepared to discuss goals and career aspirations. Managers and leaders need to spend time ahead of time to write the reviews, and think about how they will conduct the review. So start the process early, and schedule lots of time for the actual review. Also, don't schedule them back to back, it’s hard to predict the end times and you don't want to cut it short just for the sake of your three o'clock.

Problem 4 - The one sided conversation
A review should be a two-way conversation. In fact, it should be a 80/20 conversation. (Isn't it great how often the 80/20 rule comes up?) where the employee speaks 80% of the time. After all, it is about them. Provide your feedback and let the employee do the talking. Most of the review should focus on employee reactions and takeaways from the discussion. Don't talk just to fill the awkward silence.

Problem 5 - The inaccurate performance review
It goes without saying to be honest and fair in the review, and not to play favourites. Everyone knows this. That being said, also don't wimp out! Don't gloss over the negatives in order to maintain relationships, or because it’s too hard. Addressing real problems, especially the ones about employees, is one of the hardest parts of a manager's job. It’s an important part of being a good leader.

Leaders never stop learning

It is said that leaders never stop learning, a true leader is always looking to expand his horizons and bring new knowledge and skills to the table. People are more willing to follow a leader that has demonstrable proficiency in the area that they are leading their people in.

Here at Macadamian, the leadership group is very committed to continuous learning, it fits in with one of our values of "Constant Improvement"

Our Director of IT and Process Improvement is always handing out new books to the leadership group to read. It is quite hard to keep up on all the interesting reading being passed out and my own personal reading and training.

Book learning is one way to learn, and it is a useful way, but it is only one of many ways. Most people learn best by learning through experience. You can learn from a mentor, from working on a project, from taking a chance, or from failing.

People don't like to learn from failing because people don't like failing. It is stressful, you feel bad, and a generally annoyed at yourself for making the mistakes you made.

But, failing is OK, you learn from it. Organizations must create an atmosphere and culture where failing doesn't result with a firing or other punishment as long as the failure wasn't caused by negligence or malice.

An atmosphere of informed risk taking can lead to absolutely amazing results, and advances in technology and product design. At Macadamian we learned this long ago, if people were fired for a project that goes red, or worse yet, infrared, many of us at Macadamian would no longer be at Macadamian, and Macadamian would be bereft of some amazing and talented individuals.

Of course not all mistakes made result in such drastic results, sometimes the mistakes are from choosing the wrong technology, or making an assumption that doesn't pan out. We at Macadamian try to encourage our team to take informed risks in order to deliver high quality projects as quickly as possible. You can't always wait to get every single fact before acting.

I have often said, that the success of leader is not in the mistakes they don't make, but how they learn from the mistakes they do make.

People are people, cash, hardware, and hog heads are resources

Props to Matt for sending this to me.

It was a brief consulting engagement. Version 3.0 was behind schedule. I was privy to this product planning meeting but still naive about corporate lingo. At first I thought "resources" meant money or time but it didn't compute.

Finally I realized that "resource" meant "human." Or, in this case, "software developer." Oh.

I hate it when managers and executives refer to the highly talented people on their teams as resources, it completely dehumanizes them. I have noticed managers making this mistake for years, and whenever I have heard it, it was like nails on a blackboard.

I remember way back back as a young(er?) officer of making the mistake of referring to members of my platoon staff as resources in a company meeting. The company commander laid a private smack down on me that I have never forgot.

It is really easy to switch into this PHB speak when talking about management and operations matters. But it is something all good leaders need to fight against. After all, many of these co-workers are also your friends, and you would never refer to your friends as resources would you?

Remember, despite deadlines, pressure to deliver, and customer demands, your team is comprised of people, people with friends, family, and commitments outside of work. Your computer can work 24/7 but not your team. Always thinking of your team as people will help you remember that they have a life outside of work. It is your job as their leader to promote a healthy work/life balance at all times.

At the end of the day, like Soylent Green, resources are people.

What makes a good team lead? Part Two

A week or so ago I had a post about what makes a good team lead. In this post I had a list of statements that I would look for in my team lead. Many of these statements can be derived down to base personality qualities such as being:

• Decisive - It is almost always better to take a decision with 80% of the information then it is to wait for the other 20%. Overall you will get more done faster.
  
• Enthusiastic - Enthusiasm is contagious, it will inspire your team
  
• Responsible - Do the Right Thing. It is also a mantra at Macadamian.
  
• Honest - Does this need explaining? Nothing destroys trust like not dealing with people in an honest and fair manner.
  
• Dependable - Make your commitments, be there when needed.
  
• Confident - People are more apt to follow you if you appear confident. Show confidence in your team.
  
• Courageous - This goes with "Do the Right Thing", also goes well with being "Transparent". It is hard to tell the customer that you are late, or to tell the employee that they are not meeting expectations. You should also be courageous enough to stick to your convictions, or try something new.
  
• Loyal - Always try and do the right thing for your team. Go the extra mile for them.
  
• Patient - This is one I have trouble with the odd time, but be patient to answer their questions, help them with a new technology, or to understand a new requirement.
  
• Determined - Get the job done.
  

To me, these are the 10 important qualities of a team lead. Does anybody have others to add?

Reviews should never be a surprise

Over the past few weeks I have been dealing with a yellow project of mine. The project is yellow because of the customers perceptions on the design, code quality, and general attention to detail demonstrated by the team over the 3 month project.

Now I had sought out feedback on how the team was doing several times throughout the project, but never received an answer. During the project debrief, the poor performance was brought to my attention. Unfortunately, at this point there was nothing I could do about the current project, and could only try to improve on the next project.

Like praise and recognition, being told you are not meeting expectations is very important. If you are not told otherwise, you may very well be thinking you are doing a great job.

I understand that sitting down with an under-performing team is hard, often the leader will be comfortable. It is hard to do this. However it is absolutely imperative that this be done.

If we don't take action on this right away then many bad things can happen:

• resentment builds within the rest of the team
• the leader starts to resent the under-performing team or individual
• features have to get dropped due to time constraints
• quality suffers
• etc

The top two are real team killers.

A meeting discussing the expectation gaps, and a plan to address these gaps will go along way to improving the under-performing team or individual. If they don't improve, then you have at least started the process that is required to remove them.

At the end of the day, it is a leader's responsibility to make sure all their team members always know how they are doing, whether it is good or bad. It's our job.

What makes a good team lead?

In a previous post, I talked about what I think makes a good team member, and in order to be a good leader you must be a good team member.

So as a leader, you should think about what makes a leader good from the eyes of their team. Is it their movie star good looks or their willingness to bring in donuts? I sure hope it is neither even if you like donuts.

Your team (and you) hopefully look for most of the following statements to be true when thinking about your team lead or manager:

• be an excellent communicator, and good at using the tools at their disposal to plan and organize the team's work load;
• be self-confident, and strong within their domain of knowledge;
• makes reasonable, objective, and consistent, decisions within their boundaries;
• be able to mentor and coach the team to achieve maximum performance;
• be able to inspire the members of the team;
• to understand and choose the correct style of leadership based on the situation;
• to demonstrate integrity at all times;
  
• to be trustworthy and honest;
• to be an excellent problem solver, both with anticipating and solving the problems;
• to be able to handle stressful situations
• to respect you.
  

So, can anyone think of anything else to add to the list?

PR, part of your complete breakfast.

No, I don't mean "Public Relations", in this case, I mean "Praise and Recognition".

We all like to be told when we are doing a good job. And a kind thank you, or a pat on the back goes a long way in making us feel as if we are appreciated. This is an important principle of leadership. But, it is something that I have noticed is becoming less prevalent. This is a big mistake.

Companies are spending millions of dollars to increase productivity, implement flexible hours, and increase health benefits, yet they still have high turn over. Why is that?

These policies get taken for granted. A company increases their benefits, attracts new people, other companies follow suit to compete. Soon these heightened benefits become the norm, now to differentiate themselves, companies need to raise their benefit packages and policies again.

I think that PR is especially important in a company where we strive for constant improvement. A culture of constant improvement can result in a culture of constant criticism. I have thoughts on that too.

Most people like to be praised and recognized for the work they are doing, most people like it a lot. A leader must strive to make their team feel important, to create environments where people are rewarded for their hard work and successes.

This is the benefit of rewarding, it is one of several ways that a leader can rely on to influence behavior. With rewarding, it is based on a leader's ability (and perceived predisposition) to praise and reward their their teams for positive behavior.

Praising/rewarding people doesn't cost anything, makes the employees feel good, and reinforces positive behavior.

So remember to say thank you, and remember to tell your team when they do a good job. It is just as important as telling them when they didn't.

How to be a good team member

Leadership is often discussed in terms of how to motivate your team, the principles of leadership, and all the other skills and traits that make a good leader. But, one of the most important skills of a leader is actually how to be a good team member. In other words, how to be led. This is the first (key) step in becoming an effective leader.

A bad team member really affects the esprit-de-corps of the whole team. This can lead to:

• reduced productivity
• an unhealthy work environment
• high attrition rates
• negative cliques
• favoritism
• etc

People who are bad team members, will become awful leaders.

So how do you work towards becoming a good team member? Follow these simple guidelines:

• mind your manners, treat your fellow team members in a respectful manner
• admit your mistakes, and learn from them;
• do the right thing for the project;
• comply with the direction set by your team leader;
• be a positive influence on your team;
• accept constructive feedback;
• help your fellow team members;
• be transparent about your status;
• be honest about your abilities.

In reality, these could almost all be summed up by one, "Do not do unto others as you would expect they should do unto you."

Nothing in here mentions that you must mindlessly follow the directions of your project leader in an unthinking drone like manner. Just realize that there is a time and a place to question the direction of your team leader. In front of the customer, or on team call is not the time or place to do so.

Don't be a barking phone

Last night I was talking with one of the other DPMs (I shall call him Toby) here at Macadamian. We were talking about the perception the developers in our global R&D centres have of us.

Toby traveled to Romania and ended up spending nearly 2 weeks there. After he was there, peoples perceptions of him changed. The old perception was that he was an angry person, always mad at something. After Toby visited them in person, they realized hey, he is a pretty swell guy.

Why did they think he was an angry person? It was because most of their interactions with him were not very positive:

• emails that seemed blunt
• VoIP calls when they were not performing, or had made a mistake
• asking them to do something
  
• emails asking for status
• etc

All these interactions where either Toby was in charge, or performing corrective actions.

So what changed on the trip? Well, Toby did these sorts of things:

• talked to them socially
• had dinner with them
• played poker
• drank Romanian plum brandy with them
• etc

In short, they realized that hey, Toby is a person, and pretty swell too! It was not that Toby was trying to butter him up, it is just how he is in person.

You as a team leader need to be seen as a person, sure, you are in charge, and you are accountable for the delivery of the projects, but your team is comprised of people and no matter how many times you tell yourself, yes, you are only human.

So, if you are leading a global team, try to visit them in person, and when you can't visit them in person, make sure to follow these simple tips:

• Prefer voice calls over email
• When you need to send emails, try reading them aloud to see if they seem harsh or overly critical
• Don't talk just about business, try to have a water cooler chat every now and again
• Ask questions like, how has your day been? I heard you were sick yesterday, are you feeling better?
• Try and schedule the meetings in common hours, if you cannot, try to alternate the times they have to stay late versus you have to come in early

Remember, you don't have to be their friend, but it really helps for you not to be their enemy. And in your spare time, start working on the virtual foozball game for those ad-hoc games, err, I mean design sessions.

What motivates you?

This weekend I was out on the year end trip with the cadet corps that I work/volunteer with. For the year end trip we went out into the Ottawa Valley to Wilderness Tours to do some adventure training. The unit did mountain biking, rock wall climbing, and whitewater rafting.

Saturday was a real scorcher, very hot, and very humid. At the end of the mountain biking and rock wall climbing, we decided to let the cadets go for a quick swim to cool off. Cool off being the operative word. As the Ottawa river is quite brisk at this time of the year.

One particular cadet, whom doesn't really like to expand his boundaries was the only one who didn't jump in. He wanted to, but couldn't bring himself to go. He would run up to the edge of the dock and stop at the last possible second. This went on for nearly an hour.

The other cadets tried to encourage him to go, offering to jump with him, or help him to the floating raft etc. I tried to encourage him to go as well. I coaxed, and prodded, and encouraged for about half an hour. Then I remembered something about him. I remembered, he loves chocolate. Well, any junk food really.

I offered to buy him a chocolate bar if he would just take the plunge. He didn't bite at the offer right away, but it opened the floodgates so to speak. Within a couple of minutes of that offer, he made the leap. I was pretty happy that he overcame his fear.

This little story underscores a key leadership principle; know your team member. In this case, I knew he loved chocolate.

You need to know the person on your team as a person. You need to take it past the simple and obvious things like know their name, or the ability to pick them out of a crowd. You should learn a bit about their:

• family;
• their hobbies;
• their likes or dislikes;
• their qualifications;
• their career aspirations;
  
• and leadership ability.

Knowing this information allows you to make informed decisions about how your team member is performing, or what will motivate them to succeed.

Knowing that your team member has an elderly and sick parent can go along way to explain why someone that was previously an excellent employee has suddenly become unmotivated, grumpy, or is out of the office at odd times.

Conversely, knowing that someone wants to be a Project Manager allows you to guide them in their career progression, you can tailor their goals and training to accomplish this. This might also explain why they work longer hours then your average employee.

To be clear, this doesn't mean that you have to be their friend, but it doesn't hurt either.

Just make a decision

I am pretty big on leadership, and I stress the importance of it whenever I can. This isn’t to say that I am the perfect leader, far from it. I make mistakes, and through these mistakes I hope to improve.

I once told a young cadet that was facing some difficult leadership issues at the unit that the mark of a good leader isn’t in the mistakes you don’t make, but how you learn from the ones you do. It seemed really profound when I told this to the cadet at 3am one cold winter night, and in the light of day, it still seems pretty good.

At Macadamian, this concept of constant improvement is enshrined in our values; in fact it’s the last “C” in “TRACC”. It permeates everything that we do and every aspect of our company. Every new hire goes through training that discusses our values, and we discuss that as part of the employee review.

However, you can’t make mistakes if you never make a decision. A person who never makes a decision is pretty common affair, but they are not really a leader no matter what their business card says.

A leader must be confident, and make sound and timely decisions, you can of course rely on experts in your team for information, but in the end it’s YOUR decision to make.

In almost every case, it is better to make a decision when you have 70% of the information then to make the decision when you have 100%. You will never get 100% of the information, and if you make that decision at 70%, most of the time you will be right. Trying to wait until you get 100% of the information will lead to unnecessary delays, team stoppages and wasted effort.

So just make a decision.