{"id":12122,"date":"2014-07-29T14:00:33","date_gmt":"2014-07-29T11:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mozaicworks.com\/blog\/5-duties-of-a-technical-leader-increase-motivation-2\/"},"modified":"2022-02-01T18:08:08","modified_gmt":"2022-02-01T16:08:08","slug":"5-duties-of-a-technical-leader-develop-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mozaicworks.com\/blog\/5-duties-of-a-technical-leader-develop-people","title":{"rendered":"5 Duties of a Technical Leader: Develop People"},"content":{"rendered":"

“The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been”
\n\u2014\u00a0Henry A. Kissinger<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

How does a technical leader act in a company\u00a0with empowered\u00a0teams? I believe all leaders must attend to five fundamental duties:\u00a0demonstrate character<\/a>,\u00a0clarify direction<\/a>,\u00a0solve problems<\/a>,\u00a0increase motivation<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0develop people<\/strong>.\u00a0This blog post describes the fifth duty: improving a team’s results by growing the abilities\u00a0of its members.<\/p>\n

To increase its performance, a team needs to grow its knowledge and skills. The leader’s role is to help\u00a0the ones around him discover how amazing they can truly be.\u00a0He will challenge them with ambitious goals but at the same time\u00a0will support them in decision making by sharing\u00a0both what he knows and the way he thinks. Finally, a leader will encourage his peers to learn from one another in\u00a0learning communities.<\/p>\n

Provide mentoring<\/h2>\n

Most of the time, the richest sources of information lie within a few meters from\u00a0us — our colleagues. But as\u00a0this story by Roy Osherove<\/a>\u00a0illustrates, that’s not always\u00a0our first choice.\u00a0Roy had been recently hired and he got assigned his first task. After working long hours for three weeks, knee-deep in documentation, he managed to finish the task, only to discover that his solution was very, very slow. The\u00a0team leader, after seeing the solution, got together with a senior developer and came up with a\u00a010x faster\u00a0alternative in only a couple of hours. A short while later, Roy got fired. Obviously, if the team leader\u00a0had given more guidance to the new employee on his first task, things would have worked out a lot better.<\/p>\n

By\u00a0providing systematic mentoring<\/a>, a technical leader benefits in two ways. On the one hand, he makes sure that the task gets done as\u00a0efficiently<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0effectively<\/strong>\u00a0as possible. On the other hand, it signals that he cares about his colleague’s carrier and knowledge. This way, he will\u00a0strengthen the relationship<\/strong>\u00a0and attend to one of his other duties — increasing motivation. There’s a wealth of ways to provide mentoring:\u00a0pair programming<\/a>, code\/design\/data structure reviews,\u00a0coding\/testing dojos<\/a>\u00a0etc.<\/p>\n

Explain thought process<\/h2>\n

I remember a story I’ve read a few years back from an entrepreneur. His company had grown to about 30 people and he was working 90 hours per week trying to be “on top of things”. He was the one making all the decisions: how to price the product, what was the content of their newsletters, how to answer client complaints, how to plan and execute their projects. At one point he realized\u00a0that continuing this way meant that pretty soon one of two things would fail: his company or his health. So he decided to do things differently:\u00a0whenever somebody came to him with a problem to solve, instead of jumping to solve it, he would first sit down with his colleague. Then, methodically, he would explain his thought process: what is his decision and how he reasoned to reach it. After six months, his workload dropped to\u00a0only about four hours a week. At that point, he took his family on a six-month cruise around the world.<\/p>\n

In our never-ending battle with the to-do list, every time we are presented with a problem, our instincts are to solve it as quickly as possible. But this only means that the next time the same problem appears,\u00a0it’s still us who will have to solve it. Good leaders take a long term perspective. Every problem can be a learning opportunity, so they\u00a0take the time to explain what they are doing while they are doing it<\/strong>. And next time a problem rears its ugly head, they will have a better skilled colleague to take care of it.<\/p>\n

Set challenging goals<\/h2>\n

I’ve described in\u00a0a previous blog post<\/a>\u00a0how setting the vision helps with understanding the overarching direction of the organization.\u00a0The teams can, in turn,\u00a0define their own goals<\/strong>\u00a0that will contribute to achieving that vision. Technical leaders challenge their colleagues\u00a0to learn new skills in order to become “better” or even “the best” in the company. In one company I’ve worked with, each ScrumMaster of the teams working together on a product challenged their colleagues to have a smaller\u00a0number of bugs than the other teams. This friendly competition managed to raise the quality level so much that the product manager confessed\u00a0he had never seen so few customer bug reports after a release.<\/p>\n

Here are some goals you could challenge your colleagues to accomplish:<\/p>\n