4 ms·

One time, as a first-time techlead/manager struggling to get my team to deliver, I tried to let them play with the problem for a bit then give a few nudges in t

One time, as a first-time techlead/manager struggling to get my team to deliver, I tried to let them play with the problem for a bit then give a few nudges in the right direction / the direction I wanted them to go. With some team members it was extremely effective. Others got tunnel vision on the wrong path and I was unable to reach a consensus with them on what a good solution looked like, which snowballed into an inconsistent codebase, and a divided team with morale problems. I probably wasn't the right person to manage this team, or maybe I don't have the same innate manager talents that this author has. Not saying that my solution is always right, but i definitely think my inability to sell a cohesive technical direction to the entire team hurt the schedule/quality. I think hand-picking people whose opinions align with mine would have really helped the outcome, whether or not my solution was best. Perhaps detaching my ego from the outcome would have helped too. I wouldn't take another high pressure delivery responsibility role without hire/fire power.

exelius 11y ago
IMO this approach is definitely not one-size-fits-all. It's usually best to provide strong leadership up front in the form of clear expectations, but let people experiment in areas outside their comfort zone. This could mean putting some of the more junior team members underneath a senior developer -- the senior developer gets to experiment with management, and the junior developers benefit from some guidance. Overall, you have to use techniques like this in the context of a situational leadership framework. There's a ton of reading material on situational leadership, but basically it comes down to recognizing the areas where people are knowledgeable and/or confident and providing the right kind of support. The "let 'em fail" tactic is great for people who are confident but not knowledgeable -- they learn something about the topic, and they learn about their own (lack of) understanding of said topic. There are many situations (when people are neither knowledgeable nor confident) that require you to do more hands-on management of your team -- and that's ok, since your goal is to help them move up the knowledge/confidence curve. Very rarely do managers in our time have hire/fire power; in my experience it's very difficult to fire anyone for performance-related issues. Usually the best you can do is offer to swap your "problem children" with another manager and hope they do better in a new environment.

exelius 11y ago

IMO this approach is definitely not one-size-fits-all. It's usually best to provide strong leadership up front in the form of clear expectations, but let people experiment in areas outside their comfort zone. This could mean putting some of the more junior team members underneath a senior developer -- the senior developer gets to experiment with management, and the junior developers benefit from some guidance. Overall, you have to use techniques like this in the context of a situational leadership framework. There's a ton of reading material on situational leadership, but basically it comes down to recognizing the areas where people are knowledgeable and/or confident and providing the right kind of support. The "let 'em fail" tactic is great for people who are confident but not knowledgeable -- they learn something about the topic, and they learn about their own (lack of) understanding of said topic. There are many situations (when people are neither knowledgeable nor confident) that require you to do more hands-on management of your team -- and that's ok, since your goal is to help them move up the knowledge/confidence curve. Very rarely do managers in our time have hire/fire power; in my experience it's very difficult to fire anyone for performance-related issues. Usually the best you can do is offer to swap your "problem children" with another manager and hope they do better in a new environment.