Being a team player in my mind (an IC turned manager) is helping the organization optimize for building the right thing, not building things right. You can find

Being a team player in my mind (an IC turned manager) is helping the organization optimize for building the right thing, not building things right. You can find a lot of programmers that are decent technically, but the best ones I've worked with cared about making sure what we're building makes sense. It allows us to design architectures that are fit for future changes in regards to how the product evolves. For this to happen you need to communicate and acknowledge that sometimes not coding, but aligning makes the coding part of the job much more efficient.