Do you feel like your software development team has been dragging lately? Have you thought about onboarding a new team member or outsourcing something for which you don’t feel confident in your team? Maybe you’ve even considered firing someone?
Before taking on any of these extreme measures, consider reflecting on your leadership style. It may not even be that you are doing anything wrong, but maybe your current style isn’t a great fit for the culture of this particular team, project, or company.
Try going through our list of guidelines for our software development team leadership, and see if any can be applied to your team to improve functionality, morale, and product:
People appreciate autonomy and can tell when you value their option. If you feel like you are being forced to micromanage, try breaking the cycle and letting your team members make important decisions without coming to you for every little thing. Using team language can help both your mindset and the way others perceive you. For example, ‘we’ are a team. Your team members work ‘with’ you, not ‘for’ you.
Everyone should share responsibility for mistakes, as well as the reward for successes. This boost in confidence can result in more confident, productive developers, and can allow you to stick to your job, rather than doing theirs. Hint: make sure you do any ‘hands-off’ experimentation at the appropriate time, as not to leave your team alone in a situation where you are needed.
Being a good leader isn’t easy. In fact, it’s challenging. As a program leader, you need to trust your team, allowing them to (safely) make mistakes, learn from them, and teach them to trust themselves. And unfortunately, leadership is the essential part of any software development program – technical aspects can all be learned or outsourced. So, take a good look at your management style before attributing any flaws to individual team members and experiment with altering your style when and where you can.
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