Imagine instead of being thrown into your jobs, your next project, or your work that the first thing you do with a new team is you get to know them. You spent some time getting to know them, talking to them about things they care about, figuring out their work ethic, what their strengths and weaknesses are, etc, etc. Putting together a plan with all of them contributing as to the direction the team should…
Joining a new team is never easy. You don’t know all the “things” and “isms” that make the team work (or are holding them back). Whether it is formal or informal, the new team is always waiting for one thing to happen – the leader to emerge – not to assert their dominance or mastery, but the one that helps out team members, that leads by example, listens, takes their lumps, does the grunt work…
The bench does not get built overnight. Building your leadership team takes time. It takes thought, on both sides, those putting out the offerings, and those receiving them. Our natural inclination is to rush in and build a team as quickly as we can, but this will always fail as quickly as we started. Take the time, find the right people, talk to them, build the bench you need for today and tomorrow.
I’ve started to see more and more articles cropping up on delivery teams. I have yet to write my own but this is great to see. I’ve been using the term for a few years now as I’ve worked with more and more teams on the software delivery front. The idea for it came from the idea that it takes multiple roles to deliver a software solution, in a small company those roles can overlap…
You can’t lead everywhere, you can’t lead everything if you try you will fail. Pick where you are strong at, pick what you want to learn more of, pick where you want to focus – add any additional pick criteria that work for you. But make sure you pick. The leader that doesn’t pick, that ignores the need to pick, becomes the leader that chose to lead everywhere and missed the point.