We should all manage teams

For context in case you happened to come across this post, I’m going to speak from the technology industry, a deeply technical industry, and how leading teams, at least for a period of time, can help the team and yourself, both professionally and personally.

How it impacts your anxiety and that of the team to manage it

I am from Argentina, a country with the highest number of psychologists per inhabitant, it is neither a good nor a bad thing, in fact I have been doing therapy for more than ten years to rethink myself and to rethink society.

I bring this data because of the subject of anxiety and it deserves a separate chapter, as social networks have intensified this phenomenon.

But let’s get back to the point I want to develop, anxiety in team management.

We live in a society that is in a hurry to get where we develop applications that encourage sharing videos of seconds because we can not stand to see a video longer than 30 seconds, where sharing information has to be compressed into 140 characters and if it is a longer thread uf not even want to read it. In this context of anxiety, managing and developing teams is a huge challenge, almost titanic I would say.

Stolen from a lecture by Paenza full lecture

There should be no other year in a person’s life where one incorporates so much information, learns so much, changes so much in quality of life, as from 0 to 1 year of age.

Where am I going with this point?

The contributions that one makes to the team and the people are very, veeeery slow, and in most cases almost imperceptible and you will have to learn to manage your anxiety and support the team to manage theirs.

Another point that I find very curious is that ability (and this is also commented by the great Paenza in the talk I shared with you recently) to have zero patience to face a problem, we need answers for everything, and yes, that is partly due to the anxiety we handle. Let’s encourage the ability to solve problems, not everything in life has a solution and there are no answers for everything.

Let’s encourage the ability to solve problems, not everything in life has a solution and there are no answers for everything.

Finally, in many companies it is common to encounter performance review processes twice a year and I would like to leave a question in the air.

Do we really believe that a person can make an evolution within six months?

And here the fragment of Paenza’s talk makes more sense.

There should be no other year in a person’s life where one incorporates so much information, learns so much, changes so much in quality of life, as from 0 to 1 year of age.

The quest for quick feedback to feel valuable

One of the things I would have loved to have been advised on when I started managing and leading teams is to look for things that give me a quick return of dopamine.

When you are leading and managing teams, change processes are very slow and you tend to think that you are useless and that you are not doing “anything productive”, calm down.

I don’t like tips and tricks, but something that helped me and that I would have liked to be advised is to look for what makes you happy, write a piece of code or refactor, document, anything, but something that makes you feel that you are contributing value to the team, again, already leading and making decisions bring a brutal value, the problem is that it is imperceptible and one is human and needs to feel useful and valuable.

Do I have personal growth?

What would happen if we lead a team for at least one year?

Even if it is not your chosen career path, leading and managing a team will provide you with very important tools, more important than any software design and architecture pattern.

You will learn to control your emotions, egos, frustrations, you will learn to negotiate, trust, advise, direct, ask for forgiveness and show your vulnerability, I could go on for a long time, but I think I can explain the level of information and tools it can give you.

The answer is yes, you are going to have personal and clearly professional growth.

The obvious, not everything has to go through you, nor do you have to be aware of everything

How many times have you crossed paths with “toxic leaders”, What is toxic for me?

Those people who are funnel, everything has to go through them, all the time they need different decisions to go through them and almost 100% of the time their decisions predominate.

What do I propose?

Let’s promote and accompany the growth of the people in the team and the team, let’s share knowledge and be open to new ideas and proposals.

Personally speaking the day I went on vacation and everything followed its course, we even took out functionalities, we communicated them and when you come back you don’t have that feeling of FOMO it’s the glory.

I leave the question in the context of when you come back or someone comes back from vacation and you hear it daily.

Uff I’ve been going through all the emails and slack messages to catch up

Shouldn’t projects take their natural course without you being present?

Exploit the virtues and reflect on the improvements, both are equally important

I am going to state the obvious, we all have good and bad things.

Please when you have 1.1 talk about both things, exploit and emphasize the virtues and reflect on the improvements, if you only highlight the improvements “or what is wrong” it is distressing for the person on the other side, he/she will feel that nothing is enough and nothing is right. On the contrary, if you only highlight the virtues and do not take the time to talk about the improvements, you will not drive change and improvement in the person’s life and career.

Again exploit the virtues and reflect on the improvements, both are equally important.

Be yourself, don’t manage from books

Lastly, and this may also be a truism, but be yourself, you feel miles away when someone is talking to you from a prepared speech or tips from a leadership book.

We all are and continue to learn, you too.