background
I began to lead a research and development team in 2016, and now I lead four or five small leaders. I have observed many colleagues, many of whom work very well when they work alone, but their performance is mediocre when they become leaders. This article will talk about my practical experience in leading a team, hoping to inspire my friends who are leaders in the front line.
Summarized from coder to leader, need to pay attention to the following four points:
1. Role change
There are a few programmers who do not change their identities in time after they become leaders, or they are too busy, or they lose their direction, do not understand the whole picture of the team, and fail to grasp the key points. This part of them accounts for 20%, which is manifested as:
- Miss the point. The leader should be responsible for the team as a whole, and make decisions and schedule around the overall interests of the team. Do not indulge in the “happiness” of coding. It is suggested that the coding time of an individual should not exceed 50%, which can be adjusted according to the size of the team. What are team priorities? Three things: the rights and responsibilities of personnel are clear, the process risks are controllable, and the future planning is reasonable.
- Do everything by yourself. “Doing everything personally” is a complication of “failing to grasp the key points”. A leader who fails to grasp the key points often likes to grasp everything at once and has to make decisions by himself. This not only makes him tired, but also affects the progress of the team.
- Herding sheep management. Such people occasionally come across, completely relinquish authority, go to the other extreme, leaving the team members to fend for themselves, such people are dangerous, there is no wall, not only the damage to the team, they will be killed sooner or later by the company
Self growth
30% of people start to live on their laurets when they become leaders. In fact, they need to learn more knowledge after they become leaders. They should be able to provide technical guidance to subordinates, make annual planning for a team from a macro perspective, and deal with internal and external conflicts in the team from a middle perspective.
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Reading. According to the author’s survey in the circle of friends, 60% of people read 3-5 books a year, 20% read about 10 books, 15% read about 20 books, and 5% read 50-100 books. To exceed the median, you need to read at least 10 books a year in their entirety, and the advice is to spread them out over economics, history, psychology, methodology, technology, and so on.
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Emotional regulation. Others to do self emotional management, aggressive style of doing things is bad for management, and it’s easy to form the depressed mood, make it a habit to they will think twice before, many aspects to confirm the accuracy of the information, don’t blind to the conclusion that the solution to solve the problem and the team together to discuss more, avoid oligarchic dictatorship, a team cannot hear objections is very dangerous.
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Health management. The information processing capacity of the leader is much larger than that of the ordinary staff. In the Internet industry, the final struggle is not who is younger than who, but who is healthier than who. Illness comes like a mountain. Many people know the importance of health, but they often ignore the urgency of health. They are always dealing with things that seem more urgent, and they often excuse themselves as “too busy”, but actually you are not too busy, you are too “greedy”.
Iii. Leadership
The essential difference between leadership and management is that leadership is deciding what to do, while management is doing what has been decided correctly.
A very common type of leader is a “task-dispatching machine” leader, who receives tasks from superiors and then assigns them to members of the team, and so on. Such a leader can only be qualified at most, and it is difficult to make a breakthrough.
A good leader should actively think about the direction of the team, make technical strategic layout in combination with the overall environment, accumulate the team’s core technology and core business resources, not only to defend the position, but also to lead the team to advance into new areas. There are many books on improving leadership to read, here are some suggestions:
- Pay more attention to industry trends. Focus on new technologies, learn from other companies’ good engineering efficiency tools, and develop insights into cutting-edge technologies. Follow the industry’s top public accounts/blogs and attend at least two major technical conferences a year, such as InfoQ’s XXX conference.
- Build trust. If there is a problem, try to communicate with each other one on one. Try to avoid coaching in front of the team. Some officials are not big, not small, especially like in the team group inside the scolding, in fact, very naive, will only increase the subordinate’s disgust and contempt, the real cattle leadership is not angry from the wei
- Don’t be stingy when you’re first. You don’t need to be in the front of everything. For important projects, you should be in the front and take the main responsibility. The credit belongs to everyone. I heard from a director of a team of thousands of people that when the team was working very hard, he gave out more than 100,000 yuan in red envelopes in a year. Look at those colleagues in your team who are generous in giving red envelopes. Are any of them bad?
- Don’t be afraid to offend people. If it is a matter of principle, the criticism should be made. If it is serious, the whole team will conduct a case study. I used to think that try to give some face, in fact, it is not, subordinates make mistakes, fool in the past, not only the parties did not grow, the whole team will follow, in contrast, hurt a little face is really nothing, as long as it is objective to the matter not people, things over, we are friends.
- Peer communication. More and leader position of industry friends to exchange management experience, three people, there must be my teacher.
Coach mentality
This is the most difficult, few people can do well, staff management pay attention to “selection, education, stay, use”. The selection, retention and use of talents are closely related to the overall environment of the company, and the operation space of the team leader is not large. However, it is possible to cultivate employees and make them grow continuously, which can minimize the turnover rate. Especially for young programmers, they pay more and more attention to self-growth and value expression. How do you develop employees? Mentality is more important than methodology. Cultivate subordinates with coach mentality and sincerity. You can improve your coach ability from the following points:
- Treat subordinates with respect. Technical employees are relatively “paranoid” and not good at explaining, so they should fully trust their subordinates, avoid to guess from their own point of view, give more encouragement, encourage subordinates not to set boundaries for themselves, encourage innovation, encourage learning, share, encourage healthy and efficient work, and avoid encouraging overtime and slack work.
- Find the best in your subordinates. A good leader is always good at discovering the advantages of his subordinates. There are more than 30 programmers in the small team I work for, and I can clearly tell the advantages and disadvantages of each of them even when I close my eyes. The reason why they cannot be a leader is that they are not qualified, but also lack of comprehensive ability. Help them build confidence and find their presence in the team. (The common method used by the author is to find a horizontal topic for everyone, and let them continue to conduct in-depth research in their spare time, and finally share it, and also investigate their research ability and potential.) Do not be afraid of employees learn the skills to leave, a person to leave sooner or later will go, one is dry unpleasant to leave the company without any nostalgia, but also is likely to suddenly leave, one is to leave the company to have a better platform for development, mutual blessing, exchange what one has, which do you want to see?
- Rules. The team should be effective, orderly and uniform, and strive to make one place. It needs the coach to establish reasonable rules and moderate strengthening. Although the Internet industry pays attention to loose and flat, it does not mean that it is loose. A senior VP of the company said that he was very impressed: “Setting rules is like building a door, to pass yourself, but also to others”, set rules to be considerate, not rules overflow.