What level of management participation is important to you as a Technical Team Lead?

Question

My company is undergoing a reasonably major relocation project and my manager, who works in a different building, will soon be located even further from my team and I than before.

While it would be fair to say we didn't see a lot of him before, his presence, involvement and interest in my team's progress is likely to all but disappear now. I consider myself to be advocating for my team effectively right now and communicating news and issues from the Development department regularly. However, I personally operate better knowing there is strong, effective leadership taking an interest in my project and providing regular feedback on its progress.

So my question is: as a development team leader, how important is your line manager's investment in your project (and you personally) in terms of project familiarity, feedback / availability and strategic guidance?

Answer 1

I'd throw a question back at you: How important is it for you to communicate with your stakeholders so that they understand how important your project/team is to the company.

Communication is key, if you can't get a good level between yourself and management then you should organise a meeting on an appropriate schedule to simply touch base with your manager and your team so that everyone is on the same page. Depending on how far the relocation is this may or may not be practical. Just my 2c.

To directly answer your question I would say it's of paramount importance that your mangement buys in on your project. If they aren't confident in it or understand what it means for the company then you run the risk of the project being shutdown.

Answer 2

Extremely important!

Apart from the great point already made in the answer above, you could vocalize your concerns with the manager and fix up for regular and frequent meet-ups to discuss updates and issues. You may need to rely more on emails and such face to face meetings for a more formal kind of updating mechanism. Not the best method perhaps if your manager is not the kind that really pays attention to email updates, but unfortunately, if that is the case, then there is not a whole lot you can do about it except peg at it and stay on his/her radar as much as you can.

Team meetings, lunch meets, brownbags, emails, phone calls,IMs even. Just to remind him/her you are around and doing good work. If he/she is an ideal manager they would obviously take the bigger responsibility of ensuring that they are on top of things - but I guess its too much of an ask in the real world.