How to avoid conflict with the Team Lead ?

Question

Currently we are facing some problems with our Team Lead regarding work assignment hierarchy and responsibility of work done. It is generally seen if some targets are not met by the team the Team Lead openly starts blaming the team and sometimes pin-points some of the developers. Further during the allocation of work to the developers the Team Lead does not properly explains the work to be done but expects us to complete it completely.

The worst part is that the Project Manager and Team Lead are real cousins and the Project Manager always takes the Team Lead side when such issues are put up to him by the developers.

Please guide what best can be done by the developers to make a healthy work environment.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

This is double sided, and very objective. It might depend souly on what kind of person the Team Lead is, and if they are open for discussion/questions.

The team lead should be openly addressed about this, BUT also, if a developer is unsure about what to do they should ask.

It never hurts to ask questions, you will be amazed at what you can learn.

Answer 2

Well personal relationships should not not be related with professional life. The developers should first of all organize a meeting with team lead and put forward their issues in a healthy and explanatory way. Also keep in loop the Project Manager with your views. Do not wait for anybody to make a healthy environment for you... start yourself in this direction.

One should be able to adapt to various environments and culture that is different in different organization. Always be with the flow.

Answer 3

If possible, schedule a meeting with the Project Manager and Team Lead. Openly discuss the issues in a mature and positive light. Tell the Team Lead what you do like (as a group), and tell him what you think can be done to improve quality, expectations, deadlines, etc. If critical requirements are habitually missing, let him know that. Although his cousin is the Project Manager, his answers may be guarded and he could get defensive no matter what the real circumstances are.

Ultimately, in my opinion, the PM/TL relation is a formula for disaster. If the problem is the Team Lead, and the Project Manager is part of that problem, then the next logical step is to go to the PM's boss.

Answer 4

I'm not sure that you can avoid conflict! The challenge is deciding what to do so everyone can learn and not too many people get hurt.

A well-run team should run itself. That is to say, the team lead's role should be to get a good framework in place so the team can decide on priorities, techniques, methodologies and even process by talking together.

So good managers will ask team members "OK, so what would you do?" They'll then get the appropriate support put in place so that can happen.

I'd suggest that as a group you

• Regularly get together (perhaps weekly) to review progress and learn from mistakes made in implementation.
• Make sure that all tasks are given to the team as a whole, not to individual developers. Everyone should know the high-level summary of a job.
• Get together daily to very quickly summarise progress. Keep this meeting limited to 10 minutes.

In these meetings it's best to avoid blaming people. Blame the code instead, or the process, but don't get personal.

And if your company culture allows it, try reading up on some of the literature around agile project management: there are many parts of that process that are designed to avoid conflict of this nature. However, it can be quite a hard shift for some organisations to devolve quite so much power to developers...