Examples Of Great Team Leadership

Question

I'm thinking of moving into team leadership role some point so I'd like to hear your stories of great/inspirational team leadership.

Answer 1

In my experience the best team-leaders do the following:

• Shield their team from inappropriate criticism or problems

• Coolly take on the pressure when things are not going well

• Push their team into the limelight whenever things are going well

• Ensure their team is publicly praised at appropriate moments

• Ensure their team are working on interesting projects (probably the most difficult at times)

• Negotiate good pay-deals for their best team members

• Keep on good terms with upper management so the team get the credit they deserve.

Answer 2

In addition to Joe90's points:

• Facilitate for your team. You are their buffer, advisor, aide and support.

Yep, that's it. Joe90 said the rest!

Answer 3

The facts are already said. I just want to add a one-liner.

You never know you have a great team leader, until you have to miss him or her for a while.

Answer 4

In addition to Joe90's answer:

• Make sure the team has a productive working environment. Noise free, windows, enough space and top equipment.

The ratio of salary expenses to office expenses is about 15 to 1. Make sure the team don't lose productivity by optimizing the wrong thing. Empirical data show that best-performing coders have larger, quieter, more private workspaces.

Answer 5

Be like Jon Skeet.

Answer 6

Good team leaders: - are accountable and reliable and demand the same from others
- are well informed and are good at passing important information along to the team
- know how to assign the right resources to the right tasks so that the team succeeds
- are good at teasing out small tasks from big goals
- have a high degree of credibility and are respected in his/her organizations
- are accountable and reliable and demand the same from others

Answer 7

Leadership is leadership is leadership. Its a skill-set in and of itself and you will get better at it over time if you focus on learning it as much as you would a programming language or new technology. Many times you are the leader long before you get the title, and IMHO, that's the best way to do it. Let me recommend the following books:

• The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership - John Maxwell
• How to Win Friends and Influence people - Dale Carnegy
• Flight of the Buffalo - Belasco and Stayer

As for anecdotes, they are all over the place. Look at Jerry Yang's history. Was he a good leader? What about Joel and Jeff with this site and their podcasts (brown-nosing)?

My personal best anecdote was a close friend of mine who was a Development Manager... He had worked very hard for that position - many hours, many battles, many lines of code, designs, learned technologies, studied soft-skills, politics, etc. When he finally got the position of Manager he wore it like a badge - the position held him up, instead of him making the position. He lost motivation, because he never really wanted to be a manager, he wanted to influence the company (apparently, those are two very different things).

A new VP came in, test-drove him for a few months, saw that he wasn't motivated or properly trained for the position and demoted him back to Team Lead.

My friend was stunned, but he hung in there.

Eventually he realized that he never really wanted to be in management, but couldn't help but lead. He began leading teams from the bottom of the org and made a huge impact on the people in the org. He helped people move into leadership roles, management, new better positions, go back to school, educate the org and make it more efficient. He introduced methodologies, lead leadership classes, etc. He's a better leader now than he ever was in management. He's told me that he is more successful now than he ever was in management and we all feel like he's help us more after the demotion than before.

Leadership is leadership. Good leaders don't need a title to lead, bad ones do. Good luck to you.

Answer 8

"Let your team members take credit for their successes, and take the criticism yourself for their failures"

Answer 9

"Whoever first spots the cause of this bug gets a free lap dance from my own pocket."

Did magic for an all-male team... especially for one sharp-eyed developer...

Answer 10

I'm a fan of, "Good evening staff - you worked hard today - sleep well, I'll most likely fire you... in the morning."

For those dolts who haven't read this far and are already flagging a -1 and typing a bovine response, the above breaks down to:

• be cordial
• recognize their effort
• make sure they get quality downtime
• be honest... but also have a sense of humor