Chapter 17. Leading through learning: the responsibilities of a team leader
I was honored when Roy asked me to explore the topic of team leadership. It’s an interesting topic because it can cover such a broad array of factors.
We could cover the usual things, such as servant leadership, impediment removal, or motivation, but there’s one thing that intrinsically sets great leaders apart from mediocre ones. To get there, we should first discuss the responsibility of a team member.
One of the things that excites me the most about the Software Craftsmanship movement is a shift of responsibility. Frequently we, as developers, have set out with the ingrained feeling that it’s our organization’s responsibility to help us grow and succeed. This was true, to some extent, in the early days—great programmers stayed with great companies for a long time.
Growth was something you expected when you were hired. You could look forward to staying with the company, putting in your best, and getting rewarded upon retirement with the knowledge that you’ll be cared for in return.
Those days are gone. I don’t know of any colleagues who’ve taken a job with a company thinking they’d be there for 20 or 30 years. That seemingly coincides with the mantra of “Here today, gone tomorrow,” which some organizations practice. That further means that, if we can’t even be sure that our jobs are still going to be here, we certainly can’t expect that it’s a given that organizations will help us grow.