Chapter 22. Making your team manage their own work
I was reading the previous note in this book (at the time, it didn’t include Roy’s analysis), and it got me thinking. It took me a while to understand why I felt that it isn’t quite right. And then it hit me: the game of the team lead choosing who does what isn’t worth playing. It’s better to avoid the problem to begin with, and the best way to do this is to let the team decide who does what.
If you want to become a great team leader, you need to stop being the team task dispatcher. Normally, a group of people will do a better job at this than a single person. Your job as the team leader is to allow this; make your team self-manage.
If your team isn’t there yet, it’s a good goal to strive for and invest effort in. The first step is to stop deciding for the team. As long as you decide who does what, the team won’t take charge of its work. After all, why should they worry when you do this for them?
I know this isn’t easy to accomplish, but here’s what works for me when I approach this problem.
Explain the new “rules” to the team. When expecting someone to start doing something new, I find it usually helps to state my expectation. The first thing I do is to tell them that, from now on, I expect them to divide the work between them. I also say that if they find it difficult, I’m willing to help.