Chapter 32. Actions speak louder than words
The way you act says more about your values than any pithy motivational slogan. A team is more likely to follow your lead in terms of your behavior than they are to follow your instructions, particularly if these aren’t aligned.
If you talk about valuing feedback and then get defensive when someone offers some, the team will unconsciously pick up on the defensive behavior. Conversely, if you always take the time to check in with your team, they’ll get into the habit of telling you things and may even become more comfortable talking with one another. Sometimes, this modelling can have a surprising upside, when you notice the team picking up a behavior intrinsic enough to your values that you never thought to make it explicit.
One of the toughest starts I had as a software team leader involved joining a team of nine strongly opinionated developers as their lead. They’d formed cliques within the team, and each thought the others were idiots and didn’t understand software. I was brought in primarily as facilitator: an external person who wasn’t vested in any of the cliques and who might be able to help them find a way forward.