I had the opportunity to lead a team today. Although my current role is to be in charge of disparate groups of people trying to fix an “incident”, it isn’t team leading. Today had me in a different role.
Yes, it was a cheesy team building exercise, but I’ve never done one before so it was all new to me.
I remember in other jobs, part of my role was to help new team members (usually young) get up to speed, teach them some things, show them how to learn about whatever technology we were using. There is a great feeling of reward in doing this, and I hadn’t done it for years.
Today it was brilliant getting dropped back in it. To see the different personalities and how they reacted and interacted will be “thought food”* for a few days at least.
The cast:
Young lad (mid-20s) white tee-shirt. Turned up early. He just got called out in the previous session for doing a good thing, and is coming in feeling on top of the world.
Younger lad (early 20s). Seems new but is in a good position (product manager) so probably very good at school. Unfortunately, as a PM, he is pulled outside for the first part of the activity and told (for this game) he has to act like an asshole.
Young lady (20s) seems confident but is quiet. Likes to do the work but isn’t the one standing up, being loud.
Younger lady (early 20s), also new but in a good position, so probably a high achiever. She seems to know the “younger lad”, giving him some support when things got a bit shitty. (Read on!)
Slightly older guy (30s). Been around a while, happy in his life, but maybe isn’t as high in the company as he would like to me.
Me. Ould lad, very much enjoying this (the “project” involved a bit of art so I was all for that), competitive (even though there was no “winner”), and very comfortable with organising chaotic ad-hoc teams into achieving something.
Step 1. Young lad (white tee-shirt) is up at the White board, marker in had, starting the planning. Younger lady hasn’t arrived yet, and the “PM” has left the room for 10 mins.
Jobs are given out (make pictures of things), and the work starts. Deadline is halved half way through, but I give them a bit of “perfection is the enemy of good enough” and we make the thing.
Before we can present it:
Step 2. PM comes back in, acting the asshole (literally acting because he was told to outside for the last 10 minutes), saying the customer wants “more” but when questioned couldnt say what the “more” was (this is extremely realistic to my mind).
White tee-shirt starts getting well pissy. I thought this was so interesting, and have seen it so much when tech people collide with the “customer”. An expectation that there is clarity, truth, and the “right answer” out there. That something can be done “right”. Younger lady steps in a bit to support the PM, because although he is acting, white tee-shirt is genuinely frustrated, and pissy.
PM then has to “present” the project with no notice. While acting the asshole. Impossible of course but so interesting to see people from his own team start to argue and shoot him down mid presentation.
To my mind, the next “natural” step would be the team fragmenting, the quieter younger folks disengaging, and the louder folks taking over. I would have found that a bit boring to be honest so I thought fuck it, I may as well get something out of this.
And I learned a few things. If I ever do become a team leader/manager I think I would do these things I found out. I’m the oldest one on the team, and used to running call bridges, so I have “the voice” and could kinda step in easily enough.
Step 3. The retro. We had to do a retro on the last session. The team happened to be standing, my lazy ass was sitting, so I said, “right, everyone has a minutes, starting at the left, give us your retro”.
And the retro was good. White tee-shirt spoke over the young lady once, but he caught himself before I had to say anything. The feedback was great.
For such a silly thing it was so interesting. White tee-shirt wanted to take over as PM (without realising as a team member, the PM is in reality just giving suggestions). Slightly older fella agreed and pointed out we could choose who we wanted to present the next round, and indicated white tee-shirt or me. Younger lady came up with something awesome; no matter what we should be supporting eachother and work as a team. When it came to me, well I just repeated the feedback I liked…
Lessons for me: Make everyone talk, even the “quiet” ones. As a leader I didn’t have to come up with anything myself, I just leaned towards the positive (“let’s support whomever is presenting next time, nod and smile, and don’t shoot them in the back”).
Step 4. The next round. PM suggested that younger lady present next time. Slightly older guy shakes his head “no” at me and points to white tee-shirt. Fuck that shit, Younger lady was to present.
Lesson for me: make sure the less experienced people are up front. All the “experienced” folks can support them, but throw the youngsters in the deep end, and see them kick ass. They will have a viewpoint and way of doing things that will be different and fresh.
Step 5. Honestly, I didn’t do much after that. Made a few jokes, went around everyone to see how they were doing (as the rest were able to self assign roles thanks to the retro and “planning section”). Of course the “deadline” and requirements were changed a bit but I was free to keep an eye on the time, and keep the team on track by.
My goal was to have people feeling good afterwards, maybe even having learned something. The young lady who was creating a lot of stuff had to also place the art and organise it and add her vision to the overall “product”. The younger lady had to stand up, and draft a presentation in a few minutes. I tried to guide white tee-shirt to a place where he understood Customer requirements can be all over the place, and it is on him as an engineer to make good decisions based on shite information.
I told the PM he was doing a great job and we know he’s not an asshole in real life! In the last round he got to play the good guy and give the team loads of encouragement which was a nice way to end it.
Corporate sessions like these can be fake and shit, but the people involved are real, and as with anything in life, in some ways you can choose yourself what you get out of them.
The two lessons for me was: make everyone talk, and put the less experienced people up front, with the more experienced people giving them support.
*Food for thought even!
