Chapter 21. Spread your workload
During my many years of experience as a team lead (albeit only recently in software development), I’ve seen other team leads “flog their workhorses.” In many team environments, there will be members who are less likely to willingly accept tasks they don’t enjoy—the complainers (they kick up a stink)—and those who get their heads down and complete any task that you give them—the reliables. I’ve seen many team leaders, including me in my early years, give the less fun jobs to the reliables, as there’s less chance of resistance and conflict.
In the short term, this strategy may work in your favor, but there are some repercussions:
- The team as a whole may begin to pass work off to the reliables.
- The reliables will eventually burn out.
- The reliables will become frustrated, and you’ll more than likely lose their respect.
- Internal conflict will arise because the reliables will separate themselves from the complainers.
The solution involves sharing the load equally. If you gave a “boring” task to Member A today, give the next boring task to Member B—regardless of whether they complain. This will build up a culture of equality, with every team member having their share of learning opportunities.
Roy’s analysis
The solution’s nice. But to paraphrase Jerry Weinberg: many leaders like to take the money but not do all the hard parts about leadership. And I’m certain that this note’s giving great advice that many leaders will find hard to follow specifically because it requires a little bit of conflict. For many leaders, conflict is the opposite of what a safe work environment looks like, but it’s essential to get out of that comfort zone and realize that conflict is necessary, as described in The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni (Jossey-Bass, 2002).
By getting out of our comfort zone and doing this thing we find hard to do (asking things of people who don’t like to do them), we also grow ourselves. We see what happens when we push a boundary. We learn more about ourselves and other people, and we see what happens when certain things are being triggered in our work environment. We become better because we gain more perspective: different approaches to things bring experience that we can use in our work. Not to mention that we play fair, and make the team play fair, which builds loyalty.
One more question to be asked is, “Why is the team leader assigning things to specific members?” You’d expect members of a self-organizing team to select tasks for themselves. This is a clue that the team isn’t self-organizing, or it’s not treated as such.
Whether that makes sense or not remains unknown. Perhaps it’s the right thing to do when the team’s in survival mode. In learning mode, it might still make sense to assign tasks to team members, but specifically to learn new skills and get them out of their comfort zones. It wouldn’t make sense to give tasks to people who’re masters of these skills, but who serve as bus factors for that knowledge in the team; while you assign a DB maintenance task (something simple) to a member with less DB experience, in order that they learn.
In learning mode, you can also think a bit more “meta” and teach the team to pick and choose their own tasks, based on how uncomfortable it makes them. Teach a team to get itself out of the comfort zone, and you’ve created a team of leaders.
A self-organizing team already knows how to choose their own tasks. It wouldn’t make sense to assign tasks to team members.
JOHN HILL is a .NET Team Leader/Senior Developer for a small Australian CMS software development company.