Chapter 7. Growing people
- Using challenges to develop a successful core team
- How to use “homework”
- Identifying potential in people
In the previous chapter, you learned about using commitment language. It’s time to use it to grow the people in your team.
For your team to be able to self-organize without depending on you, they need to learn how to solve their own problems. One of the simplest ways to encourage that is to stop solving all their problems for them; ask them to start solving them on their own. This is called delegation, and it may feel awkward at first, but it’s part of the idea of getting out of your comfort zone and learning new skills.
You too will have to learn a new skill here: stop solving everyone’s problems, and begin mentoring and challenging them to solve problems themselves.
Problem challenging
Sooner or later a team member will come to you with a “wishful problem” such as one of these:
- “We need faster computers.”
- “I wish we had better communication with the customer.”
- “We need to learn TDD.”
When that happens, ask the wishful questioner one simple question:
What are you going to do about it?
Each word here is carefully selected:
What are you going to do about it?
This simple question, stated exactly like this, asks the person to answer using commitment language. Each word is carefully chosen to remove doubt that you’re looking for anything other than commitment.
Suppose you ask another way:
- “What do you think you should do about it?”
- “What can you do about it?”
- “How do you intend to solve it?”
All these questions evoke answers that have loopholes:
- “I should do X.” (Instead of “I will.”)
- “I can do X.”
- “I could do X.”
As the person answers you, challenge them to use commitment language, as you saw in the previous chapter.
People may not get what you’re asking them to say. They might keep answering in the same old ways. Remind them gently:
So you will...?
This is not simple delegation, though. It’s about teaching people to solve their own problems; it’s a challenge to take action. That’s why I call this problem challenging.
How did I react the first time I was challenged?
I remember when my leader first asked me, “What are you going to do about it?” I experienced a combination of thoughts and feelings:
- I felt angry because he asked me to do something that wasn’t my job.
- I felt angry that he seemed to be avoiding work, asking others to do it instead of doing what he was paid to do (to help me!).
- I felt betrayed a bit, because I came for help and found myself staring in the mirror instead.
Some of this bad vibe happened because nobody prepared me for what was about to come. The conversation went like this.
I answered, “Well, I just came to you, didn’t I? So that’s what I’m doing about it.” I felt good about telling him off.
He answered, “I want you to learn to do this on your own. It’s a skill that you need to have if you’re ever going to be a leader yourself.”
That was a good answer. But who had time? I said, “I don’t have time to do this (whatever it was—I don’t remember). Can you give me more time?”
“Yes.”
I got more time, and later I was asked to use “I will... by...” when committing to this new task.
It took me a couple of months, and some new skills, to realize that this was a great gift, instead of a horse with no teeth. Don’t expect it to be easy to have this conversation with your people.
When to use problem challenging
This technique comes in handy in several places:
- Day-to-day growth opportunities
- Daily stand-up meetings
- One-on-one meetings
Let’s look at each one.
Day-to-day growth opportunities
If someone comes to you with a problem, you can ask them, “What are you going to do about it?” You can mentor them and give them ideas about how to solve their problems, but first see if they can come up with ideas of their own. Challenge them to solve it on their own, with you as their mentor, but without you doing the work for them.
Daily stand-up meetings
When someone brings up a problem or hindrance in the daily stand-up meeting, challenge them and ask them, “What are you going to about it?” to see where it leads. Help them figure out the problem, and don’t solve it for them. Teach them to solve the problem on their own. Most importantly, teach them the thought process that leads to the solution.
One-on-one meetings
When a team member raises an issue during a one-on-one, see if you can help them solve it on their own. Help them figure it out, and mentor them to completion.
Next, let’s talk about what happens when someone doesn’t live up to their commitments.
Don’t punish for lack of trying or lack of success
When people are challenged to solve their own problems, it’s important not to punish those who are unable to solve them. It’s their problem, and they will continue to suffer for it. The consequence is that they will keep having the problem. If they care about it enough, they’ll keep trying.
If you’re not giving them problem-solving tools, though, that’s an even bigger problem. You can’t ask them to solve a problem and not support them when they attempt to do so.
Having their back can mean many things. Here are the two most important:
- Give them enough time to work on the problem.
- Give them permission to approach other people they need help from.
Next, we’ll take a look at a simple concept I’ve used successfully many times, which I call homework.
Homework
Challenging for growth is only one of the techniques to use when people approach you. You can add a more structured and planned growth trail for team members by having biweekly one-on-one meetings where you can discuss the idea of homework.
Homework involves things a team member could do better, or things they need to improve on because they hurt the team. It doesn’t have to happen outside of work, but it may not be related to the current work that person is doing (sidework might be a less-confusing name for some).
Things to consider as areas of growth for homework are these:
- Something they feel will inspire them
- Something that will get them out of their comfort zone (you can see they’re afraid of doing it)
- Something that needs to change because it hurts the team (morale, productivity, teamwork)
Things that don’t fit the description of homework, but seem like they do, are these:
- Learning the latest buzzword technology on the same platform (I know technology X but want to learn this framework)
- Learning a new platform without learning its culture (I want to learn Ruby, but I won’t assimilate with an experienced Ruby team)
You can usually tell the difference between a true growth opportunity and a fake one if you know what to look for:
- Absence of fear— If the team member isn’t even a little afraid of taking a step, it’s probably not taking them out of their comfort zone. A good example of a true growth opportunity is switching to a different team or speaking to someone they’re afraid to speak with.
- Absence of annoyance/frustration initially— If the team member isn’t even a little frustrated or annoyed about how it’s not their job to do X, you might not be truly teaching them something new. A good example of a true growth opportunity is doing work that was never part of their job description or sitting in a room with people they never had to work with.
In essence, homework is about learning a new skill, not a new technology. So always ask yourself and your team, “What skills are missing?”
Homework is a personal commitment, not a task
During one-on-ones, if someone takes on homework, they should treat it as a personal growth challenge, not as a work task. They shouldn’t be punished if they don’t do it, because they only hurt themselves. The desire to improve and exceed your own limits is what drives this homework, not a manager telling someone what to do. That’s why taking on a personal homework task should be said in commitment language, but should be judged only at the personal growth and mentorship level, not at the work level.
Homework has follow-up
I consider it homework if I can get an email from a person at the end of each day or each week or have a one-on-one meeting each week about the progress they make. Any longer period of time, and we start to lose focus and lose track of accomplishment.
Homework examples
Let’s say one of your team members is a slow typist. In fact, they use the mouse for almost everything. This is hurting your team—people hesitate to pair with them because of how slowly work gets done.
You can sit down with this person and ask them to consider ways to make improvement. Most devs would be thrilled to increase their typing speed. You can suggest ideas or, better yet, ask them for ideas on how to improve their typing speed. For example, get a “blind typing” teaching program and measure words per minute over a few weeks.
Another example would be someone who’s always negative—you know, the “it’s never going to work” type you’ve had on the team for a while now.
The first step is to have a one-on-one with the person and explain that they can benefit much from choosing their battles. Homework for them could be to say the word “no” no more than three times a day.
Then you can ask the team member to email you at the end of each day and review when they said “yes” or “no” and why. This isn’t about punishment; it’s about being there as a mentor and personal reminder, someone to bounce ideas off and to give advice when needed.
It can take months for homework to change behavior or help someone craft new skills; plan on at least three to six months. Remember, one of the reasons you got out of chaos is to create extra time for people in your team to learn and experiment with new skills. Use that time, and let people use it to try these new commitments. It’s important not to overdo it, though, as you’ll see next.
Pace yourself and your team
It’s important not to push this too far. If your answer to every question is, “What are you going to do about it?” at some point you’re going to stop getting questions. It’s going to be too quiet, and not because people know how to solve their own problems.
You’ll see they can’t, but they won’t ask for help anymore. That’s how you’ll know you’ve gone too far with challenging them. Make sure to challenge people on no more than a couple of fronts at the same time. Don’t swamp people with challenges. Give them time to work on one or two challenges at a time and then move on to the next challenge.
Now that we’re pacing ourselves, let’s talk about when to step in even though people are learning.
Do you have enough learning time to make this mistake?
Sometimes you’ll see people going down the wrong path on a problem, and you’ll have to make the decision whether you should let them follow that path and learn for themselves why it’s a mistake or prevent them from making it.
That depends on how much time you can spare. If getting out of the hole they’re digging will take longer than the buffer you’ve allowed for, you might want to take charge and redirect their efforts.
For example, suppose someone wants to do without source control. If they lose all of their work, it would take too much time to restore. Usually you can’t afford that decision.
That’s why, even in the learning phase when you’re striving to be a mentor, sometimes you’ll have to be a dictator.
Are there situations where you shouldn’t grow people
What if you have a short-term consultant on your team? What if you’re the team lead for this project, no other, and there will be a new team lead on the next project? Should you work on growing people even in those situations? My answer is an unequivocal “yes.”
People who come across my path, even for a short time, will get the same amount of respect, expectations, and challenge from me as if they had been there forever. I try to always leave those whom I’ve led better off than they were, in terms of new skills and challenges. It’s an expression of my personal integrity.
If you conduct yourself this way, you’ll find that people will want to work with you and will remember you even years later, no matter how short the project was.
You never know when you’re going to meet those people again, and you may find hidden treasures along your future path because a few years back you did the right thing with people who didn’t expect it of you. Show by example that even in the short term, you don’t give up on quality (of people or of leadership).
Next up
If all goes well, people should be making progress with new skills every week. You can ask yourself, on a weekly or daily basis, “Is my team better than it was last week?”
The next step is using what you learned to get your team closer to self-organization, and measuring how close you are getting to that goal.
Summary
- Growing people can be accomplished by challenging them to get out of their comfort zone and do something that requires learning a new skill. This can be done using on-the-job techniques or with homework where people can gradually practice new skills even if they don’t directly relate to on-the-job activities.
- It’s important that people are challenged with one thing at a time. Too much can be overwhelming, and people will walk away from the challenges, or may choose not to involve you. It should be challenging, but reasonable, to accomplish learning the new skill, and they should be actively choosing to do this.