In Chapter 2, we discussed the importance of assessing the people on your team early in your tenure. Your team members can be characterized in one of the following ways:

• Key player. Keep these people where they are.
• Development project. This person isn’t quite there, but shows potential. Work out a plan to develop it.
• Move. This person might fit better in a different role.
• Observe. You aren’t going to figure out everyone right away. Give yourself space to watch and think if you aren’t sure.
• Replace eventually. This person should be replaced, but it can be done at the right time.
• Replace immediately. Find a way to move this person out. This can either be someone who has an attitude problem that can’t be resolved, or someone who is irredeemably incompetent.

In your evaluation, look at more than the technical competence of the person in question. Sometimes a person is contributing more to the team than you see at first glance. Include things like the energy the person brings to the team, the judgment shown during team meetings, or the relationships the person has with other peer groups. Also make sure to think about whether you can trust that person to help you implement the changes you need.

By the end of the 90 days, you have had plenty of time to observe your team in action. You should know who is staying, who is going, and who is moving. Communicate that information to your boss, and eventually to the other key stakeholders. By the end of 6 months, you should have the people in place that you need to run your team.

The difficulty is that some of the people to be replaced have critical knowledge and skills. You need to identify a plan for doing this with as little disruption as possible. Temporary help can be hired during the transition, or maybe a more junior person is ready to step into the opening. In any case, a plan needs to be approved and implemented.

Recruiting the Right People

Recruiting is expensive, so you need to make sure to do it the right way. Understand which qualifications are actually necessary, and which are nice to have. Take into account the skill profile of the other team members, so that you know where you can compromise and where you can’t.

Also take into account how the team members would work together. Try to assemble a group of people whose strengths are complementary, and who will work together well.

Hold out for high-character applicants. Hiring the wrong person is expensive in both time and money.

Reassure the people you want to keep. When good people see churn in the team, they may start looking at other opportunities themselves. Speak to HR about the constraints you have on what you can and cannot say. There are ways to signal your appreciation to people you want to keep without crossing any legal or ethical boundaries.

When you post a job opening, you need to identify what the requirements for the job actually are:

• Primary and secondary responsibilities for the role.
• Education and experience required.
• Personal characteristics and skills (e.g., strong organizational skills, able to work independently)
• A personality match with the team and organizational culture and with your managerial style. (Note that issues in this category cannot be used to discriminate against several protected classes.)

A job posting is a good chance to rethink what that position should be, as opposed to what the former employee’s characteristics were. Maybe it makes more sense to shift responsibilities differently within the team and to redefine the role.

Once you have the requirements in mind, you can write up a job description. This will need to be vetted by HR to verify that you are not impinging on any legal requirements.

• Job title.
• Organization and business unit name.
• Hiring and reporting managers (identify both, if they are not the same).
• Responsibilities.
• Compensation.
• Expected work schedule and location.
• Educational and experience requirements. Distinguish between hard requirements and “nice to haves.”
• Personal requirements.

A lot of technical people can’t write a well-structured résumé to save themselves. I have found some gems by being a little forgiving on the résumé and depending on a phone screening to weed out people whose résumé reflects more experience than the candidate actually has. It depends on the nature of the team and the opening you are trying to fill.

My preference is to make notes on résumés listing topics I want to investigate further (based on red flags I see). Then I set up short phone screenings. Based on the phone screenings, I call back a small number for in-person interviews, and hire from there after checking references.

You want to make sure that all applicants respond to a core set of questions so you can make fair comparisons without being prejudiced either for or against a candidate. In addition to the core questions, ask questions raised by oddities in their résumé, and let the candidate speak about his or her strengths.

The interviewer needs to keep control of the pace of the interview. Some candidates are particularly good at snowing interviewers. They entertain the interviewer and avoid the tough questions by playing out the clock.

No more than 10% of the interview time should be taken by a brief, scripted introduction to the organization and what the position entails. If there is a serious, potentially disqualifying question that needs to be asked, ask it up front. Then roll into your core interview questions. Finally, finish up with other questions. It is your responsibility to keep control of the pace of the interview.

There are a number of questions that cannot be asked, such as questions about race, ethnicity, sexual preference, family situation, health conditions, age, weight, or religion. Your HR department should be able to provide guidance about questions to avoid. They also may want to review your core set of questions.

Leave time for the interviewee to speak about what makes him or her the ideal candidate for the job. Sometimes that can be the most interesting part of the interview.

Leave about 10% of the interview time at the end to wrap up and allow the candidate to ask questions about the position. Shake hands, make eye contact, and walk the candidate out.

At the end, write down notes about your impressions. When there is a long time between interviews, or when there are a lot of interviews together, it is easy to get impressions confused between interviewees. You can use your notes to keep people straight.

Check references when you are close to a decision, before you extend an offer. Most people who have been around IT for a while know horror stories about people who can talk a much better game than they can execute. Reference checks are one of the few safeguards you have against this problem.

Team Formation

Bruce Tuckman developed a model of team formation in the 1960s and 1970s.¹ The stages he described seem ubiquitous to team formations in different circumstances:

• Forming. New team members are introduced, and people learn about each other.
• Storming. Conflicts emerge between different ways of doing things.
• Norming. Team members develop ways of cooperating and working together.
• Performing. Team members have developed trust and understanding, and are able to work together effectively.
• Adjourning. The team breaks up.

Some amount of conflict is inevitable when people start working together. The team’s leader should understand that this is natural, but should work to accelerate the development of ways for team members to work together productively.

Pay particular attention to people who are in different geographic locations, and especially in different time zones. You need to schedule extra time to interact with them and to draw them into the team dynamic. Geographic and time differences will slow down their interaction with the rest of the team, and will delay their ability to move into the norming and performing stages. You can’t afford to lose part of your team like this; make a conscious effort to draw them in and keep them involved.

Large teams also can slow down the norming process because there are more interpersonal connections for the storming phase to operate over. You can work around this to some extent by breaking the larger team into work groups of three to seven.

In some cases, team-building activities can help. In my experience, the best way to move from the storming to the norming phase is to go after some early wins. Shared success builds team working relationships faster than anything else I know.

Goals

A goal-setting exercise allows you to work one-on-one with your direct report to identify specific ways he or she can help the company move forward. It is usually ineffective for a manager to specify goals, and it is almost meaningless if the employee sets goals without input. A functional goal-setting process will involve input from both the employee and the manager.

To be effective, goals need to be

• Easily understood.
• Written down in a permanent location.
• Specific in criteria and time.
• Challenging but achievable.
• Recognized as important and aligned with the organizational strategy.

If a goal’s objectives are not measurable, the goal becomes meaningless. The specific goal needs to have a specific measurement associated with success. “Learn Java” is not measurable. “Pass the Java exam with a score of 80% or higher” is.

As a manager, you should mentor your direct reports on how to meet their goals, once you have agreed on a set of important, measurable, and specific goals. Each goal should be broken into tasks, each of which will have a timeline. As a manager, it is your job to ensure that the employee has the resources necessary to execute the agreed-on plan.

Your job does not stop there. You need to review each employee’s progress toward their goals periodically, and you will need to write up their employee review for their file with the outcome of the goals at the end of the review period.

Motivation

Different employees are motivated differently.

Money is important, of course. Compensation is a raw measure of how much someone is valued by the employer; make sure your people are fairly compensated or you will lose them.

Beyond monetary compensation, there are a lot of other incentives you as a manager can use to help motivate your team members.

Exercising Power

There are five different ways that power can be exercised within an organization:

• Coercive power. This is the type of power exercised by using threats or punishment to try to push the other person into doing what you want. Overuse of coercive power causes resentment and is generally less effective than other ways of exercising power.
• Legitimate power. Getting people to do things for you from a position of authority within the organization.
• Expert power. Using personal expertise or knowledge to persuade people to do what you are requesting.
• Reward power. This is when incentives are used to get people to do what you are asking. Studies show that certain types of reward, such as interesting work assignments or recognition, are really effective at changing behavior.
• Referent power. This is when people are willing to do things for you because they like you. Some charismatic leaders have been effective using referent power, but they are few and far between.

Legitimate power extends only so far. People understand that you are the boss, so you have a legitimate right to ask them to perform reasonable work. To really motivate people, you need to look further.

Proper use of rewards (such as interesting work assignments, recognition, or the opportunity to learn a new skill) can be great motivators for solid performers. Combine that with the expertise you have built up over your career, and you have an enviable ability to motivate your team.

Legitimate power (sometimes also known as “executive” power) is the most effective way to deal with certain types of emergency situations. Sometimes there just is not time to reach a consensus on the way forward.

But if you end up issuing orders too frequently, you will lose your team. They may go elsewhere. Or they may do something worse. They may stop using their own initiative and rely on you to issue orders on exactly what you need them to do. If you get to that point, your effectiveness as a team leader drops significantly.

Processes for Success

How do you track progress? How do you communicate each person’s contribution to the rest of the team?

Ticketing systems, project tracking processes, team meetings, and staff schedules are all examples of processes that should be examined to see if they can be improved.

Decision-Making Process

You also need to consider the decision-making process you are going to put in place.

Consult-and-decide means that you ask for information and input from the team, and then make a decision. This is an alternative to building a consensus . In general, it is worth the time to try to build a consensus if the decision is going to require enthusiastic support by your team. In situations where either the team is inexperienced or the decision needs to be made quickly, consult-and-decide is going to be the more appropriate decision-making process.

Feedback

Establish a feedback process early in your tenure. Feedback should flow both ways, from you to the team, and from the team to you.

When you provide feedback to your team, at least 75% of your feedback should be positive. If you aren’t able to come up with that many nice things to say, you may need to engage in some self-examination. Very few people are that bad; most people want to learn, improve, and do a good job.

Chapter 7 has some hints for issuing effective reprimands, if things have risen to that level. More frequently, a minor correction can be couched in the middle of positive feedback on the bulk of the work that the team member is doing right.

Make sure that your expectations are clear. Usually, when things aren’t done the way you want, it is because your team members don’t understand your expectations. If you haven’t made your expectations clear or communicated them effectively, that is on you. Don’t take it out on your team members.

Provide opportunities for your teammates to give you feedback. Usually, my only requests are that team members address me respectfully and in private when they need to provide me with negative feedback. If there are resentments within the team, it is better to get them out into the open and discuss them honestly. If the resentments fester in the dark, they are guaranteed to emerge in a time and place when you are least able to deal with them.

When a team member brings an issue like this to your attention, take a deep breath. If you can’t deal calmly with the issue right now, thank the team member for bringing the issue to your attention, tell him or her that you want more time to think about it, and schedule a meeting for later.

Think about how you want your team member to react when he or she has negative feedback coming from you. That is how you need to react. Your people are knowledgeable professionals, and they deserve the same sort of treatment that you demand for yourself.

Organizational Culture

Stephen Robbins³ defined several axes that can be used to define an organization’s culture:

• Member identity. How closely people associate with the organization, rather than with subgroups within the organization.
• Group emphasis. Is work assigned to groups or individuals?
• People focus. How much weight is given to the impact of decisions on people?
• Unit integration. How much are units encouraged to cooperate?
• Control. How much do rules and policies govern behavior?
• Risk tolerance. Are employees encouraged to take risks to innovate?
• Reward criteria. What sort of behavior is rewarded? Are rewards based on behavior or criteria such as seniority or popularity?
• Conflict tolerance. Are employees encouraged to air conflict and disagreement openly?
• Means-end orientation. Does management focus on means or outcomes? Organizations with a balanced approach tend to be more successful in executing complex projects.
• Open systems focus. Does the organization monitor and adjust to changes in the external environment?

Think about where your organization falls on these axes, and look into what type of environment your new team members come from.

You will live in the atmosphere of the larger organizational culture, but you can define an organizational culture for your team. Think about what type of team you want to lead, then think about how to get there.

Messaging from the manager can help set a tone. Think about an aspect of team culture that you want to create or emphasize, then talk about it when you discuss the team environment with each of the team members. Persuade them how the world should be, and show your team members that it is within their power to create it.

Techies tend to have very sensitive BS detectors. Don’t say things that you don’t mean. It is okay to explicitly tell your team members that you are messaging about something, but follow it up by explaining why you see that characteristic as important. Use your powers of persuasion, backed by a sincere commitment on your part to foster that characteristic. Your team members will respect you for it, and they will follow your lead.

Staff Training

Find room in the budget for staff training. But beyond paid coursework, encourage team members to stretch to learn from each other. Cross-training increases the value of each team member.

Training needs to take into account the strengths, weaknesses, and career goals of each person on the team. For technical people, learning new skills is a valuable reward.

To the extent possible, try to structure training on a just-in-time basis. If you have someone train on something six months before they get to touch it, they are guaranteed to have forgotten everything they learned. When someone is trained (either in the classroom, or by cross-training with a teammate), provide them an immediate opportunity to exercise their new knowledge.

In one place I worked, there was a budget that allowed for one offsite training course per person per year. The team members coordinated who would go to each class. When that person returned, they were expected to spend their first few days back documenting what they had learned and transferring the knowledge to their teammates who had been covering the environment. This saved the organization money, improved teamwork, and allowed the team members to learn far more than they would have been able to cover by hoarding knowledge.

Credibility

The most powerful tool you will have as a manager is your own credibility. It will take time to win your team’s trust. It can take you only a moment’s lapse to lose it entirely.

When times get tough, credibility is going to be what gets you through. You will be able to acknowledge the problem to your team and ask for their freely given assistance in resolving it. Your credibility will be what makes the difference between getting the support you need and getting a cold shoulder.

The key to earning credibility is to keep your commitments. Try to make your commitments in writing so that you don’t run into a problem with each side remembering something slightly different.

Sometimes you will make a commitment that you are prevented from keeping by circumstances beyond your control. When you discover that you will not be able to meet a commitment, come clean and renegotiate the commitment as appropriate. If things are just not going to work out, apologize. People will be upset, but they will respect you for dealing straight with them.

Commitments should not be made lightly. Other commitments will need to be taken into account. If you are making assumptions, try to state them explicitly. (I’ll deliver the server next week, assuming that the hardware is delivered to me as scheduled.) If there are things that can be done to mitigate possible problems with the assumptions, it doesn’t hurt to make those actions explicit as well.

You are the heart of your team. If your team can’t trust you to deliver reliably, your team will not be able to deliver for you.

Your Education

Do not neglect your own education and training. I started my MS program knowing that I could only take one or two classes a year because of my work load. When I started the program, it seemed like it would take forever to finish up the program, but five years later, I had my degree.

Take the long view toward your development. Think about where you want to be in five years. If you were interviewing someone for that job today, what would you look for? What would you ask? That is the information and experience you need to pursue.

It is up to you to set the tone for your team. Make your team into a learning organization. It will make your team more flexible, and it will make your team members happier.

Read books. Find some substantive blogs to follow. Take classes. Attend lectures. And think about going after that degree you meant to finish, even if you can only take one or two classes at a time. You will be better for it. It will make you a better manager—and a better rounded person—over time.

Summary

As the leader of the team, it is your responsibility to set the tone, and to collect people around you to reinforce it. Decide what your team’s personality is going to be, and recruit to shape the team into that personality.

Your actions have an outsized impact on the team dynamics. Keep in mind that the primary reason most people leave a job is because they don’t like their immediate supervisor. This doesn’t mean you have to be everyone’s buddy; that would be counterproductive. Be professional. Be fair. Have clear expectations. Recognize excellence. And then think about how to structure your team to support the personality you want it to have.

Discussion Questions

1. Describe the characteristics you want your team to embody. Does your team have those characteristics now? How would you go about fostering those characteristics?
2. List some interview questions that would be good for finding out a candidate’s technical expertise. Now list some questions that would be good for assessing the candidate’s character.
3. Visible tracking of each person’s progress on assigned work is both a good reward and a good motivator. What method would work well in your environment? A weekly report? A bulletin or white board? A web-based dashboard?
4. Every manager should have a personal education plan. There are technical certifications or diplomas that you can work toward. What are your educational goals? What concrete actions are you taking to achieve them?

Further Reading

Blanchard, Ken, and Spencer Johnson. The One Minute Manager. New York, NY: Morrow, 2003.

Harvard Business Essentials. Manager’s Toolkit. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2004.

Robbins, Stephen P. Organizational Behavior, 10th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2002.

Watkins, Michael. The First 90 Days. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2003.

¹ Bruce Tuckman, “Developmental Sequence in Small Groups,” Psychological Bulletin 63, no. 6 (1965): 384–99.

² Harvard Business Essentials. Manager’s Toolkit. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2004.

³ Stephen P. Robbins, Organizational Behavior, 10th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2002.