POV: leadership style
During my career so far, I have created two teams from scratch, one on-site and the second remote.
My main goal was to build a diversity of seniority levels to cover all the possible tasks and circumstances that may arise. Moreover, I am a strong believer that team members should come from different backgrounds, experiences, and sectors to blend the knowledge and everyone could be affected and learn from each other. Personality characteristics are also an important factor when I form a team. Having team members with thoughts, feelings values, and behaviors that complement each other, creates a strong base of collaboration.
#My leadership style is adaptive, visionary, and delegating, and my personal goal is to make them the best versions of themselves based on their goals and the company's vision.
One of my highest values is communication; thus, the employee and I schedule our connection slots from the very beginning and gradually we adapt depending on the style of leadership each employee prefers. We used to have biweekly 1-1s and a weekly full-team meeting, even though my chat was always open for them and they were on my highest priorities. I was also using the team chat as a means of daily communication. A general thread was always active to share articles, news, even music, and the daily good morning gifs. Also, our chats were always accessible to the team members to catch up at any given time.
#The team's support is my highest priority each day.
My second value is respecting the individuality of each employee and their needs. The 1-1s were 45 minutes long, with the main focus on their yearly and quarterly goals, what they try to achieve, their struggles, and how they wanted my support.
The biweekly meetings were about two hours long and divided into two parts. We started with a peer review of the tasks that we were working on at the moment. Everyone had the opportunity to share their thoughts and suggestions from different points of view, regardless of their seniority level. Everybody was equal and had the power to share their ideas. The second part was for sharing knowledge. Usually one of us came across something new, from an article, a course, or whatever preferable source we had. Then the member had to present the information and we then discussed how we can apply it in our tasks or our general processes. Following this structure, everybody had to be open and grounded, as everybody had the opportunity to share something important that would help others.
#Being addicted to learning leads to professional development and stops you from getting overtaken.
In the second team that I created and was leading, we used to have three main teams that needed a designer. My structure per team was one Primary designer and one Secondary. The Primary was chosen based on their skills and the project demand. They were responsible for delivering the project and leading the way they wanted to proceed. The Secondary was responsible for being the "rubber duck" for the primary, someone who knows the project and can step in if need be. In this formulation, they learned from each other, and we decreased the bus factor. Projects with more challenging objectives were undertaken by the more senior designers and the easier ones by the junior or mid-level. With this structure, we were all both Primary and Secondary at the same time in different projects.
All the above techniques came as a result of trial and error using a bunch of different methods and approaches. Leading, though, is not static, and one size fits all.
It is an ever-evolving situation that the parts should adapt to and empathise with each individual because, at the end of the day, we are human beings.
#My observation is that by holding your teams back and giving them space to breathe and develop, you can have a balanced team that performs.
