This is my personal "manual" describing how I operate optimally, conditions under which I might malfunction and how others can work with me to reach our team goals. The purpose of the document is to help any new members of my team (whether I'm joining your team or you are joining mine) to onboard as effectively as possible by sharing expectations and building trust.
The document is not intended to be final. To get things going, I blatantly copied some points that apply to me from other tech leaders’ READMEs. I have been reviewing it annually since then and managed to put more of my own spin on it.
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I am here to make sure you are both successful and happy: I want you to improve your technical skills, grow your career and enjoy your work.
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I am here to make sure our team is successful and pointed in the right direction.
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I am here to make sure our team is getting what we need from other teams, and that other teams are getting what they need from us.
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Communicate effectively and frequently. If you don't understand something, or how it fits into the larger picture, ask! Be prepared to provide insight and clarity to decisions you make.
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Invest in yourself and focus on self-improvement. This looks different for everyone and can be going deeper, going broader, or engaging in feedback to really listen.
Notice how there is nothing about tech skills and abilities in this section. This is intentional. I find the skill of effective communication to be the key in achieving success in a team environment.
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I'll do my part to make sure you are both successful and happy: I want you to improve your technical skills, grow your career and enjoy your work.
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I'll transparently share the context of my own goals, challenges, and priorities - you should never wonder what on earth I do all day! (If you ever do, please nudge me!)
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I'll provide company context and priorities to the work our team is doing. I will make sure our team is pushing in the right direction.
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I’ll listen and hear your feedback because it is the biggest gift you can give me to help me improve. I know that I will make mistakes, and I'm going to make decisions that are wrong. I promise you that if you come to me and explain why something is wrong, I will listen, address it and possibly send you a thank you gift.
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Here's how I rank communication methods in terms of urgency via medium:
In-person (right now) -> Call -> Text -> Slack -> Email (later is fine)If you have an alternate ranking method it is up to you to let me know, otherwise I will apply my ranking to interactions with you and thus expect that when I come to you in-person or via a call, you will understand there is an urgency attached to it.
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I value speed, including proactive efforts that keep us moving quickly (e.g. writing tests, refactoring legacy code over and above new features, pairing on work to improve our code quality and minimize key person risk)
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I value learning and know that training up on a tech stack may not always be the fastest route to production.
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I value your time and don't want you to do any process that is neither beneficial to you nor required by law, policy, etc.
When not working from home, I am usually in the office between 9 am and 4 pm. I am often in the office earlier or later, but with some exceptions, these tend to be the hours you can count on finding me.
As for your schedule: do what works for you, but use good judgment. Our customers expect 24/7 support, so if you're a night owl, and you choose to work from 9 pm to 5 am, that might work with me. Same goes for if you're trying to avoid rush hour, need to drop off your kids at school or daycare, etc.
If you want to work sometimes from home, do so. If you're not productive when you work from home, or if you can't be available for video meetings when you work from home, come into the office. Regardless of whether the rest of the team is working from home or not, you can expect a normal day—schedule meetings, etc. as normal video-conferencing means people who work from home will be similarly available as if we were in the office. One caveat is one-on-ones: I prefer to do these in person if possible, so if you need to work from home on a day we're scheduled for a one-on-one and rescheduling is an option, please let me know, so I can reschedule it, or reschedule it yourself during an open slot in my calendar.
I will put some time on your calendar each week for one-on-ones. Chances are it will be for 30 minutes once a week. If you need more time, let me know, and I will adjust.
One-on-ones are your time. I will probably have some things to discuss with you, but these are your opportunities to let me know how you're doing, what you need, what you wish could be different, how you feel about our team and your teammates, what your career goals are... etc. These are for the conversations you might not necessarily have with me when we're sitting at our desks amongst coworkers. If you'd like to give me a brief status update on things you're working on, that is fine with me, but those are generally better suited to a quick chat while I'm at my desk or a Slack message.
I encourage you to write down some things you want to chat about ahead of time because they can be hard to think of or bring up at the moment. If you struggle with bringing them up, feel free to send me a vague agenda ahead of time. If you don't know what to talk about, say so. We can use that as a topic.
Have a look at these articles on one-on-ones. I think they are brilliant and I'm using most of the techniques mentioned tehre.
If you have thoughts on either, that might make a good topic to include in a one-on-one.
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I am big on using openness and vulnerability when building trust and empathy within the team. I encourage all my team members to watch Brené Brown's TEDxHouston talk (https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability). This is my favourite TED talk of all time.
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I am also a big believer in growth mindset popularised by Carol Dweck (https://www.amazon.com/Mindset-Psychology-Carol-S-Dweck/dp/0345472322). I value progress over perfection and attitude over experience.
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I am an introvert. I prefer listening to talking. I can be quiet when surrounded by many people and can easily be perceived as "boring" at social events unless I make a conscious effort to say something relevant and non-trivial. Even then, it's often too late and the conversation has moved on to a different topic :) Which brings my next quirk.
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Sometimes I tend to take time thinking before saying something which results in uncomfortably long pauses in our conversations. Same with writing. I feel like it's taking me way too much time to write this README :)
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I think of myself as humble, but sometimes I come across as pretentious. Please let me know if you notice this.
Finally, a big thank you to the wonderful leaders who publicly shared their own readmes which I used when composing this one. They have been a huge inspiration to me.