Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about how lucky I had been to be working with my developer team for the last two years, first as a project manager then as a technical director and, incidentally, their manager.

And this morning I read this article on “Building Great Teams” by Jim Holmes. To summarize it quickly, he states that to be part of a great team, you have to focus on 3 points : Respect, Communication and Passion. And if we are the leader of that team, you have to “Do everything [he] just wrote about, but turn it up to 11 – and start with the respectful attitude with which you treat your team.”

As I agree with him on the part of being a member of the team, I think that he nailed it even better on the managing part of it.

Respect is indeed one of the most important thing you can have in any case and his example about jokes is a perfect one, because you have not only to not do some jokes, but also choose when to do it. When I had to criticize someone on something, I used to joke on it, to alleviate the gravity of it. I stopped doing that, because you never know how it will be understood. Now, I tend to speak about the problematic topic with the concerned person, ask about their opinion to see if it match mine and then seek with that person a way to solve that issue.

The only thing that I could add on the whole article could fit in the passion and communication topics. As you manager, you need to inspire the people who works for you. Show them new stuff, encourage them to try new things (with reason), and don’t blame them if it doesn’t work as well as expected. This will show them you trust them (very important), they will feel important (and they are) and this can motivate them in their work. They will know that if they suggest something unexpected that can solve an issue (technical, time, money) they will be thanked for it if it’s viable. And if it’s not, at least they had took part in it.