When we are talking about the role of Teach Leader, we think it is a position that serves as a technical reference for a software development team. That's true, but it is the most straight learning skill for the role. As a Teach Leader, you must have three tasks in mind: Advocate, Facilitate, Motivate.
Being a Tech Leader is being a team and culture builder over a technical reference.
In this post, we will discuss productivity happiness and how engaged teams drive better outcomes.
Team culture
The outcomes of every team are highly connected to the team culture. The team culture is a set of behaviors. Behaviors are what you do, and culture is the sum of the group's behaviors.
The behavior of a team is the reflection of the behavior of the leader.
That does not mean that the leader imposes rules about how to act inside the team. What really means is that a leader's mission is to align the team behavior with the principles to deliver high-quality outcomes.
Every person contributes to a set of behaviors that could be positive for the team culture. Leaders must recognize the set of good behavior patterns that the team is building and remove those that could produce a faulty relationship.
Building a team culture
As a leader, having a team culture where each member feels comfortable is the most difficult task because we lead with persons. Each member has different emotions that conduct them to act differently, based on the levels of trust they have within the group.
Building a team culture is an interactive process; there is no guide about developing that connection between humans. Each team is different and has different missions. Before creating a team culture, you need to identify each team member's motivation and then ask yourself what culture you want for this group of people you are leading.
At the end of the day, our goal is to build a healthy team culture. If a team has a healthy social relationship, a purpose, and promotes trust and communication, the team members will be engaged.
"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do". Steve Jobs
Engagement
We can define that engagement is the result of having teams with a strong sense of purpose. We can say that purpose is the feeling of being part of the same mission, and it is what motivates us to make our best effort to grow as a team and as professionals.
When team members are engaged, we will have high enthusiasm, energy, and motivation, translating into higher performance, creativity, and productivity.
Team culture + engagement = productivity happiness
Productivity happiness
Our productivity and happiness levels result from the team culture and engagement that every team member perceives inside the group.
Leaders often will perceive low productivity and happiness due to a lack of motivation, but that's not really true. I like to say that motivation is the result of engagement. Motivation drives a single person to achieve results, and engagement drives us as team members to achieve better outcomes.
We must focus on promoting high engagement levels because it is the glue that keeps a team strong and with high levels of innovation. Also, it produces side effects like friendship loyalty, that means:
We are motivated to work because we don't want to let down our friends.
Productivity happiness in the software industry
In the software industry, we can say that we have achieved a good productivity level when the members start thinking about delivering better user experiences. As a result, we start to see some behaviors aligning the end goals with better code quality.
If you want to learn more about workplace happiness, I recommend the course Boost Productivity Through Employee Happiness by Kylie Hunt (Workplace Happiness Advocate).
Photo by You X Ventures on Unsplash
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