I’ve made some mistakes and gotten a few things right leading a team since spring of 2014. This talk will cover real anecdotes from my leadership experience—lessons often learned the hard way. You’ll get some ideas of how to keep a team motivated, how to deal with difficult conversations, and ultimately how to extract the very best from your development team.

1. 7 Leadership Lessons
My experience as a team lead
Andy Hurd

2. My Journey
● BYU Graduate - Computer Science
● Lucid Software
● Team Lead since Spring 2014

3. Lucid Software

4. 1. Ask people to do hard things

5. Ask people to do hard things

6. Ask people to do hard things
● Focus on automation
● Found team member interested
● Challenged to make it happen

7. Ask people to do hard things

8. Ask people to do hard things
● Interested in leadership
● Challenged to hand off selenium
● Now leads the second Press team

9. Ask people to do hard things

10. Ask people to do hard things
● Interested in deep system problems
● Interested in owning something
● Gave challenge to figure out what performance was doing

11. Ask people to do hard things
● Talked to analysts: tied $$$ to performance
● Came up with list of performance improvements
● We’re releasing a major overhaul of rendering in the next month
● Formed a new team to help get it done

12. Ask people to do hard things

13. 2. Know each team member

14. Know each team member

15. Know each team member
One-on-ones
● Set time each week
● Come prepared
● Have some prompts prepared
● Dig deeper
● Follow up

16. Know each team member
● What did you enjoy the most this week?
○ Selenium Testing
■ Learned he enjoyed selenium and had ideas to improve it
○ Backend Work
■ Learned he wanted more experience with system infrastructure

17. Know each team member
● What did you enjoy the least this week?
○ Presenting new features to the company
■ Prefers quiet recognition and less public positions

18. Know each team member
● Had a large directional meeting for product
● Used one-on-one to prime the discussion
● Very positive energetic discussion

19. 3. Protect the team

20. Protect the team
Use scrum!
● Preserve sprint scope where possible
● Keep the business the first priority

21. Protect the team
Moving from individual contributor
● Can’t do as much; it’s okay
● Take the time you need to keep everyone operating at maximum
● Change your expectations

22. Protect the team
It’s okay to say “no”

23. 4. Foster a culture of trying

24. Foster a culture of trying
Innovation requires failure;
make room for it!

25. Foster a culture of trying

26. Foster a culture of trying

27. Foster a culture of trying
#AndyScrewUpOfTheSprint

28. 5. Let the team be the heroes

29. Let the team be the heroes

30. Let the team be the heroes

31. Let the team be the heroes

32. Let the team be the heroes

33. Let the team be the heroes
Video

34. 6. Don’t be so serious

35. Don’t be so serious

36. Don’t be so serious

37. Don’t be so serious

38. 7. Be quick with hard
conversations

39. Be quick with hard conversations

40. Be quick with hard conversations
Early tough conversation had a huge impact on me

41. Bonus: Care about the individual