SILENZ TEAM LICENSE

Keep an eye on the dynamics of your team. This happens quite a bit on teams and even the quiet ones eventually voice their concerns in their own way and time. It hasn’t mattered that the team members were quiet or loud. Team members not voicing concerns which leads to important product functionality missing and team members voicing concerns very often which leads to analysis paralysis and progress being impeded. When it comes to teams and voicing concerns and raising issues during product development, I have seen both ends of the spectrum.

That’s where your more experienced engineers and your managers come into play to help the newer engineers navigate their career and build communication skills. Have you ever had teeth pulled that were not ready to come out? Exactly. And you can forget about it being easy for them to do so if they are more introverted than other members of your team.

New engineers that are just getting into the industry will either not know what issues to raise or will not feel comfortable in raising their issues and concerns. Or at least they should have if they have had good examples and mentors early on in their careers. They have learned to recognize the gaps and problems areas in development and bring their concerns to the team. It may not show itself immediately, but over time it will become apparent.Ī lot of senior engineers and managers have gone through different levels and worked on different sets of problems already. One area where it may become an issue is voicing concerns and raising issues during product development. It puts them into the fire in the beginning of their careers where they have to learn, and they have to figure most things out for themselves.

Some teams are built with younger, less experienced engineers. The inexperienced engineers can bring those new, fresh ways of looking at things, but they can also learn and grow in their career. Some teams are built with more experience at the top and then younger, less-experienced engineers are brought into the team so that the experienced engineers can teach the inexperienced engineers. What is the composition of your team? Do you have a young, lively team? Engineers that are just getting into the field? Do you have a more mature, more experienced team? Team dynamics is all about how your team functions and feeds off of the composition of your team. The process is messy, iterative, and non-linear, and there may be some pivots along the way.How team dynamics can help or hurt a teamĮver wonder why your team operates the way it does? It is one part culture, one part composition and two parts team dynamics. ‍ħ) Remember this pattern: A team often becomes lost and temporarily fails before it finds its way and eventually succeeds. Normalize the behavior by asking the members of your team to challenge specific things and discuss ideas on merit. ‍Ħ) Don’t make it emotionally expensive to challenge the status quo. Remember that a negative response to bad news or new ideas will re-silence the team and seal your fate as a hapless leader.

SILENZ TEAM LICENSE

‍ĥ) Give every member of your team a license to disagree and assign them to use it. If you jealously guard your own ideas, they will do the same thing. Sometimes they will see something you can’t. ‍Ĥ) Sometimes you will see something they can’t. Don’t hide behind title, position, or authority to justify or muscle a decision. ‍ģ) Never, never, never let hierarchy outrank truth. At all costs, protect the team’s right to speak up. ‍Ģ) Remember, you are a cultural architect. Make the terms of engagement impossible to misunderstand. What are the rules, norms, and expectations? This is not a place to help your team thrive on ambiguity. Here are seven specific suggestions:ġ) Remember that all teams naturally feel for their limits. Respect each member of the team, give them a voice, and re-invite them to participate. So how do you reboot a silent team?Īnswer: create an environment of rewarded vulnerability (psychological safety). They shut down because they have been marginalized. Silent teams disengage because they have no voice. Going silent is a normal response to being rejected, humiliated, or punished in some way. Have you ever spent a day with a silent team? If so, you probably know that unnatural silence is usually one of the first indications that a team has been neutralized by fear.

Silenz team