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DGDN » Articles » Miscellaneous » How to Lead your own Design Team
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» How to Lead your own Design Team
by Knight_B
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Introduction
I would like to start by presenting the four basic principles in being a leader:
Confidence - Even if the leader does not have the answer, he always has to appear as though he does
Approachability - Being caring and open for the members needs and desires
Honesty - To be open about the current situation and always tell the truth
Integrity - A leader has to treat each individual equal no matter his or her importance or skills
I have been in many teams and the above principles have always been possessed by the successful team leaders. Those who ignored them had a tendency of seeing their team either get teared apart by conflicts or even being disbanded. The one who wishes to lead a team also need to have great patience and negotiating skills. Cause I can guarantee that conflicts will evolve between the team members no matter what you do to prevent it.
Conflicts
The reasons for assembling into a team are many, but the one reason that is shared by teams and clans worldwide is the hope of achieving something great, something that one cannot do alone. This vision is individual and the most successful teams out there are those whose visions are closest related to each other. They do not have to spend time arguing and satisfying all the team members since they are all working towards the same goal, or at least it looks like that. However, a team consists of varying personalities and for a team to function, all these personalities have to be able to function together as one unit and it is the team leader?s responsibility to sort this. Another aspect is as I mentioned before, each members' individual vision about what the teams' goals are. In addition, what it is that motivates the member to work for the team? Some are greedy; others hope to get famous throughout the community. However, those who are driven by having fun and wanting to evolve the team; those are the best team members you can get. Once again, we come into the amount of abilities a team leader must possess. The ability to sort out the ?real? stuff from the crowd, is in my opinion the most valuable since it is in that process you will get the core of your team. Those who are ready to follow you to hell and back if needed. In addition, compromising is a large part of your job. You need to keep your members happy if you want them to stay in the team for a longer period. This means that you will have to make it look like everyone is right. In a volunteer team for example, there you cannot force anyone to work since if you complain about one person, he can just quit the team. Therefore, you have to handle your members with silken gloves but still with a touch of force. Here is where compromising appears. Compromising means that you might not get through everything you originally wanted, but compromising makes the members feel that they has a part of the power, which they of course have. However, one strategy you can use to gain most in compromising is to demand much more changes than you really want. Then compromise away the parts that you do not need/want to change. Therefore, you end up winning since they did not know what your goal was from the beginning.
Now let us assume that you have a decent team, consisting of let us say twenty-five members and two officers/moderators. Internal struggle and intrigues are what you can expect when you appoint officers. It is just the fact that power can corrupt, and the one who get's power often tends to desire more. In addition, to achieve that they will eventually criticise you to give themselves more power. Moreover, taking criticism is part of the job. However, one basic rule when giving and taking criticism is that you always handle it private and out of the members view. There is nothing that is so devastating to a team?s morale such as when its leaders are fighting in public. In addition, to keep your team together you want the morale to be as high as possible. There is no other good way to keep your officers happy than to treat them equally but still be able to make them feel special and be spare with praising them so that their egos do not grow too big. Also, be certain to appoint people who actually work as officers since then you will not have to involve yourself too much in their work. Most important of all is to avoid at all costs stepping over your officer?s territory if not absolutely necessary. If you do, you will hurt their egos, and you can expect a decrease in loyalty. No one likes when someone else comes into their room and starts dictating and commanding.
One basic guideline when giving orders is to never ask a member to do something you would not be able to do yourself. This is just a saying of course but I believe that you understand what I mean by it. Well, let us say that you have an open conflict between you and one of your officer?s. There is no way to escape from such a situation without either a drop in the morale or a weakening of your authority. The key is to solve this with a minimum of damage in both. In other words, compromising! You should avoid using rough force and exposing your real power unless it is unavoidable. Showing the real power you possess will make the members feel powerless, which in itself is dangerous due to the fact that you have used your last weapon, and at the same time increased the risk for similar incidents in the future. Depending on the situation?s seriousness you have to decide with which method you should solve the problem. If it is the first time the officer is complaining and his complaint is in order and he of course contacts you in private, not showing off in public, you can solve it by compromising. Simply make it look that you are both right and promise that you will correct the fault as soon as possible. Of course, you let a few days pass before you correct the problem, since you cannot let him believe that he can command you around. That rule is only if the situation does not require immediate resolving. Also if the officer went public with his complaints, he should be either be removed from his position of power or sacked off the team since then he broke a basic principle, which is unforgivable. In addition, that should be done with the usual silken gloves but with a touch of elegant brutality. If the officer has been complaining a lot, and you have resolved the situation using the mentioned method for slighter matters, you should then deny his request/complaint and in a civilized manner with a touch of understanding, declare that you are the leader of the team and that he should focus on his own duties instead of complaining. Make it look that no one except him are of that opinion and that his complaint is of egoistic character. That will make him feel uncomfortable and guilty, which eventually will force him to retake his complaint. Never force him to apologize though, since then you will crush his dignity and that is no good for the overall morale.
The worst possible conflict that can happen is when several of your officers? revolt and that with the members support. This should of course never happen if you rule wise, but certain situations might cause such things to happen. Well, you are now basically back at step one, since now you have little or no support behind your rule, and in order to keep the team together you will has to regain their trust and loyalty. However, to solve the immediate situation you have to sacrifice your honour and dignity. Basically agree to all their demands, without you being removed out of your position of power of course. This is the absolutely last action you can do with your power in possession. Well, the real last action is of course giving up your power and resigning. This of course is not desirable for any leader of any kind. Without power you, as a leader, are nothing. Well, let us not get depressed over that since a good leader should never have to deal with a such situation. Before moving on, I have to say the following. There are two types of leaders in a such situation. The first type will do as mentioned above, but by doing that you risk to lose the power anyhow since then your team feels that anytime they do not like your decision, they will just revolt and you have to stand back and meet their demands. Basically, you become a doll, but that is the risk you has to take if you want to have a team left to rule over. The second type is the one who would never admit that he is wrong and rather sink along with the ship than compromise. I must say I admire the second type due to their refusal to abandon their principles, but if that type makes a clever decision regarding his team or not I leave for you to decide.
Duties & Responsibilities
As the team leader, your main concern is to oversee everything and in some cases the team leader are the webmaster of the team site. Being both team leader and webmaster is of course not necessary but some leaders prefers to be that since then they can quickly announce news and they are in full control of the team?s main communication platform. A leader must also be supportive for the team members. A good basic thing, not necessary though. Is that the team leader has at least basic knowledge in all of the team?s areas. That improves the overseeing capability since then the leader at least have a bit of understanding in what the team are working on at the moment. Overseeing does not mean being an ?overprotective? mom who steps in as soon as someone encounters problems, and then the leader steps in and tries to be nice and help. That is not good for the team spirit. If you notice that someone has a problem, keep an extra eye on that person. However, never offer to help, wait for the person itself to come to ask for help. If you step in without their request, you make them feel like idiots. Although you have to remember this, having problems and being incapable of doing their work is not the same thing. You are having a problem when you work and unexpected things fail and such incidents, but the final product is never affected. You are incapable of doing your work if the problems you encounter give consequences on the final product. If a member has the earlier problems, you got no problems since it is natural to have problems but as long as he/she solves them there will be no problems. However, in the later case, you have a problem and you have to take in consideration if that member can be allowed to stay on the team, this is of course if you are aware on that there is no special circumstance that affects his work now. Yes, a team is a family, but a team has the luxury of being able to ?cut? away people who are not good for the team. Someone who is not contributing to the team is not good for the team. It is not easy being a team leader since you has to make the critical decisions, such as sacking people. The fact that you have the power to sack people automatically distances you from the rest of the team. Since they know that one day, you might sack one of them. This makes the leader a bit lonely at the top since you are the one to flame if the team goes bad and the rest of the team are distant to you since you has the power to remove them. It is here your officers come in. They exist to support you and to help monitor the team. However, they are also a bit distant to you since if they make you angry, you can remove them from their position of power. Once again, we have reached the point where you see both the good and bad sides of the coin. It is a privilege to be a leader, but with power come great responsibilities that in some cases are heavy to carry. However, unless you were forced during the threat of a gun to become a leader, you got nothing to complain about. It is all about to work trough the though times and enjoy the golden days.
Notes & Comments
Well I am happy that you have read my article and I hope that you have learned something from it. I have wanted to make an article about this subject for a very long time. Now you think, ?Hey, you are a news-poster for DGDN, what do you know about leadership and conflicts??. Well DGDN is not the only team/clan I have been part of. Once upon the time I even were co leader in Armageddon Creations who designed for Age of Kings. I have also been officer in some other gaming clans mostly. Due to this, I believe that I have a rather good knowledge in the subject ?Leadership & Conflicts?. In addition, this article is supposed to be a guideline, it does not cover all the aspects of leadership neither all aspects of conflicts. This is just a summary of my experiences in the past, which I hope can be helpful for both new team leaders and experienced ones. I greatly appreciate if you comment and criticise my work. In addition, I am already considering writing a sequel to this article. What it will focus on, is not decided yet.
Well that is all for this time. I want to thank you once again for taking your time to read this article. Also feel free to comment and critisise the article.
Added: Nov-22-2003
Views: 3112
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