Key Takeaways: 8. Episode – Heidi Helfand

Passionate teams are motivated

Yeah, a passionate team to me is a team that's comprised of people that are motivated. They're very interested, intrigued and driven to do the work of the team. There's something about it that they feel like they're making an impact and they know it, and so they strive to come up with unique solutions to achieve the goals that they have from their customers.

Team chemistry by giving choice

You know, I think that if people have the freedom to choose their teams, maybe there's a greater chance that the teams will have chemistry, which the people will want to work together. Maybe the people choose to work together. I think giving a choice in a team, is something that, it's almost like risk management for team chemistry, If people have a choice.

Sometimes people need to work with others

Forming, storming, norming, performing and you know, sometimes I think, yeah, if a team is together too long, they could feel like they're stagnating. Maybe there's not enough diversity of thought […]. You could try to change it up and bring in different work or start a book club or something, but sometimes people just need to work with others.

Change is also a personal choice

So it's a business decision how the rate at which you grow, it's kind of like stepping on a gas pedal fast or slow. But then it's also a personal choice, I think. Just like our opinions about change in general, I might be a person that wants more change, or maybe I might be a person that prefers more stability and less change, and I think that's valid.

It's valid to not change your team

And it's valid not to change it. So I'm not saying bust up all your teams, I'm not saying dynamically change all your teams as fast as you can, what I am saying is that reteaming the ability to change is an option that I think is left out of many of the discussions in software development best practices. It should be on the table for many reasons that are valid and then sometimes invalid. Team change is gonna happen, so you might as well get good at it.

Tap into the interests and needs of the people

Yeah, I would say really try to tap into the, get to know people. Tap into their interests. What motivates them? We're motivated by different things. You know, have one on ones. Talk in groups. Be open to enabling people to grow maybe into a different role or into a different squad, into a different team or to working on something else like really try to tap into the interests and needs of the people and really support them to help them into the directions that they want, and it's the sweet spot when you find the direction that the person wants to go when it's in step with the direction the company wants to go. So I think through having close relationships, we can make this happen.

About Heidi:

http://www.heidihelfand.com/about/