
Ask HN: What traits you need to be a team leader? - dillmac
Suggestion, blog or book?
======
SirLJ
1\. You have to have your people's back, this is the most important thing...
be there for them 24/7, insulate them from problems and management stupidity
and always fight for them.

2\. lead by example, never ask them to do something you won't do yourself.

3\. Communicate, I have booked on afternoon a week from 14:00pm till 16:00 and
more to just talk with my team and discuss everything from work, to weather,
sports, to bitch and moan against the company, etc...

4\. Get together as much as you can on a real "team building exercise" \- the
whole team in another city for at least 2 days with a great party and lots of
eating and drinking on company dime...

~~~
borplk
> 4\. Get together as much as you can on a real "team building exercise" \-
> the whole team in another city for at least 2 days with a great party and
> lots of eating and drinking on company dime...

I deeply despise this trend.

~~~
muzani
I find that a lot of really bad leaders do this a lot for some reason. The
best organizations are often targeting something epic, which builds
camaraderie in itself.

~~~
borplk
Yeah. If you have to be beer buddies with people you work with you don't
understand what professionalism is.

~~~
SirLJ
This is not about beer buddies after work, this is about getting together once
or twice a year to get to know each other a bit more...

I am going to answer here the person who deleted the long message yesterday
saying saying he/she rather play PlayStation alone and so forth (hopefully
he/she will read this)

If one of my employees is having panic attacks thinking about the yearly team
building diner and drinks, then we are having a big problem...

We need to sit down talk about it and find a solution, professional help,
whatever it takes to go over this, because it is juts not healthy!

Not to mention on how this person will react in a real stressful situation,
let's say the part of the network is down, systems affected, the company is
loosing money on SLAs, big debugging call in the middle of the night - this
kind of real pressure will for sure either damage a fragile person or at least
case a burn out...

Mental health is no joke and have to be taken very seriously...

~~~
nicholas73
You sound like you know how to work with others. How do you like life as a
(solo?) trader then?

~~~
SirLJ
I still work a "full time" job, just because I love my job and the team I
lead, so every year I am postponing my early retirement to the delight of my
bosses...

I work from home (my team is spread across the country), but I talk to them
almost daily, so frankly I am not sure what I would do when I retire for real.
The trading is fully automated, so I would get bored pretty fast I guess...

For now the plan (written in sand in a low tide) with my wife is to give it a
go maybe after the kids are out of the house (hopefully in a few years) and
travel for a while...

It was a bit of a long winded answer, but as you can see I have no idea yet
:-)

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gvajravelu
1\. Great communication skills: Both for communicating with the people who
report to you and for the people you report to 2\. Understanding the
business's goals: This will help you prioritize projects in a way that helps
the business the most 3\. Managing office politics: Your direct reports may be
gunning for each other's jobs or your own. You need to get everyone to work as
a team instead of working as individuals. Improving your emotional
intelligence can help here. 4\. Knowing where to get help managing when you
need it. Often talking to your boss or a former boss is a great way to go.

You might find this article I wrote helpful:
[https://www.climbuptheladder.com/how-to-be-a-great-
manager/](https://www.climbuptheladder.com/how-to-be-a-great-manager/).

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muzani
1\. Figure out the right thing to do. Be brutally honest to yourself as the
biggest source of falsehood is what you want to believe.

2\. Do the right thing.

3\. Do it fast.

Great books on this: Ben Horowitz's "The Hard Thing About Hard Things", Andy
Grove's "Only The Paranoid Survive", Jocko Wilink & Leif Babin's "Extreme
Ownership".

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cottonseed
Camille Fournier's The Manager's Path:
[http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920056843.do](http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920056843.do)

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andrei_says_
There are people, who:

\- when they are in the room, others pay attention to them and wait for their
opinion

\- when they start speaking, everyone listens

\- when they decide they want to go or do something, the rest follow

Be that person.

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dmfdmf
[https://theamericanscholar.org/solitude-and-
leadership/](https://theamericanscholar.org/solitude-and-leadership/)

~~~
Spooky23
Thank you. This is great.

