I'm sure you will get plenty of good advice.
My own (limited) experience is that your job is going from a "Individual Contributor" to a "Team Lead". This requires a pretty drastic change in thinking and is not something to overlook, or else things will not end up well. This means that there is going to be a lot of work - much more than you can do by yourself - that's why you have a team to support you. The primary thing I struggled with in the past was delegation. Learning to trust (but verify) your team to complete tasks the way they should be done. I think a lot of people struggle with this and is a primary reason for not doing well in a new role.
Some other quick things that come to mind are:
- Don't be a gatekeeper of information. If you learn something that would be a benefit to the team, make sure they know it and don't have to go through you to get it. That is - get the team involved.
- Do take a Crucial Conversations course. You will inevitably have to deal with conflict within the team and knowing how to approach the situation will help significantly.
- Do have 1-on-1's with your team on a regular basis. You determine how often, but it should be regular and should be a priority for both of you. This is where you will learn about conflicts within the team, about their career path and aspirations, about personal issues that they are dealing with, and will help build trust between the two of you.
Good luck! It's a fun role and comes with it's own challenges, but can be very rewarding!
> The primary thing I struggled with in the past was delegation. Learning to trust (but verify) your team to complete tasks the way they should be done.
I would like to add that the above is only possible if you "plan" the work. If you have expectations of how a certain task should be accomplished then you should be able to define the task on a detailed enough level so that you "can" delegate it and that the team member working on it actually has the ability to complete the task according to your expectations.
There is nothing worse for a team member to be given some vague idea of what should be done to then afterwards having a big discussion on the expectations, i.e. how to be a mind reader.
Some other quick things that come to mind are: - Don't be a gatekeeper of information. If you learn something that would be a benefit to the team, make sure they know it and don't have to go through you to get it. That is - get the team involved.
- Do take a Crucial Conversations course. You will inevitably have to deal with conflict within the team and knowing how to approach the situation will help significantly.
- Do have 1-on-1's with your team on a regular basis. You determine how often, but it should be regular and should be a priority for both of you. This is where you will learn about conflicts within the team, about their career path and aspirations, about personal issues that they are dealing with, and will help build trust between the two of you.
Good luck! It's a fun role and comes with it's own challenges, but can be very rewarding!