At the beginning

The development team of a recent client I worked with consisted of 9 developers, initially without much structure. To increase focus, it was decided to split the team into 3 squads of 3 developers each, each with its own tasks to focus on. Each squad needed a squad lead, and I was asked to be one.

What is expected of a squad lead? Here is what the internal documentation read:

• Every 2 weeks have 30 mins, 1-1, with each other in the squad.
• Responsible for squad delivery of work
• Creating space for technical discussion
• Ensure transparency and accuracy of issues (i.e. help squad keep Jira updated)
• Look forward to the next roadmap items to plan and prepare accordingly
• Act as the voice of the squad in larger discussions
• Not a gatekeeper but an enabler

As a senior engineer, I feel pretty comfortable about most of these responsibilities. Still, I started feeling pretty stressed out and anxious about taking up this new role. I want to share some insights I gained that helped me get over the stress and anxiety.

Identify what you want out of 1-1s

I'm not at ease, mainly when it comes to interacting with other people. More specifically, holding the 1-1 has scared me. I'm not the most talkative person and see myself as an introvert. How would I survive 30 minutes of leading a conversation with someone else?

I spent some time reading up on 1-1s. Even though I read a lot of great resources, I still felt very unprepared for them and had no idea how I should do them. I now had a couple of hundred questions I could ask and no idea which ones to pick.

Then it clicked. It turns out that a heuristic I use while developing also applies to leading 1-1s for me. If you don't know how to do something, figure out why you do it and how you will follow from that. I understood that as long as I didn't know what I wanted to get out of 1-1s, I would never be able to lead them properly. Once I found that out, things became clear in my head, and a big mental burden was removed from my shoulders.

Focus on creating a decision-making environment rather than making decisions yourself

The name of the role says it all. Squad lead. Squad LEAD. I should lead. Leading comes with an implied idea that you should make decisions. I'm not the biggest decision-maker. I doubt basically everything I do, even the things I'm supposed to be good at, such as developing software. I'm not a big decision maker in real life, so I thought I won't be able to be a good one in my professional life either.

Then it clicked. I shouldn't be the one to make all the decisions. I should be the one that creates the environment in which decisions can be made. I should be the one who makes sure everyone gets their say in the decisions we make. I should be the one who makes sure everyone in the squad feels safe enough to voice their opinion. Instead of making big decisions, I should focus on making small changes that create an environment that allows people to make big decisions.

Make time to look back very often

I'm someone who takes things as they come. I'm usually the last person to know something is going on. I tend to accept situations as they are and adapt myself to them. I easily forget the usual day-to-day things that happen. The only thing that stays in my brain is some kind of general feeling without any concrete situations to back up that feeling. Being a squad leader means somewhat the opposite. I should detect issues before they become a problem and take a look at the current situation with a critical eye. I should be able to look back at a certain period and be able to form a funded opinion on it. Again, my real-life character doesn't really seem to fit with what is expected of me professionally.

Then it clicked. If the insights don't come looking for me, I should go looking for the insights. Instead of hoping that I would suddenly start remembering things that happen throughout a longer period, I should actively keep track of them on a daily basis. Instead of looking back at a period of several weeks, I should shorten that period to something like a day. Or, more generally, split up the larger problem into many smaller problems (I knew that developer background would come in handy at some point!). My goldfish memory should still be able to remember the most important events and impressions from the past day. I should not only think about the past day but also take notes. My hope is that by doing this, after several weeks, I should just be looking back at my notes and drawing conclusions from them.

Conclusion (and 1 free extra insight)

Most of the anxiety I have comes from seeing people do things that don't come naturally to me. For some people, it just comes naturally to lead conversations or come up with feedback about a person. Why should I even bother when there are so many people for who the ability to lead comes naturally?

Then it clicked. It's not because some things don't come naturally to me that I can't be good at them. I may need some extra tricks or some extra practice, but in the end, it's the result that counts, not necessarily how that result was achieved.