Top 8 Team Building Tips

Building an elite team is tough. It's way tougher than understanding technology and building products. My approach is extremely competitive and comes saddled with my obsessive love for tracking performance in order to win. Outside of being a startup CTO at CharterUP, my experience with team endurance karting has taught me a tremendous amount about how to be a good teammate in pursuing dominance over your competition. Talent alone is not enough. Team members must be highly engaged and energized to deliver their highest value proposition.

So here are my Top 8 - Tech Team Building Tips (unsolicited, highly-opinionated, tactically applicable)

1. Acknowledge the subjective nature of engineering and coding

Like any creative endeavor, there is no right answer. One million paths can lead to the same successful outcome. Assessing quality will always be skewed by personal preference and past experience. Don't pretend otherwise. Know yourself and your biases and don't let them cloud your judgement.

2. Embrace crude metrics for objective clarity

Counting lines of code is meaningless. Maybe. Maybe not. That one Reddit thread will sort it out eventually. In the meantime, someone is always watching and looking for trends of engagement and ways to pull contextual metrics from your output. Don't marginalize the objective value that exists in often dismissed metrics. Card counts, code commits, and huddle attendance tracking can paint a fairly clear picture of engagement and attitude.

3. Set expectations

Teammates can't always read your mind. Yes, it's pure synergy when they do and it should be that way all the time. But, this is the real world. Even the best teammates you will ever have will sometimes be out of sync with you. Take the time to clearly explain your vision, your intent, your goal, and your expected outcome. Ask questions. Allow questions. Challenge each other. Have a mandate to dissent. Then commit to the agreed upon execution strategy.

4. Be vulnerable

Coders are artists. Like any writer, musician, or painter, what we create is a reflection of who we are. Oftentimes, it's difficult to receive critical feedback or correction. Get over yourself. Your mom is not going to hang your code on the fridge for everyone to admire. Detach your sense of identity from your creation. Double down on becoming a better craftsman every day. 

5. Empathize but detach

It's ok to have feelings but becoming an elite teammate is not for the faint of heart. When you feel your blood boil or your heart sink, don't react. Crush those distractions with renewed commitment. Self-control is the most valuable soft skill. 

6. Be driven by others

Pay attention to your teammates. Understand their pace, their value and how you stack up. Break it down by specific skills. Where can you improve? What can you do to be better than them? How can you do more? How can you be greater?

7. Be frugal

Be the fiduciary for every resource spent on your product. Being a good steward means being real when assessing contributions. Team leads have a duty to motivate, reward, and task clearly. Team leads should also track everything and account for everything. Always have an intimate pulse on your team's output and each individual's engagement. 

8. Lean into the competitive side of being a developer

Work smarter. Also, work harder. Celebrating victories is crucial to team building. But, remember this. When you hoist that trophy, it casts a shadow directly onto your top competitors. Someone wants what you have: your job, your paycheck, your product, your accolades. Don't let them take it from you. Fight for your vision. Fight for your product. Fight for your teammates. Fight for your share of the market. Fight for your life.