At ITMO, Margarita Kudrinskaya is a lecturer in courses on effective team management and communication in teams, as well as the head of project workshops at the Faculty of Technological Management and Innovations, where she also teaches the subject From an Idea to an MVP. Currently, she mentors around 90 student project teams.
Contents:
- What makes a great team
- The role of a team lead
- Building trust
- Team values
- Top three tips for team leaders
What makes a great team
It’s not enough to just want to make a dream team. A team is built on the common goal, on the motivation and personal goals of each person, and common values. If you have a leader who is ready to take on the responsibility and be empathetic towards the team members, if you have a group of people who come together to work on something and are willing to make compromises despite the difficulties in their path, then you can build a strong team. And that’s a conscious effort.
The role of a team lead
Importantly, every team needs a leader. Even in peer-to-peer teams, there is someone who will represent the team with project stakeholders and make sure everyone knows what they are responsible for. Leaders have to be ready to discuss this role with their team and take on the responsibility it entails. Building trust and making sure the personal and common values within the team are attended to are also among the leader’s responsibilities.
Building trust
There are several exercises you can start with to start building trust.
Getting to know each other
First, team members need to get to know each other. This can be done at the first meeting with an exercise. Each team member lists:
how they can be useful to the team – strictly related to the work at hand and maybe some other qualities or skills;
their hobbies and interests;
an unusual fact or an achievement.
Ice-breaking at every meeting
During subsequent team meetings, before jumping into work, it can be good to start with some ice-breaking. Ask the team if they’ve tried something new this week or if they had an interesting experience. This helps take off the pressure and separate team members from their functional roles in the team, paying attention to everyone’s personality, and thus adding to trust.
Retrospective sessions
Once the project has ended, it can be good to do a little retrospective of what went well and what could be done differently so that everyone can reflect on this experience, own it, and grow in their next project. This retrospective session can be separated into two parts:
- one for specific, project-related tasks or aspects,
- one focusing on people, where each member of the team shares what they learned from the project, what they can praise themselves for, and what they can thank their teammates for.
“This last personal part is particularly important because it is a dedicated time for the team to actually thank each other. Sometimes, we may find it hard to praise ourselves and it can be very healing to hear others talk about how we helped them and what they found valuable in our work. Depending on the team, it can be good to suggest writing each other personal thank-you notes and cards, as a physical memento from the project that we so rarely get to have in our very digital world,” says Margarita Kudrinskaya.
A similar retrospective can be held once or twice over the course of the project before the final one to allow the team to reflect on the ups and downs of the previous period and to set goals for the upcoming weeks or months.
Team values
One interesting way to let team members share their values is to suggest that they write a “manual” to themselves during the introductory meeting. It could be a list of “the tasks I am good at,” “the tasks I don’t want to be assigned,” and “my values.” This gives the team leader valuable information – not only about how to allocate tasks, but also how to motivate each team member or help them act on their value.
“For example, one of the teams I mentored had a member who listed ‘learning new things (English)’ as her value and this was a Russian-language project. This person was assigned the task to conduct research for the project, and I advised the leader to expand the task to include English-language sources. At the final retrospective session, she noted how valuable this task was to her; in moments of low motivation over the four months of the project, she drew inspiration from this experience of having learned something new, and this truly helped her complete the project. This shows us how important it is to work with values,” explains Margarita Kudrinskaya.
And if we are talking about common team values or, for instance, ITMO’s values, and how to incorporate them into team work, the team leader needs to really believe in them. If you share a value, it will be seen in everything that you do and in the way you interact with your team members.
For instance, you can remind your team about the deadlines by simply saying “Dear team, please remember the deadline and submit your tasks to me timely.” Or you can say “Dear team, it’s great that we’ve reached this final stage of our project; it’s very tough, but it’s wonderful that we can implement such a cool idea at ITMO. Let’s make this final push and submit our tasks in time.” The latter option punctuates the importance of the project not just to the leader, but to the university’s common goal. Importantly, this has to be a consistent pattern – and not just a call to the “higher authority” out of the blue.
Top three tips for team leaders
- Remember that being a team leader comes with its responsibilities.
As a leader, you will have to represent your team and handle difficult situations. You will also be working with real people who have their own problems, wishes, and goals. Therefore, you will need to be able to adapt to your team’s varied communication styles and navigate different and difficult team interaction scenarios. This is something to consider before taking on the leading position.
- You have to learn to delegate.
It’s often the case that team leads aren’t ready to let something out of their control and try to do everything themselves, eventually burning out. Delegating is about trusting the people you’ve put on your team and allowing them to show their professionalism. It’s an opportunity to grow both for the team lead and every team member.
- Maintain your connections, even after the project ends.
Some projects are shorter and some are longer and the team may never come together to work on the same project again, but this doesn’t mean that we need to cut all ties once the work is done. We can stay friendly and maybe even meet years after the project. That’s why it’s important to build your interactions in the team in such a way that you’ll be glad to run into each other in the future.
