How to be a star in your team?
Self-care, asynchronous work and relationships
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You can be a star performer by taking care of yourselves, optimizing how you spend your time and building relationships.
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Being part of a great team is a wonderful experience. Apparently, you are the average of the five people whom you spend the most time with. If that is the case, being part of a great team is a big deal. Now what can you do to be a great team member? The same qualities that make you a great team member can make you promotable, get more visibility and recognition and other good things.
Now, I am assuming that you are in a role that you love and in a company that aligns with your values. If not, explore your options and make it happen.
Self care
First things first, manage your physical and mental health. Get your necessary dose of physical(3 hours a week) and mental(meditation, prayer, therapy etc.) exercise. Get enough sleep. Find time for friends and family. Barack Obama, in his letter to successor, alluded to importance of friends and family to help us through rough patches.
Ownership
The most important quality in an employee is their ability to get things done. Take ownership. If you can take ownership of your task, that will free up a lot of company’s planning resources. Understand your task, pay attention to why it is important to your team and to your company. Iterate, get feedback and refine. One of my previous manager used to call the first version a straw-man. Having a straw-man allows you to collect actionable feedback. And deliver a high quality work product.
Company first
When you do a task, you should optimize it for your company first, then for you team and then for personal ambition. There is a saying that every company ships their organization structure. It is because teams prioritize their part of the company’s product as opposed to the company’s product itself. Recently, in a conference, one of the speakers was talking about how some of the projects are technically complex(Machine Learning) since that is what the team members wanted to work on. That is a manifestation of optimizing for personal ambition. If you want to hone a skill, do a side project. No need to drag the latest technological fad into your company’s project.
Good documentation and meetings
Write good documentation and run good meetings. These are the two things that you can do to mint time. Documentation will save you a ton of meetings. Amazon had a 6 page document requirement for any new idea. Having things written out and design drawn out will make discussions more targeted and relevant. And you have something that is reusable which keeps on getting better(and hopefully not too long) with each discussion. This is relevant to explore a new idea, suggest a change in process, collaborate on client communication and any other scenarios.
I used to say that I hate meetings. What I mean is that I hate a bad meeting. You already know what a bad meeting looks like. It could have been an email! Knowledge workers spend a lot of time in meetings. It makes a lot of sense to try and run them well. I will leave you with three things. Have an agenda, share the agenda along with pre-read materials before the meeting, and share minutes with action items after the meeting.
Be curious
Be curious and ask questions. I like to think that ‘there is no bad question’ is true in the corporate world. In addition to you learning something new, it also gives the person answering your question another opportunity to drive their points home.
Meet people across the company
Meet non-team members periodically. This is more important in a remote/hybrid work setup. Since there is no more water cooler conversations in a remote session, make conscious effort to meet with colleagues outside your team. You can always start with a team that your team works with or is dependent upon. Talk about work but also just have a conversation. Ask them about their favourite colour.
Meet your manager weekly. Happy manager, happy career - or so the saying goes. Understand your manager’s goals and help them achieve those goals. Be proactive in offering help.
Meet your manager’s manager periodically - say once in a quarter. Your manager’s boss will appreciate your initiative, and you can learn a thing or two. Again, talk about work but also get to know their favourite colour.
Be egoless and fearless
Katie Haun, during her appearance in the Tim Ferris show, talked about a good manager, Will, that she had. According to Katie, Will was egoless and fearless1. He did the right thing, in the point of time, without worrying about his next job. I believe that is a good work philosophy for all of us. Be egoless about our work to welcome feedback so that we can deliver high quality work. And be fearless about standing up for the things that matter. After all, every software product is excel with opinions.
Good luck to be a star in your team.
I love everyday heroes like this.