Standing Up For Your Team

I’ve been coached on my “messaging” more than once. Usually right after I told a teammate the truth about something leadership wanted to keep quiet.

Here’s one that stuck with me. In one organization, leadership decided to change the product’s direction. The work my team had been grinding on for months wasn’t going to survive it. We couldn’t finish it fast enough to fit the new plan, so it was getting scrapped. The decision had effectively been made upstairs, but nobody wanted to say it to the people still putting in late nights on code that was already dead.

I was told to sit on it. Keep the team moving, don’t rock the boat, let it come out when it comes out. They’ll call that controlling the narrative. To me it’s a lie by omission, and frankly it’s a joke. So I told my team. Not the polished version, the real one: this is changing, here’s why, and the thing you’ve been pouring yourself into is probably going away.

I got feedback about that. There’s a way to disagree, to pick your moment, to deliver hard news like an adult, and I’ve gotten better at that over the years. But whether I protect the people who report to me was never up for negotiation.

Trust is the only thing on a team that actually compounds. Spin your people once and they stop believing you, including the good news. Then you’ve got a team that nods along in meetings and quietly starts looking for the door.

I’d rather be the person who told them the truth and took the heat for it.

If you lead people: when leadership and your team pull in opposite directions, who do you actually stand behind? Your team already knows the answer, whether you’ve said it out loud or not.

#Leadership #TechLeadership #EngineeringCulture