When leading a team, I always make sure to implement a project management tool, my favorite being Asana. I see accountability, streamlining communications, and the ability to work asynchronously as crucial building blocks to any great team these days. The buy-in component was difficult to overcome, but through meeting with members of my team and demonstrating how this tool will help them, I was able to achieve their endorsement. I found that certain colleagues had more proclivity to use the product if they used some sort of organization system in the past. We also started to implement daily standups/scrums to quickly go over Asana which provided better direction and understanding on what was missing and needed, to move forward.

—consider getting rid of or changing that second to last sentence. maybe change to an example of how you convinced someone who didnt ever use one of these or had bad experiences using planner ;)

As a second building block, I aimed to establish personal relationships with each of my team members. I would schedule 1-on-1 time away from the office, usually a local coffee shop, in order to make them feel more comfortable and open to sharing anything. One meeting was to understand the past; the motivations, the background, how they came to work at the agency. The next meeting in the 1-on-1 was to discover with their current workload, how things are going, how they could be better; and how I could support this effort. The final meeting was figuring out what they truly wanted to do; whether it was at the agency or not. This component I had found extremely important because it helped me discover the ‘why’ with those that I managed and how I could potentially help facilitate. I would create a framework for each person my team, and help guide them to achieving success.

The last building block was more so focused around myself. There have been times where I got so engrossed managing the project management that I didn’t take time to truly understand the projects more. Other times, I’ve had the exact opposite problem. I would be so deep in the ‘nitty gritty’ that I failed to zoom out, look at the big picture and prevent me and my team from getting blindsided by scope creep and rigid deadlines. I found, there needs to be a balance and understanding of what I’m good at and areas I could have team members better complement me. I’m always aware and thinking how I can better service them, so we can all achieve success.

I look to lead my teams with compassion, with empathy, and with understanding our ‘Why’. Without my pods fully buying in, we will cap our upside. But if we do, we are completely unstoppable.