How can I help? Servant Leadership as a Software Development Manager
Understanding how my character and personality helped me to identify myself as a servant leader.
I am a servant leader. I have been for all of my 30-year career in IT but only very recently did I realise it. I enjoy helping people achieve something for themselves more than I enjoy achieving something myself. The fulfilment and satisfaction of helping and supporting people to achieve their aims, their objectives, their potential, is incredibly rewarding on a personal level.
Whenever I see someone in need, my first thought is “how can I help?”
Throughout my working life, I’ve applied this principle to my day to day job. As a developer, I used to go out of my way to help ensure everything worked as intended.
I never really understood or allowed myself to be constrained by department or management level fences/barriers. If I could see someone struggling, and if I could help (in any way possible), then I did. If I could see a process not working or not adding value to the delivery life cycle then I would get involved and try to change and improve it.
In fact, I didn’t understand why other people acted differently. I didn’t understand the “it’s not my problem/responsibility” mindset, surely its human nature to want to help if you can.
As I moved into management roles, I kept my “how can I help?” attitude, providing a positive and proactive team environment. Never saying I was too busy or that we, as a team, should not get involved. Always supporting every team member to the fullest. Removing obstacles, initiating discussions, bringing people together to plan new work or resolve current issues and generally helping my teams deliver.
Not delivering myself but doing everything I could to enable the team to do so.
Every day, the first thing I would do is look around the team and try to see if anyone was looking unhappy, angry or generally not positive about the day ahead. What could I do to try to help them enjoy their day rather than spend it feeling down and unhappy? Some people never really need more than a smile or an informal conversation about the day ahead. However, other people may need more time out of your day whilst you help them resolve a conflict or issue. But it’s spending that time helping them feel supported and happier that is so rewarding.
It’s finishing the day knowing that you’ve helped someone enjoy theirs and that they are going home feeling they’ve made a difference and really contributed to their team.
Catena Media
Returning to the UK after travelling for a year, I decided that I wanted to try living somewhere different — with a new challenging role for work too. Malta was top of the list due to the incredibly friendly people, the sunny weather and generally relaxed lifestyle.
From working within a corporate and highly structured environment in the UK, I was excited and intrigued by the types of roles I was finding in Malta. There were financial services, IT consultancy and even some ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) opportunities. But there were also several young dynamic companies that had grown from small start-ups to large global enterprises.
I’ve always been attracted to companies/departments with a real commitment to change while delivering business value, and these new companies believed and embraced these values completely. I applied for a couple of suitable roles and was invited for an interview with Catena Media as the Software Development Manager.
My role as the Software Development Manager completely follows the ideals of servant leader management. It is not just the creation of teams, providing the right tools and training and support network. It is how those teams evolve into highly skilled delivery functions. It is how the individuals request and encourage more and more responsibility for themselves across the entire delivery life cycle.
It’s about energising and helping individuals find their passion for work, their passion for working as part of a similarly minded team of colleagues and friends, their passion for delivering true business value, and finally, creating teams that really care and want to help.
The measure of my success will be how many of the software delivery team members think “how can I help?” whenever they see an issue or software requirement, or even if it’s someone needing help with an unrelated task.
Chapter Leads
We are just starting a new journey trying to utilize the chapter lead concept. We identify chapter leads as recognized experts within the company in QA, development (Front-End/Back-End, maybe at development language level), data and even Product Owners and management, potentially.
A chapter lead is a servant leader too — focusing on supporting, mentoring, being a champion for all employees within the same chapter, organising training and conferences for their chapter, and creating a true feeling of support throughout the chapter for all its members. Any problem is a shared problem, with a global team of experienced experts who want to help find a solution and really care about helping each other. They’re also a consultant for the rest of the company who have any requirements/questions relating to the chapter.
Sometimes teams can become partially isolated, and as Catena Media expands globally we have multiple sites internationally with their own software delivery teams all forming part of one global technical team.
How can we start breaking down perceived barriers? How can we generate communication in a more natural and caring/helpful way? Chapter leads could really help with bridging the knowledge and communication gaps across the global locations and even within local offices. They can start creating links between the teams, to break down boundaries even more.
Get people talking, communicating and helping each other
By using chapter leads we can start improving cross-department global communication. Sharing ideas, sharing functionality (QA Automation, development frameworks), and even creating opportunities for team members and managers to work in any global team so that the right people are available at the right time. Thus, truly becoming a global technical department, retaining localisation but enjoying the support of a growing international virtual team of caring and helpful experts and colleagues.
I will be posting a new article later in the year, discussing the successes and failures we encounter as we introduce chapter leads and continue to improve how we help and work with each other around the world.
It will also include my own personal successes and failures, as I attempt to continue managing through servant leadership.
Thank you for reading. This is my first ever article, so if you liked it (even a little) please give it a “round of applause”.
For more from Catena Media, have a look at the Product Team and Design articles.
http://product.catenamedia.com
http://design.catenamedia.com
