Let’s skip past all the talk around holacracy and other unconventional models for a minute and assume you’re like most companies. You’re scaling and your once team of 10 is starting to grow beyond the point where having everybody under a single point of leadership is starting to become unsustainable. You need to introduce a new middle layer of management — you need to start appointing Team Leads. Dun dun dun.

I know, there’s an inherent fear that comes with doing this. After all, adding layers is often synonymous with adding weight, bureaucracy, and all the other things that are supposedly non-existent in all the modern-day flat organizations that we often read about. But if you stop and think for a second, you’d realize that even in the flattest organizations, you’ll still find 90% of the team led by 10%.

The challenge that most people have, then, is not with the concept of adding new management layers, but with how it’s implemented. From my experience, introducing Team Leads into a growing organization can be hugely beneficial and rewarding — if done correctly, that is.

So, if you’re a growing company toying with the idea of introducing Leads, or a mature company considering how to improve your leadership culture, I’d like to offer you 3 observations:

1. Leads should not be a higher class of people. They simply have a different set of responsibilities and skillsets that revolve around organizing a group. There should exist others in the company that are equally or more talented (in different ways) that are not in Lead roles because they’ve chosen not to pursue those responsibilities or their strengths are in different areas. In other words, there should be no organizational pressure to have to “move up” in order to be better. Growth needs to be attainable in other ways.
2. The introduction of Leads must stem from the need to stay autonomous and flexible, not from the need to have people managed. It’s a subtle distinction but it makes all the difference in setting expectations around what a Lead means. Introducing a Lead should allow a group of people to act small while the company around them gets big. It should allow a company to stay nimble, regardless of size, and it should enable more people to steer the ship forward.
3. Only the right people with the right skillsets should be Leads. This one is obvious on paper, but not in practice. However, who you appoint as a Lead sets the precedence for how the organization defines leadership so it’s not something to be taken lightly.

So then, what defines a good Team Lead?

A good Team Lead has two equally important qualities:

1. Domain expertise. They are well versed in the technical skills of their craft. They have a consistent history of finding their way successfully to the finish line, and better yet, they understand the whats, whys, and hows that got them there.
2. People expertise. They are great at advancing a group of people to the finish line. They know how to teach, mentor, and facilitate great decision making. They are empathetic, organized, and articulate about their approach. Strong expectation and knowledge management are what keeps their team focused, empowered, and happy.

Domain expertise without people expertise creates an unsupportive and a sink-or-swim environment for the team. People expertise without domain expertise creates an unrelatable relationship. Both are incredibly important to ensuring the success of a Lead and the health of the team they lead.