6 tips for successfully leading software developers
Developers are notoriously grumpy and unamenable to
disruption. They tend to want to
continue working until they arrive at a place of completion and satisfaction.
What’s an IT leader to do?
The following perspectives will help you better understand
what motivates and mystifies developers and can guide your thinking on how to
be the leader your team needs.
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Cultivate business
awareness
One of the critical tasks for all leaders is to provide an
overhead strategic vision to the people who work on the lower-level tasks. This is especially important—and
challenging—when working with developers because their work is so demanding of
careful, focused attention.
Developers are required to master an enormous amount of
complexity that can squeeze out the larger context, resulting in a kind of
myopia. The work itself is enough to
occupy even the most ambitious and active mind, so it becomes especially
important for leaders to provide the two-way channel between the daily coding
and the larger direction.
Convey meaning
Although strategy and business value are valuable to
communicate to developers, there is an even higher thing which we’ll call
purpose or meaning. The strategy is
engaged to support the mission. The
mission is the raison d’etre for the company itself.
Does the company have a potent mission statement? Is the essence of the mission well
distributed into the ranks? The
rightness or goodness of the enterprise should be infused into everyone’s
activity.
Developers are especially tricky, as they are typically
rather resistant to what they often cynically see as indoctrination. Nevertheless, the sense of legitimacy is just
as necessary for long-term developer contentment as anyone else.
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Foster creativity
Developers’ will to create is strong, but it can be hard to
perceive as creativity is often obscured by the technological nature of
development. Developers communicate with
a strange patois of acronyms that hide the artistic spirit behind it. Learning to perceive and nurture that spirit
is a special kind of leadership that developers will appreciate.
Allow space for
failure
Despite their mastery of complexity, developers are prone to
feeling like they are not really up to the job at hand—the strange phenomenon
known as imposter syndrome.
This kind of insecurity is more common and sensible with
green developers, but you would be surprised at the accomplished programmers
who still acknowledge running into it.
Even coders coming from great success can find themselves burdened with
uncertainty about their ability to handle the next thing confronting them.
Every leader’s style is different, of course. So is every developer’s. Instead of a hard and fast rule like avoiding
harsh criticism or promoting recognition, it’s good to simply bear in mind the
kind of difficulty developers wrangle with in their daily work. The path of execution is rarely a straight
line for a developer. They frequently
must call upon an inspirational force to get there, and this can be frightening
when deadlines loom.
Encourage taking
breaks
Here is a practical insight: When you have developers who
are facing blocks, they have a tendency to beat their heads against the wall of
impasse. Usually, the block is a
creative one that can’t be solved with faster shoveling and hammering.
Know when to encourage a break. It’s counterintuitive, but so many times the
breakthrough a programmer is looking for is not to be found in working harder
but in getting some distance from the problem.
Developers themselves frequently miss this point. In fact, they will actively resist it when
they are in the grips of a tough challenge.
They believe that continuing to grind away at the thing is the path to a
breakthrough.
Provide balance
Developers suffer from discontentment, stress, and burnout
at a high rate. Whatever you can do to
mitigate this is welcome. Developers do
it to themselves and also are subject to external pressures. Both of these
forces can be addressed by leaders.
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