It takes practice and skill-building to lead a team.

Nobody gets it right the first time and you should know that leadership takes a bit of effort for some to rise to the occasion. In this article we present the 5 skills and abilities that an efficient software developer team leader must possess…

It’s not rocket science for some to understand leadership; with a bit of curiosity, self-talk, charisma and self-assurance, all in the right combination, would go a long way to help — that and a little bit of luck and timing as well.

While some of us come across as natural born leaders with the mad skills below, in reality, these traits can be learned and honed over time with practice. Support from your company goes a long way as well if they have programs, training and coaching sessions to help you succeed. With this support, your team will in no time become efficient, effective and driven to success.

Understanding how important knowledge sharing is in our business, here are a few skills every software development leader must have.

1. You are a team builder

The more your team gels, the more efficient they become. To make a good team, you need to be able to understand people and how to bring out the best in them.

You will need to identify each of your team members strengths and how to get them to interact positively with others. The key here is to listen what gets them excited about their work, whether its attention, recognition, maybe even the need for frequent feedback. Knowing this for each will ensure the team is focused and remains on track.

Don’t underestimate feedback when building out your team. It should be constant and proactive. Don’t wait until a problem surfaces before you do so. Have an internal process setup where your formal feedback is at minimum every six months. And for what it’s worth, there is nothing wrong with informal positive feedback on occasion as well. A little will go a long way with the team.

2. You allow others to make decisions

Delegating what tasks need to be done to the right team member is a critical management skill for any software development team leader. This will simply allow you to be focused on the main aspects of the project.

Only when you have a good understanding of your individual team members will delegation be possible. You should know at that point who can handle front end tasks, and who prefers back end tasks for example. Your tasks will be easier to assign once you have understood the abilities of each person on your team.

The other point of delegation is in its ability to increase productivity and confidence within your team. Software developers who are good leaders are also good delegators who challenge their team with important responsibilities. This will build your teams commitment, satisfaction and return your confidence in them with dedication to hard work.

3. You allow your team to breathe

Another key trait is learning to give your team autonomy. It is an essential factor in building trust regarding employee engagement. Leaders in an Agile environment, for example will provide their teams with clear goals and will allow them the opportunity to find the best way to achieve those goals.

Autonomy is only possible if you rely on your teams’ input. Without it you will not function well as a tight unit. You as a leader, should be guiding your group through delivery and allow them to self-direct on their own. When they see their leader is supporting them by trusting them, they will be more engaged as they feel more in command of their time and efforts and ultimately their reward.

The only caution here is that while autonomy is critical, you will need to outline your expectations and maintain strong communication. As a leader you will need to give them breathing room, but you will need to monitor to a certain degree to avoid your team going beyond the parameters set out at the beginning.

4. You motivate

An excellent incentive to motivate is a simple as providing training when its needed to help advance the team and bring them up to speed on newer technologies.

This is a great way to maintain motivation and can also help keep your team whole as they are advancing their learning while working diligently on project delivery.

5. You coach

It can be easy to get sucked into a blame game scenario when things go wrong on a project. This is the most important time that you will need to keep a professional distance where you are able to see the bigger picture and identify a person or a process that created the challenging scenario the team is currently in.

As a leader in software development, you need to understand the problems, how best your team will be able to overcome the hurdle, and most important, ensure the same mistake does not repeat itself anytime soon. Let’s say the issue was with the code, a good quality software improvement with unit/integration testing could very well be the best solution. Then again, if the issue was process related, updating the internal processes will be necessary.

Remember to be constructive in your employee engagements. A leader that is destructively critical with mistakes only destroys team morale. Encourage the team to try again rather than retaliate or punish for a mistake.

6. You are a problem solver

Your goal as a leader is to somehow figure out how to minimize problems and their frequency of occurrences. Training the team to be brave and solve the issue right away before things go south is key here.

As a leader, you will need to be able to guide your team through the problem-solving process. The goal is to come up with constructive, positive results as quickly as possible. Your team will also need a few guidelines set forth by you to keep them on track.

7. You have integrity

Hard skills are great to get you in the door. It will be the soft skills that will propel you further up the ladder toward software development leadership.

Integrity is a key soft skill. It is a concept of consistent actions, values, expectations, methods and outcomes that are an important attribute of a great leader. Your integrity will demonstrate your commitment to do the right thing for the right reason, irrespective of the circumstance. Your team members will naturally follow you in these same values and ethics.

Your integrity will determine how much your team will trust you. It will be the one thing to help inspire your team to obtain better results always!

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More About Us —

Band of Coders Show is a podcast dedicated to helping software developers problem-solve their biggest leadership challenges. We talk leadership, productivity, team building, effectiveness, and much more.