Hi, I’m Gavin. I’m a career web-dev. I discovered I’m more into people than tech, so I manage people now. I’m writing this to give you some insights into my approach to work, and working with you. Whether you report to me or not you might find the stuff below applicable.

Some ways I think about work and managing

I default to high autonomy

I assume you know how to do your job, and want to do it well. I won’t be checking your work except in the rarest of circumstances. I largely rely on your team to speak up if they’re unhappy with your performance.

I trust you already. I trust that you’re doing the best you can with what you have. So don’t worry too much if you haven’t worked with me before, I’ll take the time to get to know how you work, and if I have suggestions I’ll speak up.

I’m more likely to give you too much space than too little, but we’ll work out something that supports you best. This doesn’t mean I’ll completely leave you alone of course, I’ll be checking in on how you’re doing in our 1-1’s and getting feedback from the people you work with.

I look to delegate and grow leadership skills

I want you to work on important stuff, and I want you and your team to get the credit. I’m always on the lookout for something relevant and useful to your growth that I can delegate to you, or get someone on your team to delegate to you.

I believe that experiencing leadership responsibility is valuable for everybody, so will encourage you to find opportunities, and I’ll hopefully pass some your way. I won’t hang you out to dry though! Delegation includes support.

I believe in your career over the company we work for now

Because I think the business is most successful if you are growing, learning and engaged. Life is short, careers are long and who knows where we’ll end up?

That said, growing your career is your responsibility, not mine. What I’m able to do is show you opportunities that are available, get to know what your goals are so that I can give you useful information, advocate for you to others, and try to reflect things about you you may not see. I’m on your personal career team, but you’re leading it.

People have different levels of drive in different stages of their career. Sometimes you want to grow, sometimes you need to rest and consolidate. I won’t push you to do a bunch of tiring learning exercises if you’re currently coming to work to get a break from the rest of life. We all have ups-and-downs.

I like to catch up semi-regularly

I like to check in via 1-1’s, as a scheduled calendar event. My normal 1-1 cadence is two weeks; time flies and I like to have a baseline of checking in. Much of the time these are “everything is fine” but we meet regularly because it’s good to step back and get a bit of perspective, and for those times when we do need to chat about something.

I might snag you ad-hoc for a coffee anyway, if you look like you have something to talk about, or if there is news. I’ll usually drop in ad-hoc slack conversations too, but I like face-to-face because it’s better bandwidth and I can get better insight into how you’re feeling.

Grab me any time. I am in meetings a lot, or just not in the office, but I check chat regularly and will happily change my schedule.

I’m not precious about these meetings; tell me if you’re busy and we can catch up later. Sometimes I’m not in the best mood so I’ll suggest we chat some other time. Sometimes we’ll have a meeting clash. It’s no biggie.

I believe in team responsibility over individual responsibility

This one can seem counter-intuitive because I put a lot of time and attention into individuals:

Each individual team member is accountable to their team, and the team shares responsibility for the work.

Let me expand on what I think about teams.

How I think good teams operate

A good team respects all team members—no matter their location—including team members from every other discipline: a team is never really homogeneous, and will include roles like developer, designer, tester, PM, BA, PO and indeed every kind of TLA. Working for the benefit of the team is more important than working for the benefit of one discipline.

A good team works on improving their communication

Communicating in a team is a hard problem. It takes constant attention and an individual and shared desire to improve.

I’m highly likely to diagnose a conflict or issue in a team as a communication breakdown. I expect everyone to work on improving team communication.

Call me on this when I mess up! I still have plenty to learn.

A good team nurtures psychological safety

We spend so much of our time and energy at work, and I want us to feel safe to bring enough of “ourselves” that we enjoy it.

It’s up to us all to nurture safety. Some things that increase safety (but not all!) are curiosity; openness; a willingness to apologise; a respect for and understanding of individual differences, especially an understanding of what individuals bring to the team.

Some things that reduce safety that we need to at least be mindful of are: unresolved conflict; changes to the team; busyness; and complacency.

This work takes consistent time, observation and trust. It’s not just my work but yours too, and I’m likely to highlight ways you can work on it.

A good team works together whether co-located or separated

I’ve written more elsewhere about my approach to remote working, but in short: I believe that teams must operate as remote-friendly by default. Even without permanent remote workers in a team there is very often someone “not in the same room.” The tools and processes of a remote team set a higher baseline for quality communication inside the team and out.

I expect you to treat remote members the same way you would co-located ones. This includes including them in ad-hoc discussions, purposefully sharing useful information etc. Feeling alone when things are going on with a mostly co-located team is real, and helping the remote person feel an equal part of the team takes more effort and communication than seems initially natural. This is valuable too for people who are just off that day, or in another meeting, or simply away.

The team has responsibility, over individual responsibility

As I wrote above each individual team member is accountable to their team, and the team shares responsibility for the work.

This leads to expectations of teamwork like:

I expect that your team knows what you’re working on and how you’re getting on against the goals for this iteration. If I need to I informally evaluate this by how well the rest of the team can speak about your work and progress when you’re unavailable.
Your team knows roughly when and where you’ll be available on a regular day.
Sometimes you gotta do work that you find boring, even routinely. It’s not all coding and funtimes.
You will (with a reasonable level of enthusiasm) participate in team meetings, including preparing beforehand for them. If you really have nothing to contribute or learn, you’ll let the organiser(s) know in advance that you’ll be skipping it. Meetings are for people not people for meetings.
You’re contactable by your team during work time (according to what you know your team reasonably expects.) Ideally you’ll have some high-bandwidth communications options because it’s good to have an impromptu chat with sound and video.
Teams take responsibility for delivering the work. Teams will rally around the work that needs doing, sharing and supporting one another in getting it done. Work doesn’t get ignored because an individual has “ownership” of that area. I am not fond of silos and will not support them.

Some more reading on my work philosophy

If you want to read more, here’s some stuff to Google:

Rands In Repose — much wisdom and experience even though I won’t always take his approach: our personalities are quiet different.
W. Edwards Deming — Continuous Improvement; a giant
Theory Z of Ouchi — Deming-based management theory
Systems Thinking — People act the way they do because of the systems they’re part of. Fix the system not the people. I considered putting this as a section above but it seemed too broad. Read about it anyway!

If you want to see me from a CV perspective

Ask: I’ll send you what I used to get this job.

Random facts

Enough of what I think about work. Here are some random facts about me that you might experience day-to-day:

I’m South African, but not in any meaningful way (I had a boss once who thought that excused his assumptions 🙄)
I ❤️ PHP as a programming language & also front-end development in general.
I ❤️ Linux as my work OS when I can. I do not like OSX, not one bit.
Some days I’m just grumpy. It’s not personal. I will probably agree with you if you point it out.
I’m idealistic, sometimes in ways that annoy people. I do notice that annoyance. Sorry :-/
I don’t care for sport, TV or movies. I am genuinely sorry that this kills most topics of small-talk.
I’m a bit noise-sensitive—I’m one of those people that prefers sitting in silence.
I’m not bothered by silence in conversations either, I prefer to listen and reflect.