People

I’ve been lucky to have had some amazing leaders in my career, and I strive to continue using the values they instilled in me:

Support
Ensure they have the tools they need to get the job done. Listen to their ideas, worries, goals, all of it. Take real action to help them, whether it’s clearing roadblocks or simply covering for them while they take care of an important family situation. BE there.

Mentor
Find ways to challenge them in the direction they want to go in their position now and/or future. Share relevant experiences, and answer questions. Take the time to learn their strengths and don’t be afraid to give feedback on areas to improve.

Communicate
Maintaining transparency, and communicating as much as possible not only builds trust, it keeps things running smoothly. Ensure all documentation, information, goals, everything is readily available for your team. And on the other side, listen to them so you can advocate when needed.

Advocate
Represent each team member, with other leaders, peers, everyone. Stay positive. If another speaks negatively about them or puts them in a bad situation, speak up. Your job is to support your people.

Projects

Working alongside and as a Project Manager myself has taught me that even if the tools we use change over the years, the key parts of project leadership remain the same. These are some I focus on.

Clear Expectations
I use the “W”s to guide myself and my teams. What are we building? Why are we building it? Who is doing what for this project? When do we need things to be complete? Answers to these are critical at the start and during any project. If we don’t have even one of them, problems will pop up.

Documentation Control
This one is so easy to overlook, and it’s so important. Ensuring everyone involved with a project has easy access to ALL documentation keeps things running smoothly. You can save countless meetings, emails, and messages between people by pushing data instead of pulling. Bonus points if you have a tool which acts as a dashboard to quickly organize and find documents, decks, etc.

Communicate
Truly smooth projects have the best communication. For the team, keeping each other in the loop is great, but don’t forget to share progress/challenges/asks to leadership as well. Ambiguity and lack of information fosters gossip and negativity. Any given day everyone should know what is going on with your project. Project dashboards all can update and read are ideal.