What do you wish for your team?
When the startup’s future was uncertain, I worked weekends and nights to guarantee the team a safe landing at another company. I remember creating slides, writing technical documentation, and sketching out system diagrams with Draw.io. I worried about everyone. Some had mortgages. Another had a young family. College tuition isn’t cheap. A few engineers could be deported because of visa issues if our bank account hit zero.
During a better time when the company was growing, I wished to see everyone become leads of their own division. The front-end engineer we hired was talented with graphic design – he was so motivated he made t-shirts for us during his first month. My plan was to grow him to lead a team of designers to reshape our company logos and appearance. A senior engineer could build a team skilled at tuning Elasticsearch to handle all the incoming data.
I asked my friend who’s a VP at a mid-size tech company. He wants everyone on his team to get rich. Most of his new hires joined too late for a substantial equity package. Given the later stage of his company, he plans to grow each individual so they’ll have the skills to become rich wherever they go next.
I wished for survival. I hoped for growth in an alternate future. My friend wished for money.
Think about what you want for your team. What does your team really want and have you asked?
Is what you want aligned with your team’s true wishes?
I can’t answer this question for you – you’ll have to work with them to find out.
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