June 10, 2023

Encouraging participation

A friend who leads a team of engineers recently asked me:

I'm having daily stand-ups with my (remote) developers and the energy feels like that of a funeral home. Any ideas on how to bring the energy level up? I don't want to force fun, but it's a bit painful.

I've worked with a number of engineering teams over the years and run into similar problems. A few practical suggestions from my experience:

• Consider changing your daily stand-ups to Slack-only (e.g. What did you finish yesterday? What are you planning to work on today, What are you blocked on). If the team is new, it might still be worth keeping the call.
• Create a "water cooler" meeting once a week in place of stand-up. Play some games, run an icebreaker, or just chat with people about anything non-work related. Human beings need connection!
• Create a random Slack channel for the team where they can share pictures from their weekend, of their pets, etc. This helps the team get to know each other better.
• Ahead of a team check-in, ask one of the engineers to share with the team what they're working on: demo functionality, explain interesting solutions or performance improvements, show off cool tools, etc. Nothing gets engineers more excited than talking about the specific details of what they're working on.
• Sometimes people stay quiet because they're insecure. There’s a risk in opening up that someone may call you out — better to stay quiet and seem detached than to speak up and seem under-qualified. Anything you can do to reduce the risk of participation and promote the culture of safe learning is a win.

One more thing to consider. Some people are not comfortable participating in socializing, but are more than happy to participate in other ways, like building useful tools, writing documentation, etc.

If possible, set up a 1:1 with each engineer. Ask them specifically what their comfort level is with sharing publicly. Some engineers want to be more outspoken, but don't feel confident. Others don’t want to and would prefer to stay quiet. Some will only share if they feel there's something worth sharing. Once you better understand the team and their goals, you can be more intentional about planning group interaction during meetings.

For more great suggestions about how to interact well with the various types of people at your organization, I recommend picking up Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain.

“We don't need giant personalities to transform companies. We need leaders who build not their own egos but the institutions they run... There's zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas.”

—
Cheers,

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