The Manager's Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change

by Camille Fournier

It can be hard for new managers to create a shared team identity. Many of them default to an identity built around the specifics of their job function or technology. They unite the team by emphasizing how this identity is special as compared to other teams. When they go too far, this identity is used to make the team feel superior to the rest of the company, and the team is more interested in its superiority than the company’s goals. Rallying a team in this way is a shallow binding that is vulnerable to many dysfunctions: Fragile to the loss of the leader. In-group teams tend to be very fragile to the loss of their leader. When you hire a manager who builds a clique, that clique is likely to dissolve and leave the company if the manager leaves the company. This problem makes it that much harder to address the problems that the manager is causing by creating a clique in the first place. Resistant to outside ideas. In-groups tend to be resistant to ideas that do not come from those within the group. This means that they miss opportunities to learn and grow. The lack of growth for members of the team often causes the best members of the team to leave not just the group, but the company. Because they believe they’re in the best group but they still find themselves bored, they don’t appreciate the growth they could find just by switching to a new team. Empire building. Leaders who favor an us-versus-them style tend to be empire builders, seeking out opportunities to grow their ...