Team Leaders as Peer Leaders, Mentors, and Company Anchors
Tommi and Lauri work as team leaders at Evitec Solutions. In addition to their regular technical development work and consulting, team leadership brings another, more people-oriented and rewarding perspective to their daily work. Together, the pair has over fifteen years of career experience at the company.
– At the beginning, you might have had the idea that team leadership was mainly about management – handling other people’s work affairs in addition to your own. There are different ways to lead, and it’s been cool to realize that leadership can also be strongly mentoring-based, which is how I approach it, Lauri reflects.
– Peer leadership describes this job quite well, Tommi continues. – We do the same technical work daily as everyone else; we just additionally use our own time to ensure that our team members can focus on their own tasks, Tommi notes.
– When you see how a person develops and learns, how skills and work tasks align, it’s beautiful and rewarding, Lauri smiles.
There’s Always Someone to Talk To
Evitec employs many different types of teams, which also means that the significance of a team varies for each individual. Some teams are built around the same long-term activities, such as product development, where the same team works together daily. Some consulting-focused teams, on the other hand, are more like peer support or a home base for professionals who regularly rotate from project to project and thus don’t necessarily do the same tasks together.
Regular team meetings, however, bring stability to everyone, common events, and a supervisor who doesn’t change easily. This, in turn, enables team leaders to genuinely get to know people and thus better support them in their careers.
– You always have at least that one person you can go ask questions, whether you’re in one big project or several smaller projects, Tommi says.
– There’s always someone you can pour your heart out to and talk about difficult matters, like an anchor in the company, Lauri continues.
Team Leaders Take Care of Their Team Members’ Training and Resourcing
In addition to mentoring and “anchoring,” team leaders’ responsibilities include supporting their team members in developing their skills. Guidelines and areas of interest are discussed with team members, and agreements are made about completing certifications, for example.
The team leaders’ job is to compile and forward emerging training and other needs as well as ideas within the organization. In the other direction, a team leader might tip off a team member about a course or learning path offered by the company that they might not have thought to consider.
– Wishes are listened to with a keen ear – this is teamwork with team members after all, Tommi states.
Resource management responsibility for team leaders simply means that the team leader strives to ensure that all team members have enough work, but not too much.
– Team leaders discuss with each other regularly and coordinate more tasks or job rotation for their team members, Lauri describes resourcing.
– Together with unit management, team leaders form a kind of management team, and through this, team leaders also participate in managing the entire unit, he says.
– You also get support for work from unit managers and HR, Tommi notes. – Regular training sessions and info briefings also help you excel in the position, he continues.
– There are many kinds of teams and different types of supervisors – that’s also richness. Listening and the ability to be compassionate are the most important qualities needed for team leadership, Lauri reflects.
– If you like helping people succeed well in their work, this is an absolutely fantastic job alongside other development work, Tommi continues.