#LeadershipDilemma: Am I too soft on my team? 🤔
Hey fam, I’ve got a juicy startup story for you all. So, picture this – my team of 8 has been grinding away at a project for months, but now our lead dev and marketing manager are giving each other the silent treatment after a heated argument. 😬
I may or may not have been a bit too soft on them, avoiding confrontation like it’s the plague. But now, with our project and maybe even our company’s future at stake, I laid down the law and told them to settle their differences or hit the road. 💪
Now here’s where I need your help – am I being too harsh? Have any of you faced a similar conflict? How did you navigate it? And most importantly, how can I strike a balance between being assertive and maintaining my team’s respect?
Oh, and we’re about to hire new blood soon. Any tips on ensuring our new hires blend in seamlessly with the existing team and help us push forward? 🚀
Drop your insights, experiences, and advice below! Let’s hash this out together and turn this sticky situation into a success story. 💬🔥
If you are the manager isn’t it your job to settle an argument about the product direction? Choose a side and try it out, if the other person doesn’t go along then they serve no purpose in the team so you need to let them go.
Call the shots. If they’re in close debate it’s likely neither is clearly better than the other. If you can recover and change directions after making this decision, go with your gut and try one out.
Sitting here theorizing and arguing is wasted time. Nothing is for certain until you actually do it.
I guess I don’t have a lot of experience in product development but as the manager wouldn’t their conflict be something you should be involved with? You should be directly involved with product direction and meetings need to be collaborative as I assume the marketing manager is talking with potential clients about what their wants/needs are and the lead dev is the one who knows what you will be capable of providing and when. Arguing over product direction and having it put the project at a standstill is a leadership problem and if you are the leader you have to settle this
You can fire whomever you think is holding the project back but I’m not sure hiring a new lead and new marketing manager will solve the problem(and it would probably set you back a lot). You have to figure out what direction things should go and if THEY don’t like it they can quit
Though I don’t have much experience because I’m just starting out with a team of my own, I feel like you need to be very assertive from the very start. You need to have rules set and make sure that the people on your team understand and follow them. If those two members of your team are having a significantly negative impact on your business then I think you were doing the right thing by telling them to settle or they’d be let go.
Hypothetically, ask the marketing professional to flesh out a marketing strategy based our inability to deliver the current MVP which might kill our startup.
Do the same with the tech dev side.
Make it clear that WE have to find an option that will maximize our chances of reaching the next milestone.
Sounds like ego. Remind them that they’re working toward something greater than themselves ( the clients goals and satisfaction). Sit them down and have them present their position. Then have each side identify the pros and cons of each position. And/or have each side make an argument why they should use the other sides plan. Then have them vote openly about which will best accomplish the greater purpose.
If the choice is a matter of semantics and either path will work, literally flip a coin or make the call.
It’s clear that strong leadership is absent. If they have no direction they need someone to make the call. If they’re supposed to figure it out without a leader then they need tools to help them figure out the path forward.
This looks messy, but you are the manager, try to fix the problem, if it is something from a misunderstanding as you said, then there is no need to fire anyone, just call them and fix it.
Whatever happens after that will help you decide what you, and for the new hires, you can’t totally know if they will mesh well, what you can try to know is how responsible and for that, they need to be well vetted, if your need hires are devs, I think you should use the guys at this [hiring](http://rocketdevs.com) platform, vetting is a priority there.