If you have been following us for a while, you will know that as a company we take great pride in our development teams. If you remember last year’s recap of Polar Cape in Numbers, one of the fascinating statistics we came across was that in 2022 we trained 51 consultants during 6 sessions of our High-Performance Teams training. A total of 178.5 hours were invested in this piece of collective knowledge, that our consultants today continuously spread and implement when working with their teammates.
As we approach the end of the year, we look back on the goals we had set and whether we have managed to meet them. At Polar Cape we can say that the focus of the year, among other things, has been on building even stronger development teams – so that we can shine where we deliver best.
Besides the numerous knowledge sharing forums we continued in a similar spirit as last year we added two training workshops that emphasise the importance of collaboration in a team. Depending on their role and interests, Polar Capers had an opportunity to go through Team Lead training and Agile methodology training.
The combination of learning about Agile methodology and going through Team Lead training has helped us make our teams more flexible and learn to collaborate better. This will inevitably lead to improved project outcomes for our clients.
Why Team Lead Training
The motivation behind introducing Team Lead training sessions was that not everyone is “a natural” in this type of role. When new teammates join, they aren’t aways familiar with the “Polar Cape way” of doing things – so this training is meant to serve as a guideline. We prioritised everyone who already is a Team Lead, and we included potential Team Leads. In an additional layer, we included those who may never lead a team, but can still benefit from learning about the expectations when working in a team.
The need for Team Lead training came up 2 years ago. Before that at Polar Cape we used to have leadership training. Leadership training would convey the general idea about leadership: dealing with issues, different characters in a team, taking responsibility, helping teammates, and teach an approach to management that is in line with Polar Cape’s flat hierarchy. Trying to stay in touch with the trends in the world of the IT industry and looking at Agile methodology, we realized that our internal training needed to regroup as well. Each team needs one person to lead it and to take care of communication with the world outside the team, thus helping the team reach their goal.
That is how we created our Team Lead training. The training would treat the most important aspects of leadership, and further dive deeper into leading a team within a project.
To create the Team Lead training, we defined and took what was good about our leadership training sessions, then added what was missing and would be more specific to the Team Lead role.
The Training
The training starts with a definition of a Team Lead – but we try to add meaning to this definition by what it means to everyone following the training. We do this by creating a gradual picture of the worst to the best leads our trainees can imagine.
One of the first things we do is try to demonstrate the effect different character types can have in a team. We start off with a Disc Personality Test. According to this test, there are 4 personality types. Knowing the personality type of your teammates is important so that everyone can see each other more clearly. This is followed by remembering and describing a situation where everyone has worked with someone from the opposite end. The introductory part of the training also covers high-performance team phases, the testing and development onboarding, and covers explaining the roles within a team.
In continuance, we try explaining the product development processes. This includes the stages from pre-sales through sales, to resolution (delivery of the service). We have a systematized way of overseeing all the processes in all our projects, and we have a dedicated team member who tends to this (Delivery Teams Life-Cycle Manager). In this part of the training, we define setting up a project – the tools we use, how and where we communicate, and everything relevant to the project.
Throughout the duration of the training, we cover more case studies and go through best practices of every scenario about the mentioned team roles. There is a dedicated practical part of the training where we deal with real-life scenarios and address how each trainee would handle a certain situation.
Conclusion
Our Team Lead training was created by following a best practices list that our team has created through years of experience. At Polar Cape, we truly believe that our best assets are the colleagues around us – the teams, as well as the individual consultants around us. We advise our teammates to always use the experience of their colleagues.
We held the Team Lead training sessions on Saturdays so that we could have 8 hours of full undivided attention from our trainees. In total, we had 2 of these training sessions, with approximately 10 teammates per session. We believe that this goes to show both ours and our team’s dedication to holding ourselves to the highest possible standards when it comes to delivering quality.
