The Power of Trust: A Lesson from Building a New Team

Intro:

In our previous post New Role, New Team, and New Challenge, I mentioned the challenges I faced while stepping into a leadership role for an existing team. If you haven't read it yet, please check it out. In this post, I'll share the challenges I faced while setting up a new team from scratch.

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Pre-Context:

Immediately after taking on the leadership role, I was tasked with setting up a team with just a couple of people.

For the role, we screened over 100+ candidates and interviewed around 70 candidates. Only two of them made it to the final round, and eventually, just one candidate with 2 years of experience was selected.

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Context:

The selected candidate joined a month later. For the first two weeks, he studied Java, its internals, and our company-specific frameworks. In the following two weeks, he underwent knowledge transfer. He completed everything with below average score, and we assumed he would perform strongly once onboarded to the project.

But that didn't happen.

Despite our expectations, his performance was consistently below average even when we provided him with clear use cases and documentation. At times, we had to explain basic use cases line by line. We suspected he might have faked his interview, but after reviewing the recordings, we found no such indication. Over the next few months, his performance barely improved, despite regular one-on-one meetings and guidance.

Then, one fine day, he came up with a brilliant feature idea which could have a significant impact on our project. At that point, I had two options:

1. Assign the feature to another developer to ensure quick delivery.

2. Let him implement it, knowing the release would be delayed.

I chose the second option, and here's why:

1. The way he conceptualized the idea convinced me that he could execute it and perhaps faster than I anticipated.

2. I didn't want to demotivate him by letting someone else implement his own idea.

And guess what? He delivered the feature exceptionally well and even released it sooner than I had expected. That moment became the turning point in his journey. From there, his learning curve accelerated, his confidence grew, and he went on to become one of the major contributors in our entire department.

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Lesson to all leaders:

As leaders we often face a tough choice between short term results and long term growth. In this case I deliberately chose growth over speed and it paid off. Sometimes all a struggling team member needs is the right opportunity, ownership and trust to unlock their potential.

Not every risk will work out this well, but when we see even a small spark of capability or creativity in someone, it is worth nurturing. By giving them space to fail, learn and own their ideas, we can transform average performers into exceptional contributors.