To stay successful, high performing teams incorporate continuous learning into their day-to-day operations. Continuous learning within tech startups is critical, with an emphasis on cross functional roles and skills. This might mean not only becoming a full stack developer but also learning about sales, marketing, legal, and social media advertising. In startup workspaces, team members rely on each other and work closely together, promoting an environment of shared learning and growth. The innovative nature of startups means that a lot of team members will be coming from widely different fields. These different backgrounds can be the strength of your team, if utilized correctly. If your high performing team is going to thrive, everyone needs to get comfortable spending a lot of time in kindergarten. In other words, everyone needs to be comfortable learning the basic core of a new subject matter.
Having been witness to the patterns that rip apart good teams, I thought it might be nice to remind ourselves how great teams continue to thrive and grow together. This blog post will focus on fostering an environment of team growth and learning.
The first day of school is always a day of both excitement and anxiety. What kind of things am I going to learn? Where will I sit? Will I make friends? Where is the bathroom, what time is lunch? In many ways, a new workplace presents the same opportunities for excitement and anxiety. Luckily for all of those kindergarteners, we had kind-hearted educators to hold our hands and walk us through the first day, setting us up for educational success.
“The restroom is down the hall and we will take regular breaks. If you need help before then, just let me know.”
“Our class will eat lunch at 11am. We will walk together to the lunch room we call a cafeteria.”
My classmates and I breathed a collective sigh of relief. The basic tenets of learning were taken care of, and we were set up to learn. Now onto the advanced stuff: sitting still, coloring, using scissors and following directions. This is the big takeaway from kindergarten; although we were learning many of the basics, we were learning how to learn. Our teachers fostered our educational and personal growth, supporting our learning no matter what we knew when we walked through the door. We never had to feel bad about not knowing something. If you didn’t know, it was simple enough to ask! With all of the students in the same situation, we supported each other’s learning and development.
Fast forward to the present day. Congratulations, you must have done something right between kindergarten and today because you are on a high-performing software development team in a tech startup. You have deep cross functional expertise in a number of domains and are reasonably knowledgeable in many others. As a startup employee, you are a “jack of all trades and master of some”.
You are highly productive, work hard, and take great pride in your work. Now the two big questions remain:
How do you personally continue to grow and thrive?
How do you support your teammates in continuing to grow and thrive?
Continuous learning is important in any workplace, but it is of utmost importance in the fast-paced world of startups. In this environment, your attitude towards your own learning, as well as your teammate’s, can make or break your team. For example, are you hesitant to convey that you are unfamiliar with a topic? The fact that you have been accepted into a high performing team is certainly an ego boost. However, when that ego keeps you from going back to kindergarten every now and then, feeling vulnerable, asking for help and being transparent, then your days on the team might be numbered. Don’t be afraid to carve out some time and go back to kindergarten. Start from the beginning, apply first-principle engineering, read the docs, work through examples. “Hello World” is your friend. You will come out on the other side with a new tech stack, a new skill, a better way to help your team and customers. Afterwards, go ahead and reward yourself by taking a moment to feed your ego, enjoying the satisfaction of having mastered a new skill. Then get right back at it!
The other side of continuous learning is just as important; perhaps more difficult than learning is supporting your teammate as they go back to kindergarten. For example, Dakota conveys to the team about not knowing the first thing about a tech stack that was part of an earlier client conversation. Dakota wants to get up to speed on the tech stack by conducting a few proof of concepts (POC). While the tech stack hasn’t been used within your team recently, it’s old hat for a few of the team members. You could approach this in two ways, one damaging, one constructive.
The damaging approach is to use this as an opportunity to boost your own ego. Rather than giving Dakota the opportunity to learn, you could demean, degrade, or demotivate Dakota. Obviously, these actions and language will be subject to close scrutiny by your other team members, who will (hopefully) not tolerate that behavior. However, there are more subtle actions that are equally as damaging. Rather than using this as an opportunity to teach Dakota and foster their growth, you simply offered to do the work for them. While this is easier in the short run- and occasionally necessary during a time crunch- it doesn’t equip Dakota with any new skills or support their growth in any meaningful ways. Dakota has the opportunity to learn a new skill, and you might even have the opportunity to help teach Dakota, reaffirming your own knowledge.
Hopefully you choose the more constructive path. Support Dakota’s learning whether that means simply avoiding judgment or providing encouragement and resources while Dakota spends some time in kindergarten. Understand how your teammates learn so you can best support them as they can continue to be motivated to learn and grow within your high performing team. After all, we’ve all been there.
By shamelessly spending a lot of time in kindergarten while also supporting your teammates' similar learning journeys, you will ensure your high performing team stays high performing for many years to come.
Written by: Mark Thias
Mark is a Founder, Software Engineer and Agile Coach with 30+ years in software development and consulting. Mark is currently working to create and incubate early stage startups.
Edited by: Clint Bennett
Clint is a graduate student at the University of Georgia with experience in writing and editing. He is excited to work in the startup industry with underprivileged communities.
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