10 Ways to How to Handle Your Geek Team
Most IT projects involve geeks. I guess 99 percent of the team is geek. All I can say is that geeks are just like you and me, only smarter, more skillful, and more serious with their craft. In other words, they’re a joy to work with. 
About a couple of years ago, Chief Happiness Officer, Alexander Kjerulf, wrote an article titled how NOT to lead geeks. If you were to make each one positive, here’s how to handle your geek team.The inputs are mine based on my experience in working with them.
- Give them the right training, and on a regular basis. Training in general is empowering. But for geeks, honing their skills is important to them. And they have the passion to learn new things or be updated on what’s the latest on their chosen field.
- Give them recognition. Like any other worker, geeks too love to be given a pat on the back for a job well done. If you don’t know how or understand their work very well, Kjerulf suggests that you work with them so that you would know.
- Give them reasonable work schedule. Geeks are humans, too, and although they can be workaholics, they can still be stressed out. What good is a geek if he’s overworked?
- Talk to them in plain simple English minus management jargon. As Kjerulf said, geeks hate management-speak.
- Do not try to outsmart or act smart with them. Admit it, if you’re not a geek or do not understand the stuff geeks do. It gets more work done and faster that way.
- Be consistent. Probably because in IT, structure and consistency is critical, geeks also want consistent and clear directions, and policies. They hate it when they smell uncertainty and indecisiveness.
- Connect with them. Often, because managers are not geek themselves, they tend to stay away from their geek team, and just concern themselves with the output or in the user interface, for example, of a website project. Talk to them and discuss with them tasks that are doable and not.
- Involve them in decision making, especially when it comes to your project. For an IT project, who else understands it better than the geek team. Thus, get their ideas and suggestions and how to go about the project. There should be a collaborative effort.
- Give them the right tools or equipment to do their tasks well. What can be most frustrating for a geek team are slow computers and lack of software. These may cost you a bit more, but just look at it as in investment where you can generate income too.
- Recognize the creative side of geeks. Kjerulf puts it aptly, “Programming is a creative process, not an industrial one. Geeks must constantly come up with solutions to new problems and rarely ever solve the same problem twice. Therefore they need leeway and flexibility.”
[Source]
What saddens me as a project manager is to see good people go.
Tags: project management, teamwork
