Season 2, Episode 1

First teams and why leaders need one with Lena Reinhard

Hello. My name is Benjamin Reitzammer, and you’re listening to the cto.coffee podcast. cto.coffee is where I invite guests to chat about all kinds of different aspects of humans and tech. This episode’s guest is Lena Reinhard, a seasoned leader and executive in tech. And I’m doubly excited to speak to Lena today. For one, because I followed and admired Lena’s work for a long time already. And second, because we’re discussing the topic of first teams, something that I think is very important, yet often overlooked. Before we dive right in, Lena, please tell the listeners a bit about yourself.

I’m Lena Reinhard. I am a VP engineering. I now primarily work as a leadership coach, a mentor, and a fractional vice president of engineering. I facilitate things like team trainings and offsites and coach a lot of leaders, as well as organizations, basically how to become the leaders they want to be and that their organizations need. I also host a podcast. It’s called Leadership Confidential. It’s about the good, the bad, and the ugly of leadership. And very honest and real conversations. And I publish a lot of guides about how to lead on my website, lenareinhard.com. And I’ve worked a lot with internationally distributed teams, startups, scale-ups, NGOs, corporations. And yeah, I’m 20 years into my career, and I look younger than I am. And I’m super excited to talk to you about First Teams, because it’s something I’ve struggled with for a long time. And I know a lot of other people too, as well.

So welcome again. I’m very happy to have you here. And you already mentioned it when preparing this conversation, this episode, we agreed on the topic, or the main topic, being First Teams. And yeah, very similar to what you just said, I also struggled with that concept, or to actually apply it, maybe. The concept as such, I personally don’t find very hard to grasp. But yeah, it’s one of those classics. It’s then hard to put into practice. At least that’s what I experienced. But anyway, maybe we start a little bit with the basics. So can you maybe share a little bit how you understand the, yeah, let’s say, First Team concept?

So I first came across it in Patrick Lencioni’s work. He has written a couple books about dysfunctional teams and organizations, and also has, by the way, an excellent workbook that accompanies his “Five Dysfunctions of a Team” book. Not a lot of people know that, but the workbook, I think, is actually better than the book. He’s not paying me to say this. And that’s where I came across it first.

And so I actually never researched if he’s the actual person who really coined the concept. But at least with that name, I got it from his work. The idea being that there in any organization, leaders shouldn’t operate essentially as focusing primarily or thinking of themselves as primarily a member of their group of people who are reporting to them. And that group being their primary team that they work with and communicate with, collaborate with, and whatnot. But instead, that their primary or first team, as in group of people that they work with a lot, exchange ideas with, and whatnot, should be their peers. And I think that’s the closest I can come to a definition. So a team of peers, a team of leaders, a group of leaders who are at the same level and have probably similar domains, similar context, and who really operate as to get each other’s respective primary team instead of their direct reports.

Thank you. Yeah. Funny enough, I also stumbled over the topic or the concept via Patrick’s work. So let’s just assume– Just for this conversation, I’ll look it up later.

You can have the fact checked later.

Yeah, that he’s the originator of it. And yeah, maybe just from your personal experience or also from the experience with your coaching clients, what is so hard about it to– or for people to not only grasp it, but actually implement it or use it?

I think that’s a really good question. And this might come really long as an answer. So we’ll see where this takes us. So I think, honestly, the first point I want to highlight is what you alluded to earlier in that it’s most things in leadership work in theory. And if you’re reading it in a book or in a blog post, you say, oh, this is– of course, this makes so much sense. It’s really straightforward. There’s even– we haven’t even talked about why this is useful. But I think most people, even not knowing it, can see that there could be a point to doing this. And in theory, we all know how all of this stuff works. But then applying it to my mental frame of reference is always Monday morning at 9 AM when you open your laptop. And then you have your Slack messages, your team stuff, your emails, and whatnot. And that is a challenge that so many of us– and I just wanted to pull that up because, honestly, it’s one of the things that a lot of leaders also beat themselves up about because they’re, oh, it’s also simple. Why can’t I do it? Am I the only one who’s kind of silly about this and doesn’t get it? But I just wanted to use the experience and opportunity to say, if you struggle with applying, quote unquote, “simple leadership things in practice,” you’re likely not the only one. And that’s because the reality of organizations is so much more complex than bestselling nonfiction books and especially business and management advice books make it seem odd to me. Yeah. It was important to me to mention that.

Yeah. And I love that. Thank you. Thank you so much for saying that. And I really want to underline this 100 times, exactly what you just said is so, so true and important. Thank you.

So on this specific first team concept, I would say there’s a lot of organizations here struggling with this. One important reason is that for people who just move into a line management role or similarly for people who move from line management to managing managers, this, in my experience, this whole first team thing is usually one of the biggest things that it takes for them to really wrap their head around their new role. And it’s similar, honestly, for tech leads. And for them, it’s often even harder because they often don’t have direct reports. Because ultimately, there is a big challenge that is in this first team thing in terms of very concrete things about your role. For example, who do you spend time with? Who do you go to when you have questions? Who do you ask about things? Who are you also collaborating with on things and whatnot? And so just wrapping your head around this can be really difficult in terms of just what it looks like in practice, like how you spend your time, how you think about things and whatnot. Another part is the social aspect that many people, especially if they’re, for example, tech lead who grew within their own team or they’re a line manager who got both first an IC, individual contributor, like an engineer on their team, and then they move into a manager role. That also shifts their social circle because technically now they have these existing relationships with the people who are reporting to them. They probably also spend a lot of time with them in one-to-ones, plannings, and whatnot. But there is this whole other group of peers that they may not spend as much time with, yet they don’t have those close relationships. The social aspect, I think, is really important. Another, and that’s in my experience, usually one of the biggest ones, is incentives. What tends to happen is that teams and even departments or domains, basically anything that rolls up from a team to a set of teams and larger groups, those typically have goal set in the organization. They have– doesn’t matter what to use. We can do a whole other thing about why OKRs are bananas in the way that they’re used in those companies. But most– those entities typically have some goals, even if goal setting is something you struggle with in your organization. You typically know what you want your teams to deliver. That also means that the leaders of those groups, like your tech leads, your engineering managers, your directors, whatnot, they’re typically accountable for those goals being accomplished by their groups. And that is absolutely appropriate. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. The issue, though, that comes is that from an incentives perspective, it means that your directors, engineering managers, need to make sure that those goals get accomplished by their groups at the same time. If you’re trying to introduce the first team mindset, why would those people work together? Like, why would you say, you have goals for each of your teams, and then say, oh, but at the same time, I really want you to spend a lot of time with your peers because it’s important for our company? So that means there is often a misalignment, at least, between kind of the whole, oh, we want leaders to work as a first team thing, and then how goals are actually set and how results are measured. And I think that’s a huge contributor, integrating factor to issues. Another, honestly, is that to stick schedules, leaders and managers are usually incredibly busy, have packed meeting schedules, no time to think, and whatnot. Any additional meeting, FaceTime, or whatnot needs to be really justifiable for them to feel like. And they need to feel like they’re actually getting something out of it, or it’s going to, again, play into them achieving– like their groups achieving their results. So that’s another factor. There’s often also that, because of that busyness or other reasons, a lot of leaders struggle really with async collaboration, which then, again, becomes a hindrance. And I think the last thing that I want to mention already is that, in my experience, the first team is a long-term investment. It’s something that is going to– it’s basically part of building a sustainable organization and one that performs in the long run. It is not something that will very likely give you a ton of short-term results, which also means, in the ways that our brains function– we love dopamine. It’s just a thing. Our brains are programmed. Short-term results, accomplishments, quick wins, all of that kind of stuff gives us that. Whereas longer-term things and a lot of leaders already have a lot of those, the stuff that’s never fully done, where you’re just doing the work and going through the motions. But it’s not as satisfying. And that’s one, the neurological issue. But at the same time, it also means it’s a conscious investment that you may want to make, I also would say, or argue you need to make. But it’s not something where things are going to just, next month, function entirely differently in the organization. That just as an overview, I feel like I have another five reasons or so why this could be hard. Those are probably the most critical ones. But maybe you have some to add from your experience.

Thank you. To be honest, I think you covered our video.

OK. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

OK, bye. [LAUGHTER]

Yeah, so you touched on so many points already. But I want to pick up the last one that you mentioned, like long-term investment or short-term result. If we take that, yeah, basically, the question comes up, like, why should we even do it? I mean, that’s kind of like the first question after the second, but still. Or maybe a different way is like, what impact does it have if, as leaders, we work as a first team?

I think it’s a fair question. And I would also quite honestly say, if you are building an organization that is primarily there to grow really fast, make a ton of money in the process as much as possible, and you don’t really care about building a sustainable business that’s functioning in the long run, then this is probably not for you. And I think it’s important to be honest about that. Because I’ve worked as part of first teams. I’ve also been lucky enough to help a couple organizations could move their leadership teams in this direction. And I’ve seen this investment is really, really worth it. One part is that, honestly, it’s a really good engine to help your leaders grow. Because it’s a very conscious approach for helping them rethink the way that they work, learn from each other, collaborate. And with that, it can also be something that you, for example, utilized brain-aspiring leaders into, so they get exposed to different contexts, conversations, and whatnot. Growing leaders, it’s really useful for. It’s also great for basically actually utilizing the expertise that your leaders have. Because it creates– I’m going to call it a forum. That can manifest in conversations, meetings, you have things to collaborate on, discussions you have in your chat or whatnot. But it creates a forum, a space, and a space for people to discuss. For example, they may work together on your new strategy, or they may discuss how are we going to hire people in the future, or how are we going to handle changes that we want to make to our delivery and whatnot. And that space, because all of them will be thinking at the organizational level in that way, while also still being grounded in the context of their respective teams, they can actually bring their expertise and not just to make it useful for their own team, but also for the rest of the organization. It therefore also helps them really optimize for the business. That is honestly one of the most impactful things that I’ve often seen, because especially people who are growing into leadership roles really struggle with this. They’re often deeply invested into their teams, really care about the people they’re working with. And I don’t want to take that away from anyone. I think that’s an important notion that we all should hold. But at the same time, as you grow as a leader– and I’m sure you’ve seen that too– there comes a point when you have to make decisions. Or for example, a 250, 500 people organization that are to the best of the organization, but that doesn’t mean they’re also to the best of every individual in the organization. Just as an example, if one person wants a 50% salary increase, the best for this person would be to just make that happen. But if I do that, I also have to think about, well, will I be willing to give that same increase to everyone else who’s performing in the same way as this person? Probably can’t do that without tanking the business. And so that way of thinking and operating is something that a lot of people struggle with. As they move into these roles, first thing can be really helpful. And lastly, it’s also a really important way for actually getting stuff done. We can talk about how to actually do that, but one way to do this can be to just set organizational goals with them. Say, for example, we want to improve our delivery velocity. Perfect. Well, have them get together and work on how do they want to do this both across the organization, but then also with maybe some differences within their respective teams. So getting organizational initiatives, organizational changes done, and also as a part of that, getting communication into the organization, it’s a really good vehicle for that. And I will also say, mostly focused on the business benefits so far, but honestly, as a leader, being part of such a first team is a very different experience. It’s just it makes the work so much more fun because you have peers you can go to. You learn from each other. You hear different approaches for how they do things. It’s way less of an isolated experience of leading than a lot of leaders, unfortunately, are experiencing. And yeah, it’s just fun. And I’ve also often had conflicts with the people, and professional disagreements with the people I’ve worked in. But I’ve learned so much from that as well. So yeah, and therefore, it also improves the quality of your leadership overall, I think.

That’s good stuff. Yeah. It’s the gist.

Yeah, well, definitely. Well, while you were talking about utilizing the expertise of your leaders better, a thought came back to my mind where I find it’s common sense by now that the teams, let’s say, the leads of the organization, that these kind of teams, these type of teams, they should be cross-functional. Of course, they shouldn’t only be kind of software engineers or only designers or whatever. So these teams should be cross-functional. But I find, or intend and have experienced, that leaders, while they accept this kind of fact that teams should be cross-functional, they don’t translate that to the leadership teams. So you just go one level up and suddenly, you don’t have cross-functional teams anymore. And we’re not used to– and I say that we as general people working in, just to be overly generalizing here, yeah, we are not used to look at leadership teams as kind of– yeah, maybe they should be cross-functional too to get this similar kind of benefit. I mean, there are limits to that idea as well, of course. But just in order to utilize the expertise of these kind of leaders, especially if you go a little bit higher up in whatever size of organization you have, then there are actually like– rather VP of, I assume, you add kind of peers that are maybe in design, product management, just so you name the two classic ones. And so there you have the opportunity to have a cross-functional team and to actually get a kind of better results in what we usually associate or why we cargo cult towards using cross-functional teams or organizing, putting together cross-functional teams.

I think that’s a really interesting point. And I’m glad you brought it up, also because I think I disagree in parts. And one is that I think even the degree of cross-functional team just at the team level that I found useful really varies. I think it depends on how widely you define cross-functional. But I honestly still work with a lot of organizations where cross-functional is basically sure. Ultimately, they own a part of your product or a set of services or a project or customer that they work for and have the skills to deliver on that. But for example, don’t always require 100% design coverage. It’s like there are variations which I’m sure you kind of had baked into your generation. And I think it’s interesting because I honestly– I’ve never had a first team that was made up of people outside of engineering. And so there was and honestly still is in the companies I’ve worked with.

I will say there are two aspects to this. The one is essentially getting stuff done, where it’s about making sure delivery for the teams below you in your org is running smoothly, that there are no blockers, that vision and mission and strategy are all clear. I think for that purpose, it’s really important to have a really close partnership with folks like that. I think that’s absolutely vital. My experience that itself is often already challenging enough because actually being aligned and all that on those things takes work. I would say in the idea of the first team, I’ve understood it and seen it practiced. That’s usually much more constrained to people in a similar domain, like in this case, my engineering peers, for example. And especially because I think there’s a huge bit where working as a first team is most powerful when you manage to work at the right abstraction level. At, for example, defining strategy, road setups, organizational, build out organizational changes that are larger, how you want to basically build an organization.

If you are in a department where product engineering and design are all rolling up to the same person ultimately, then absolutely everyone, regardless of their domain expertise, should be part of the first team. But I found that specifically if you have a separation between– you have an engineering department, then maybe there’s design and product that are separate. I think it can be useful because at the same time, I think one benefit of a first team is that it’s usually relatively contained in size. So for example, you have maybe three to five engineering managers in each domain that can be each other’s first team and whatnot. But I think it’s a really interesting point. I’m going to have to think about that a bit more in terms of where are cases where it can make sense to broaden this a little bit. So thank you for bringing that up. It’s a really good point.

No, yeah, I also think that it has, yeah, let’s say delicate interaction, like the concept of can you actually work as a first team? And you basically mentioned that in your first– yeah, very early in our conversation already that working as a first team has a very delicate interaction slash balance with how goals are set and how an organization expects their subparts, their suborganizations to deliver on those goals. So while I haven’t really worked in an organization that is super strong top down, but I assume in an organization– and again, you already basically touched on that. Before I said it, that in our organization that is very much top down, where goals are broken down maybe from very large and very abstract company goals or department goals, then it becomes very hard to work as a first team when the only thing, your performance and your race and your title and your promotion and all that, yeah, depends on if all of that is just how you deliver on those goals that somebody else basically has set for you.

And I actually think that is a really good way to capture it. Basically, if your job as a leader is primarily that you execute on someone else’s ideas, yeah, this is not going to work very well.

And is that then maybe also a good way or maybe even the first way to turn it around, let’s say, and say or approach if as some kind of senior leader I really want to take the long view, as you said, and think about the long term benefits of– and want to have those long term benefits of my people working as a first team, then one way to go at it is to change the way goals are set or how goals are even thought about, whatever. Is that a good first step or– I mean, it’s a very large and complicated first step.

Start easy. This one weird trick. [LAUGHTER]

Over simplifying things. What would you say like a difference aspect or a different way to go about it would be better?

One approach that I really like for any kind of what I would call culture change in the sense of you want to shift how your organization is working, what I honestly really love to do is be just super explicit. If you really, basically, if you think that you want the leaders in your organization more to work as a first team, tell them. And I have literally run workshops with leadership teams about that because ultimately the first team is a framing for a certain set of behaviors and for then results that we’re hoping will be associated with that. And I found that, again, no matter what the culture change is that you want to do, but bring your leadership team in. And so I would even basically take what you suggested around change the way that goals are set. You can take this further. A very straightforward thing to do could be to just run a workshop with them or say, hey, I’m going to first send an email or write a document with like here’s what I would like to do. And for example, I would like for you to work more as a first team. What are my goals there? Why am I doing this? And then ask them questions because I’m pretty sure that there are reasons why they haven’t been doing this so far.

In my experience, there is often a lot of power already in basically giving people permission or like a mandate and saying, hey, I want you to work together more in at least unlocking a little bit of that. But one first question you ask them could just be my sense is that you all haven’t been working together much so far. Where is that coming from? And the answers will probably be, well, we’re super busy with our teams. There is a lot of stuff on our plates. They’re probably not going to say it this way, but part of the answer might also be, why would I work with each other? I have other stuff to do. I don’t see the value in that. I’ve been told that to my face by people and I’ve really appreciated it, but that honesty is rare. And so there’s probably in terms of just the diagnosis, you’re probably going to end up with a result that’s a mix of your leaders are all working at a quite low level. Because they’re so deeply involved in operational stuff with their teams or there is a lot of reactive work they’re doing in Rotterdam and other component could just be that yet they don’t see a point in spending time with their peers because there is no incentive. And they are mindful of how they spend their time as they should be. And it’s so far not been the way that the organization works. So starting with a diagnosis like that or going into a conversation can honestly be a really good first step because it will very likely give you a lot of insight into things that are mostly tricky for your leaders overall and things that you need to work on in your organization. So that’s how I suggest to start.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. You mentioned incentives like what people optimize for is not the same, but in a similar vein. And that’s kind of for me– yeah, I like this concept of balance, trade-offs, maybe engineers would call it trade-offs, that there is no either this or that, but it’s always like a balance between at least two concepts, if not more. Yeah, so this concept of or this idea of how do I balance, prioritize. And when introducing it, people come back with questions or with saying, yeah, I don’t have time. I don’t see the value in that. So then the question or what’s probably behind that is that they maybe also have struggle or struggle to balance, first of all, of course, seeing what the value is. But if they see the value, then time comes in, and how should they balance, and how should they see what kind of value they get from their first team versus, yeah, if I work with my reports, I get this and that done, versus, OK, let’s build a relationship with my peers or a better relationship. And then maybe next time we can collaborate on strategy more or something similar. Do you have, long story short, do you have maybe any kind of heuristics that help with this kind of balancing act?

What I really like to do with, again, any organizational change, anything where you’re looking at your organization and going, I hate those. I don’t know where these things are going here, is move into practice mode as quickly as possible. Today I’m working on a workshop that I’ll run tomorrow about increasing ownership and accountability in your organization. So that topic is the top of mind for me. The irony is that a lot of us still gravitate to basically getting stuff done ourselves. And I want to call out that in a topic like, of course, when it comes to ownership and accountability, it’s even more ironic. But even with the first team stuff, ultimately the work will have to be done by the people who are reporting to you. The people who you want to become a first team, they will have to do the primary work on making that happen. It’s your role to nudge them, create the space where that can happen. Maybe also make sure that they actually have goals and incentives that make that make sense for them to spend more time on, but resist the temptation to basically figure it out for them. Or figure it out for them. That’s the important emphasis. And so in very practical ways, I do think the diagnosis, essentially, that I described earlier where you try to understand what’s been preventing that in the past and whatnot, that’s really helpful. Because typically, I assume that a part of it, as a next step for you, will also have to involve that you talk to them about essentially what are their roles. What does success look like for them in their jobs? And in very concrete terms, for example, what does that mean for how they spend their time? A typical part of the dynamic is that they are very busy with more operational stuff than you want them to be because they don’t have enough leads that are experienced in the teams below them. So there will probably be a first step that’s coming out of this to upskill more people who are at the team level, things like that. And so my suggestion is basically, once you’ve done this diagnosis, is have them come up with things that they want to work on. So if the overall goal is, hey, I, as your boss, want you to work more as a primary team together, I want you to own organizational initiatives. I want you to be really involved in helping our organization improve in x, y, z areas. What are the things that they want to prioritize so that that actually becomes a possibility? That can be one thing. So that’s where then you go down the route of, for example, they upskill the leaders on their teams, or they– whatever– they change the way that the collaboration with product works because that’s currently a big time sink, whatever it is. So basically fixing the environment in order for the first teamwork to become possible. If that’s less of a concern, or if you want to just go around where it’s basically you create a forcing function, you can also basically just tell them their first project and tell them, listen, and I want you to work on a new engineering strategy, or here’s the scale that we’re looking at as an organization. Come up with how you want to solve that problem. Delegate it to them and have them figure it out together. Ideally, it’s probably not as a first project your next big strategy, but more something that’s maybe a bit more contained, maybe a new, say, delivery improvements in a couple of areas, but something that’s maybe four to six weeks of scope so that you also can use this as a way for them to actually start working together. Because one of the issues that tends to happen with a topic like this is that it’s so abstract that if you– and we all love to over engineer things. And you can technically spend three to six months talking about how to work as a first team and not solve it because you end up definitions. And who expects what from whom? Then you define a racey matrix, and then you still don’t have it for the– and people get annoyed because they’re like, oh, this is such a waste of time. And so I do think there is a point in at least having a little bit of a conversation, hence the diagnosis suggestion, but then just move into doing it. And then facilitate a retro. Get feedback from them along the way. Learn how this actually went, what they liked about it, what they disliked, and whatnot. I think that’s one bit. Another thing that you can do also is just pull them in much more actively. I used to have a boss at some point in my career who was very good at sharing context with me and my peers. So when there’s important meetings happening, they would always pass those things on. We had a private chat channel for us. And then the four of us had at some point defined together that we want to speak with one voice into our organization. As in, even if we have disagreements, differences, we would ultimately resolve those and then pass on the same messages to our– I had one that two thirds of engineering, one of my counterparts, or my counterparts had the rest. And that, again, was a very practical way of just being a first team instead of over-engineering how we’re defining becoming one. Did that actually answer your question?

To be honest, I don’t know what my question was.

You asked for heuristics and the rest of the question. I forgot which one.

Maybe kind of not, no. But I think it doesn’t matter because it was still very useful, very practical. And at the same time, while listening to you speak just now, I had this realization that you probably already had– yeah, a long time ago about this topic and other people as well. But that, of course, it depends as so often …

It’s always…

… always, yeah. It depends on the– or it depends what first team actually means for you or for the organization. And even for each small part of an organization, it can mean very different things. Again, it’s like the crooks with these kind of topics that are, on the one hand, very easy to grasp and very easy to see. Like, yeah, that makes sense, but are then hard to put into practice because you kind of have to figure out for yourself or your very small part of the world of the organization, what does it really mean for us? Where do we need to speak with one voice? What are the actual issues of us not working together as a team? Do we have any issues? Or is it just a feel-good kind of exercise? Like, yeah, I want you, dear folks, that report to me. I want you to have a better relationship with each other. Like, why? What does it even mean? So it– yeah, it’s like I could go on for hours there. But yeah, it depends on what first team actually means for you and what you want to achieve with it. Like, what is the kind of challenge or the tension, maybe, that you want to resolve within your organization because of that? And of course, it doesn’t have to be only for the people that you manage, but it can also come up as a group of peers where you say, like, hey, we are peers, but we’re not really working together because we only meet, like, I don’t know, once every quarter when we meet at an offsite. But actually, we should be a team. So what does it mean for us? And then, like you said, it’s also very, very, very, very extremely very good point to just get into action. Yeah, don’t overthink it too much, but just try it out and pick– and whoever picks that. Yeah, you made a very good point that people who should work as a first team should work more, or if you want to work more as a first team, that they, of course, ideally should pick the topic. But of course, if you come in and maybe have a great idea, maybe it helps just to get into action instead of– yeah, if it helps to kind of unparallelize people, maybe it’s still also– again, also that depends on so many other things.

Yeah, and I do– actually, I just realized it might be helpful because I just a couple of weeks ago facilitated a workshop with a team that was essentially about this to kind of walk through a little bit how I actually ran that as an external facilitator, if you’re interested in hearing that. There’s a question to you. Sorry, I couldn’t–

No, sorry. I’m not sure. Can you …

Yeah, so I just– so basically, I suggested that I ran a workshop for an engineering leadership team a couple of weeks ago, who was– the goal of the workshop that they said was that they wanted to become more of a team. And I offered that I could talk through a little bit how I thought about the workshop and what we did.

Yes, please, yes.

OK. So because a couple of things that you just mentioned reminded me of that. So they had approached me and said, we want an external facilitator to help us with this. And we’re a group of leaders in a company. And we want to work together more and basically become a team. And so my initial– what I initially did was I thought, hey, we could approach this via definitions basically. And so I did conversations, pre-interviews with each of them, and asked them, how do you define a team? What would characteristics of being more of a team with your peers look like? In what behaviors would you use to measure that it’s going well? And what would success look like for you? All of the things that you would assume. And I soon realized that that angle was absolutely not useful. Because of course, we all have different ideas what it means to be a team and what a good team looks like. And usually in the day-to-day work, those differences don’t show up as much because you typically have still organizational goals and strategy and whatnot. And so the degree to which I personally believe it’s useful for me to work with my peers, it doesn’t matter as much. And so my initial premise has basically turned out. It’s just, yeah, there’s no point. We could have spent probably two days trying to come up with a definition of what it means for them to be a team and still not gotten anywhere. So I ended up throwing that out. What I ended up doing instead was I spent a lot of time with the first part of the workshop talking about them as individual leaders. What do they bring? What are their backgrounds? What are their core needs? We used the biceps model as a reference. And that was one important piece because it just allowed them to get to know each other better. And these relationships usually are part of being a team for anyone. And that goes without saying almost that it’s quite– that one’s straightforward, essentially. And then we spent a bunch of time essentially discussing what are the actual actions for where being a team matters for them. And that is honestly, in my experience so far, that’s usually one of the most useful angles for this because a big part of– usually– and that’s what you reminded me of as you walked through this– usually the whole, oh, I want my reports to work more as a team thing, that it comes from somewhere. It comes up for you because, for example, you realize your reports, the leaders supporting to you, they’re not on the same page. There’s misalignment. Or some of them are making decisions and advocating for stuff for their teams. Again, the I want a 50% salary increase for this one person on my team example. They’re pushing for things that are just optimizing for themselves, for their own space, instead of thinking about what those things mean for the larger organization. Or you’re realizing that one person is really pushing for changes to, say, your hiring or promotion process because, again, they think it would be best for their teams. They’re not considering everyone else. So usually, the whole, I want my reports to work as a first team, it comes from a problem space, essentially, or from something where you’re realizing, essentially, dysfunction, which makes you think, oh, it would be really good for them to think more as a first team. And so that can be a useful angle to think about what are those problems and then actually talk to people about it and say, listen, we don’t have to necessarily define all the actually and get to the bottom of how exactly do we define first team and whatnot, but instead talk about, OK, well, clearly in, for example, how we approach compensation increases, that is an area where we should all be on the same page, as in operate as a first team, which means we should discuss those things and then make decisions together instead of just each advocating for our own teams, respectively. So ultimately, finding areas where you need to optimize for the whole organization and then in order to get there where people need to operate as a first team can be really helpful to get it out of the abstract and make it very concrete. Whereas you may also say, OK, I’m just going to give every one of you my reports, like a quota or a budget or something for compensation increases, and then you can just figure out within your own teams how you want to go about this. It’s like making it concrete, and that’s what I ended up doing with that team as well. Like we talked about, OK, here are the areas where they want to just actually have consensus on certain decisions before things proceed. Another thing that we defined was how do they want to just speak with one voice to their organization? And so talk about these concrete areas, and again, resist the temptation to over-define how this is going to work. Because a lot of it will become much clearer when you make it practical.

Yeah, I really love that. Thank you. Thank you for sharing. I hope you disagree with what I’m saying right next.

It’s exciting.

It’s a little bit more interesting than just what I can come up with. What really tickled part of my brain was when you said that– oh, actually, I’m not 100% sure again what you said or how you said it. What I understood, at least, was that first team as a concept, as a tool, maybe resides in the solution space. And that part tickled me then because, well, why should I prescribe a solution to the people on my team? Of course, it depends on how you approach it and how you introduce it and so on and so on.

We can generalize here. You get to– you’re the podcast host, right?

Yes. Let’s make a list of how often can we say it depends. So yeah, but of course, probably you already know where I’m getting with this is– or let’s say that’s why I appreciate also what you said about, yeah, start with the diagnosis. First, start with also sharing that diagnosis and then kind of luring people in maybe or inviting them is maybe a better word to then talk about, hey, this and that. For example, working as a team on certain actions or on certain outcomes could be a solution for this challenge, this– or yeah, for this challenge that I’m seeing. So yeah, that’s a really good– or what I’m realizing right now– and I fear you’re not disagreeing with that– but is that, yeah, first team, of course, is a solution to a certain set of problems. And we shouldn’t, as with most other things, shouldn’t, yeah, bulldoze over every challenge that we have or every problem that we have, but consider it in light of what actually are we trying to– what problem are we trying to solve?

That’s a really good point. I’m glad you brought that out. I probably only half disagree with this, with what I said earlier. Sidewards, the space it occupies or it’s placed in my mind is basically that it’s one, it’s in part value or principle, and in part tool. To me, it’s probably 80% value because it’s very deeply rooted in how I believe long-term sustainable organizations function really well. It’s aligned with how I think about growing and building leaders and how I also know honestly in practice how change management and communication work really well. So there is– and it also, I guess, speaks to the way that I ultimately know organizations function best. Again, unless you’re trying to just burn money and burn people out really quickly, then again, that’s not for you. I think the tooling part is where something like, let’s look at what problems we’re actually facing, we’re basically working together more as a first team can be useful. I do think at the same time, your point is very good in that it doesn’t solve all problems. It still requires at least some changes. And for example, how your setting goes as an organization and whatnot. It’s also like, honestly, I’ve led leadership teams where I’ve had people who basically told me I really don’t care much for hanging out socially with my peers. And that’s fine, whereas other people value that. And the degree to which it’s going to be useful for everyone as individuals will vary. But at the same time, I still have to use the power I have as an engineering leader in using it as a tool mostly of prescribing it a bit. Because I know of its effectiveness. I think you’re making a really good point. And I kind of want to say, yeah, you’re right. But also, I don’t care.

Yeah, a lot of what you just said was kind of a second point where I wanted to disagree with you. But no, we’re–

Just disagreed with myself already.

But you framed it beautifully and much better than I could have in that first team is part value and part tool. Yeah, it’s probably or/very likely that it depends on the leader. I mean, what is their style? What is their value system? Do they value collaboration very highly? Then first team is probably a very useful tool. Whereas, yeah, with leaders who don’t care so much about collaboration who are very much or more in the realm of I tell it what to do and you just go do it. Yeah, for them, first team, this is not a useful tool and in part because it’s simply not part of their value system.

And I would still honestly, even in that case, if it’s just you don’t take as the underlying collaboration much or whatnot, I guess sure that’s fine. But even in that case, I really would want to encourage people to try it at least as a tool, even if it’s not your personal thing as much or whatnot. I mean, honestly, I still sometimes work with leaders as peers who I know I’m never going to be friends with. That’s OK. I mean, that’s not just we professionally disagree on a lot of things. But I’ve still gained a lot of value out of working more closely with people who have very different ways of operating than me and whatnot. Because I do think there is even in the just kind of tooling aspects of the first team, like how you communicate or how you roll out changes across the argument, there is enough substantial value that I think you should try it even if it’s not your personal thing.

I don’t want to destroy the perfect ending that you kind of just said. It’s really like a perfect goodbye phrase almost for this big and for this episode, I feel.

It’s still change the order. Remember the power of editing.

Or maybe I just repeat it. Yeah, I really love that thought. That it’s not only– or even if you’re a leader who probably nobody will say, they don’t value collaboration. But if you still–

I kind of don’t at all times. Yeah. Come out.

So dear leader, dear listener, Lena and I, we encourage you very, very heavily to at least try it out. See what kind of parts of your challenges it solves or might solve.

And I think that even kind of trying this, even if it’s not your personal thing, I think it again goes to the spirit of the whole idea. And that’s where we’re coming around to this in a very meta way, where your job as a leader is to optimize for what’s best for the organization. What is good for the organization is if you have a strong first team of leaders at all levels, where those folks learn from each other, build things together, and are able to grow through that as well, and ultimately cultivate an organization that is higher performing and higher performing than it currently is. And so again, it’s not just about what you want, even if you’re in a very powerful position in your organization, but about what’s best for the org. And that’s where this concept just can be really helpful. Kind of, yeah, maybe get it over yourself a little bit. We all have to, everyone.

There, get over it.

Those can be the closing words. Yes. That’s all I have to say on the matter, probably. Even though I feel like I still have so much to say on this topic, but I really love your questions. And thank you for challenging me and giving me some things to think about as well. Appreciate that.

You’re very welcome. Thank you so much for this very inspiring conversation, for sharing loads of your experience. That was also super, super cool to have some very, very practical things to take away. I feel like everybody who listens has probably or can take something away to apply almost immediately. So that’s very cool. Thank you for that. Not only for that, but for just being here, being an awesome guest for an amazing conversation that was loads of fun. I hope listeners can feel that.

Thank you. This was a lot of fun. Look forward to being able to share this.

This was the first episode in the second season of the cto.coffee podcast. My name is Benjamin Reitzammer and this episode’s guest was Lena Reinhard. I hope you enjoyed listening to the conversation as much as Lena and I enjoyed having the conversation. If you want to know more about Lena’s work, check out her website at lenareinhard.com and you can find out more about the podcast and reach out to me at cto.coffee.