And let's dive into the topic. So when we think about building teams, the main thing that comes to my mind is it's all about people.Over the course of my career, I was first in IC, then I became a tech lead, then became a manager, and now I'm a manager of managers, leading teams. I've been in different shoes, so I understand the challenges, of different roles and different, phases of life and also in your career journey. That helps me become a good leader. And, building teams is really all about people. A good team is when you bring the right set of people together with, like, really complimentary skills, empower them with tools, coaching, and support. Magic happens. My personal mantra is always to adapt adapt my coaching style to meet individual needs. Different people thrive in really different conditions.

As a manager, you are really responsible for people, process, and outcomes. So, managers kind of, wear multiple hats. Then you think about servant leadership. You are, like, helping people thrive. You're figuring out what processes are needed to serve your teams well, and then, you're really responsible for the business outcomes for your teams. So it's important, to master all these three different aspects. There are different skills required for building each of these. And, when I think about my personal development and my team's development, I think in these three buckets. Then we talk about the four c's framework. For building teams, these are the four key secret ingredients that makes good teams and that enables people to lead big teams. It's always about context, communication, clarity, and connection. And let's talk more about each of these.

Context is about what you're building, why you're building, who you're building for, what problems you're solving, why those are the most important problems to solve, and then where your progress is. So context is very, very important. Anyone you are talking to, to your leadership, to your team members, to your peers, it's important to set the right context so that you can set the stage and you can have a meaningful conversation and lead to a good outcome. Communication goes hand in hand. It's all about, like, doing the context setting well, having the emotional EQ to do the communication effectively, providing clarity to your teams through effective communication and context setting so that they know what they're doing, why they're doing. And then human connection. Connection is important for people to thrive. We all are humans. We seek connection, and if you don't have the right connection, nothing fits.

It's like, I use the gardening analogy, which is like, hey. You need you need a ecosystem. You need the right conditions for thriving. And for humans, that can secret ingredient is connection. We all spend a lot of time at our work, and if we don't connect with the people you work with, you're not gonna do well. You're not gonna thrive. And then, let me introduce you to the Tuckman, model, which talks about team building and what are the phases of team building. So the four phases of team building that are, commonly talked about are forming, storming, norming, and performing. When you're building teams, forming is the first stage where you are, like, understanding the problems, what what you're working towards, so how what is our purpose.

Storming is when different people are learning how to collaborate together. They are gelling together, understanding different perspectives, brainstorming ideas, like, figuring out how different people can contribute. That's where, conflicts also happen, and you have to figure out ways to amicably and systematically resolve conflicts. And once you figure those things out, your team starts norming, forming, norming, and, like, you start the norms, you set up a process, you start execution. And that's and then you move to the fourth stage called performing, where your team starts performing well. So whenever whenever I'm forming a team or, when things are not going well, I always go back to this framework and think about what phase of this process the team is in and what are the problem areas or the, issues I should be focusing on, and treat it as. So this framework is something that I have, I it's a mental model that I use a lot when I'm forming new teams or, like, troubleshooting problems with the team or hyper if you have a high performing team, you're already in that last phase where things are working well.

But, working in growth environments or in today's environment, you all must have seen team structures keep changing quite a bit. So depending on where you are in your life cycle of the project or the project, you might be in different phases. Are there different things that you should focus on, each of these? So let's talk about that. So the let's talk about the first phase of forming where you are really building the team. You, I talk about a framework which you used a lot at Etsy called product discovery. It was popularized by Martin Kagan. You can read their work. He's a famous author, leading the Silicon Valley Group, and they have a lot of creating and material on, like, how to lead product discovery.

And product discovery is really, really important to understand what is the problem you're solving when you're when you're in the beginning phases of a team or you're taking on the work. Team the work you do at team building is, like, you understand the problem. Once everyone has a shared understanding of the problem as a group, then you can start brainstorming ideas because then you have a clear focus area. You you identify focus areas, brainstorm, and then you cannot let you also, you cannot work on, like, everything, then you have to start prioritizing and picking some ideas or ways you will build MVPs and focus on building your road map. So you take that, put a single order to things, define your road map, you create a vision doc out of it, and then you start thinking about, like, like, how could you validate your ideas. So you identify some success metrics, ways to measure whether where things are working or not working. And then you start effectively, like, documenting that process and communicating it.

This is the part of forming the team. Right now, we are in q quarter four. If you are in any big company, I'm assuming you're also doing annual planning. If you are in any leadership position, this is also the process that goes into annual planning. So it might be happening at the team level. It might be happening at your leadership team level, when you're planning for the next year and kind of figuring out what the, what the what the work looks like. So I call this as a forming process. Then once you have your road map, you start forming the operating rhythm or the structure for the team. How would you operate? This is also an important part of forming, which is like you define your start defining your process. Start setting SLAs. How would everyone works? This is an example of, like, operating rhythm doc for an engineering team might look different for other kind of teams.

So you define what meetings need to be done, what are different SLAs, what is the timelines for doing code reviews, for doing spec reviews, so if you have a production on call, how fast someone needs to respond, how fast to answer Slack questions, when to use what channels, how to provide status updates.

If you're in a distributor team, you have to establish some core hours where you can do meetings, and you have to talk about the how would you do reviews. So some of these are very fundamental to any team and some of these operating rhythm, features become very, very critical when you're working in a highly distributed team environment. Then another framework that I use is the RACI matrix. This is a decision making framework, which is very, very important to establish when you're kind of, figuring out what ideas to execute, how to make decisions, who to inform. So we define a matrix for large projects. They do it. I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with that responsible who's responsible for the project, who's accountable, who needs to be consulted, and who needs to be informed.

So when you create this structure and write it down, it becomes very, very clear. How how does the team operate? And then you define an escalation policy. Then documentation is also important. I really like setting up templates to help the teams ease into, like, what is expected, how they should be communicating, create templates for specs, how would you launch emails, how would you write status updates, run books, announcements? Onboarding docs are really important, especially if you have a team where new members are coming in. It takes away the burden of, like, onboarding new people. Setting up Team Wiki, which can be a great place to, like, start doing product discovery or your team discovery where you can find all the docs. So you can have a team Wiki, you can have a documentation library, whatever works. Different companies have different formats.

But, if you're in a place where you don't have it, I encourage you to think about forming it. It's important, and it really helps. I think of it also as part of the storming process. It's important to think about this only in the team structure. And once you have set this up, then you go to the execution process where you brainstorm ideas, design design things, tell things, review, communicate, learn, and iterate. This is called your execution flywheel. As you start implementing and executing, you might need to iterate and adjust things, and that's part of totally part of norming. This is where managers come in very, very play a very critical role. And once you have nailed down these things, you rinse and repeat. You codify your process. You reentroze it during performance phase, and you continue operating. And that's the that's the key to building a team.

So this is an outline of the framework that I typically use in terms of thinking about team's information. Now let's talk a little bit about distributed teams, how you set them up, what it takes. So I have I have teams that are, for years, I have been working in distributed teams, and often these teams are distributed across multiple time zones. So right now, my teams are in North America, Europe, Mexico, Canada, which means we are distributed across multiple time zones, which also causes very little overlap where everyone can come together at the same time and have synchronous discussions or resolve things quickly.

So this kind of leads to a little bit of knowledge. This can lead to knowledge siloing problem. Often, there are cultural differences, in terms of, like, how people think about work, how they communicate, what are their strengths, and their communication styles as well. So you have to when you are being a manager, you have to be empathetic and very, very, aware about these nuances and think about ways to, like, overcome them. Not everything is lost. There are really good strong things that come with having a distributed global team, which is like you get very diverse perspectives, especially if you're building products which are global in nature. It's important to have representation from a very diverse group, have all the viewpoints represented in your team.

So you build rich products and think about you can tackle all your customer base. It provides you 24 into seven coverage because some part of the world people are always working, so you don't have to worry about how the business will go on. So you can work at a highly more effective rate. It brings diverse skill sets, and internationalization becomes really, really easy. Our common challenges, which are more common or happens more with distributed teams are like, most of them I going back to the framework that I said about context, communication, clarity, and connection, they happen around, like, communication and how do you set up discussions.

A lot of times you all must be in this, must have seen the situation. There are long Slack threads. People are coming talking on Slack. There's long threads going on, long discussion, in those chats, but no decision is made, and it's unclear what's going on. Nowadays, oftentimes, I use AI and then go and insert AI bot and say, hey. Please summarize this 100 thread long conversation for me. What happens is people are chatting, but there's no clear way of making a decision. So there's a decision parallel paralysis. In some cultures, people are, like, really soft spoken. They don't want to, like, argue or so there is a problem where people are not able to disagree and commit and resolve their conflicts. So you have to, like going back to the framework of setting up a racing matrix, figuring out how you would resolve conflicts, so you have to kind of think about it.

So when these problems happen, as managers, you have to troubleshoot what are what's going on, and these are some of the reasons I see that can happen for that can cause problems. There might be crustaceans, some members are new, some are old, people don't trust each other, they don't feel safe voicing their opinions. They're missing the connection. If, we all are human, we think three d, it's very difficult sometimes to talk in remote sessions on, or especially over Slack. So you have to figure out, like, how do you establish that connection, that safety, and create a environment where people can get feedback. Goals might be changing a lot. I might be the manager and I'm coming in and I'm saying yes, And it might be leaving the team confused. They're working for months on something and I say yes to a new project. What are they expected to do?

So you have to debug, like, are there too many constantly changing requirements? Is there a problem that the team is very, very fragmented or understaffed? Their skills gap? So there can be many different reasons for a team that is not performing well or problems are happening, and this is kind of a list of common problems that happen. Then how do you come in and solve these? So here are some leadership principles that I apply. I've seen a lot of it, and I'm still working on the skill which is, like, over communicate. Especially for distributed teams, you cannot just, like, have one staff meeting or a town hall and, like, communicate the information out and expect everyone to digest it and understand it. You have to continue iterating and communicating the information over and over again till everyone gets it.

So always anchor on, like, repeating the information until you ensure that people can understand it. Ask questions. Lead with empathy. Be accountable, be an example, hold people accountable, and pull yourself accountable, measure outcomes and not the activity, especially there might be people who are, like, always on, but the work is not moving forward. The outcome is not there. You have to debug it. So a team which is having a lot of meetings is not equal to an effective team. So you have to measure the outcomes. Maintain decision logs as I talked about, like, communicate what's happening, why it's happening, if you're making any changes, why you're making those changes. Don't just do them in a meeting. Make sure you're taking notes.

You have a place where you can record the communication so that anyone who is not actively present can go back to that system and catch up and understand how a decision was made, what went into it, and you can also learn from it over time. There are some people who maintain their decision logs literally publicly. They're maintaining GitHub, and you can go and see them. So those are some of the practices. You don't have to do it publicly, but for your teams, if you can document that process, that really helps. All of these help with building trust, and trust is very critical for managers to establish. Here's some of the manager rituals to build trust and debug. Do skip levels. Make sure you have, build a habit of providing gratitude, recognizing, and celebrating events. In diverse environments, there's a lot of cultural diversity. People might be following different holidays, religious, celebrations. Make sure you create a space for everyone. Celebrate them. Connect with people. Personal connection is important as managers to establish.

All this keep time to, like, get to know people on a personal level. It also helps to understand what motivates them. Career discussions, coaching, conflict resolution, we talked about it earlier. Conflicts happen a lot and one on ones and as a manager, your job is to, like, identify conflict then help remove it. It does not mean you have to remove it directly, tell people what to do, but, like, you use coaching as a tool and help people understand and figure out how to resolve it themselves. And be open, honest, and vulnerable. By being vulnerable means, I say, bring your whole self to work. If you are struggling with something, it's okay to share it to the team.

It makes you more human, and they can relate with it, and they can also help you. So lead by example, be vulnerable, that's important. These are some of the things I practice. Collaboration rituals for the team that brings the team together. Make sure you have some of these activities and you set aside time for doing it. So pair programming, doing demo days, processing syncs where you have a common time where teams can come together and not just doing async work, roundabouts or learning sessions, and some team building activities. One of my teams used to do one Friday a month where the team would come together and just play games. So they get to know each other. As managers, you should always think about your own design. Be very proactive about it. Don't be like, hey. This is a set of people.

They just need to work together. Take time to reflect on what your own design looks like. How people are set up? Do people have time zone overlapped to, work together? Do they each have growth opportunities? Do they have peers to support them? And quantity matters or quantity. It doesn't matter. I always talk about you're better off with a smaller team than a larger team if you can work effectively. And then think about the hiring process, what skills are missing, and what you need to hire for. So if you're working at big companies, they have a standard process for hiring. When I'm doing hiring, I'm always looking at it and tweaking it as needed. These are some of the common pitfalls that can happen as a manager even when you're doing the other things.

Here I want to talk about the focus on upward communication and visibility of the work that your teams are doing. So as managers, you're responsible. You're the bridge layer between your teams and your senior leadership. So make sure you're communicating progress upwards, you're talking to your skip levels, your peers, in different cross functional teams. You don't have single points of failure in your team. Something called as bus factor, which is like, if you're hit by a bus tomorrow, your team's work should not stop. But make sure you don't develop single points of failure. You can watch out for it by ensuring you are not doing too much and you're effectively delegating things. And these things are important for you to enable scaling you. Time management, don't ever take let meetings take over your calendar.

I declare calendar bankruptcy every quarter or six months. Now look at your calendar. Think about which need new things need to be adjusted or changed, and make sure you have time for big focus work. Be aware of about your learning goals. You should always network within your companies and outside the companies. That helps you, grow your skills, have diverse perspectives, and you should also delegate things if you have too much on your plate. That's also a sign that you're not managing your time well. So this is critical. Don't be reactive about your time management. It's easy to fall into that pattern as a manager. And then most important thing, self care. Managers are very service oriented. You're always thinking about others.

Make sure you're thinking about your goals, your skills. So build your network, identify skills that you want to grow, can be soft skills, hard skills, and it changes from time to time, take feedback, adjust your plans. Pursue sponsorship. It's important. And I call sponsorship specifically, not mentorship because there's a difference. Your sponsors represent you even when you are not in the room. They open up doors for you. So sponsorship is more like as mentorship where someone is just showing up for you. So seek sponsorship. As women, we get a lot of mentoring, but sponsorship is what helps you grow in your careers. Identify hobbies that help you disconnect, help you recharge, and, most important, when practicing no. Doing too much is something we all fall into.

We all especially women, we are multifaceted. We are handling our couriers and families and everything. Learn to say no to a few things so you can focus on the ones that you care about and take risk. Don't always go for the safe options. Stretch yourself and take risk. And with that, I end the session. Here's my LinkedIn connection. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn or ask questions.