015 - Neil Vass on Managing Teams

Time Limit

“The more you think about how things look to other people and how might they see the world, the better you're going to work together as a team.”

There’s a lot that goes into making a team work well together. Of course there are those magical instances where you get a group of talented people together and it just works. But more often than not, you have to take a measured approach to make the magic happen. In this episode, Brett interviews Neil Vass, an agile delivery manager for Co-op Digital, about the complexities of leading teams. The conversation is productive and full of tactics and resources, and covers:

• Practices for staffing teams
• How to identify a teams’ strengths and weaknesses
• How to get teams aligned around organizational and project goals
• Ways to motivate team members, even when you are not a line manager
• Exercises to help with team building
• Low-effort, high-impact practices to help you keep the team feeling positive and productive

Links and resources mentioned in this episode:

• Co-op Digital's blog
• More on the role of a delivery manager
• Resources on building empathy and communication in teams: A user manual for me by Cassie Robinson and Our Empathy Survey Says - Awesome Retro by Stephen Mounsey
• The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle
• The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth

The quote Neil mentioned, which was by Dr. W. Edwards Deming

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