I’ve talked with my friend recently and he complained about his team leader (actually he was explaining me why his team leader sucks). It’s not about her personality or attitude but my friend’s biggest complaint was questions his team leader asks him e.g.:
- Is everything OK for you?
Well… How can you answer this question. Is she asking about my private life, my development environment, my current assignments? What answer does she expect? If almost everything is OK for me but I have some ideas how to improve team’s performance should I answer “Yes”, “Yes, but…” or “No”? This is a wrong question IMHO - it shows lack of respect because team leader doesn’t really care about the answer, it’s like “How are you?”.
If you are Team/Project Lead and you lead development team you should read this post and get to know engineer’s point of view.