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How to Make the Step into a Team Leader Role as a Developer

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This article is a guest post contributed by Adria Solutions


Becoming a team leader or earning that promotion you deserve doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time to position yourself to your bosses that they have the perfect person to promote and no need to go out and recruit.

So how do you go about earning your next promotion? It started when you joined your company…

Be the Best Dev Possible.

Don’t be comfortable with your current skillset. You might be skilled at what you do. But always look to push yourself and expand your knowledge – whether it’s on a particular language to become more rounded, or a just a particular subset of a language that you currently use.

Show yourself as someone who is always looking to improve and you’ll catch the attention of managers above you, as they are always looking for those with drive and determination to improve their business.

Express an Interest

It might sound simple but make the powers that be aware that you would like to progress your career to the next level. It may not be obvious to them that you are looking for a new challenge and the promotion that you crave. You don’t have to be overt, but don’t be too discrete – you need to make sure that they are fully aware of your career plans – and that you see yourself as ambitious.

Take Responsibility

A key factor in becoming a team leader is the ability to take responsibility for your team’s work. You don’t have to take responsibility for the whole team now, but making sure you have the ability to your aspect of a project out on time will show that you can be trusted to lead a team.

If something has gone wrong and you’re at fault don’t just try to hide. Create clear solutions to the problems that arise which will show you as someone who can handle a crisis effectively.

Communication and Management skills

Brush up on your communication and management skills and show that you can handle co-workers and how to talk to higher ups (as well as clients if you deal with them). Showing that you can handle difficult situations calmly and positively will help make you stand out.

Showing that you can effectively communicate with your bosses will also be a massive advantage. They need to see you as someone who can go to clients, and effectively communicate the wishes of them, as well as other bosses to make a project run swimmingly.

Business Sense

Look at Bigger Project/ World

Becoming a team leader requires you to look your company and business in a different way. Looking at how your projects and team fit into the wider business, as well as your customer’s requirements and budgets means that developing your business skills is vital to getting a promotion.

If you haven’t started already, start looking at basic business finance skills, and how your role fits in with this – from a developer to team leader through to the CEO.

The higher up you go in the career ladder, the less it becomes about the day to day project tasks and more about whether it is profitable. Showing that you understand this process will help you with your promotion.

As you become responsible for your team it means that you’ll have to help manage your team to meet budget and timeframe requirements.

Be Approachable and Helpful

All good team leaders should be able to be approached by anyone they lead with questions and be able to be helpful to them. Start showing what you are made of by helping your current team out if they need any advice. By doing this you’ll present yourself as someone who the team turns too and will stand out when your boss is looking for new team leader.

Stay Calm

Budget setback? Project moved forward/backwards? Remember to stay calm at all times. Showing you can quickly, calmly and effectively handle any situation will always help you in your career.

Look to have techniques ready to help you deal with any situation – whether it’s counting to 10, deep breaths or whatever you need to show that you can deal with any setback.




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