What is management about? According to my favorite podcast, Manager Tools, as a manger you need to achieve results and retention. Pretty obvious on the one hand. But terribly difficult to implement, especially if you want to balance things. One aspect is how to integrate new members into the team. If you have not read my post on what actually makes a team, please go here first.
When you join a team you are the “freshman”, at least in terms of team dynamics. Not so long ago I had switched teams myself and after quite a few years found myself in that role again. I had gone through this process quite a few times, either within an organization or combined with a complete change of employer. Different this time was that from day one I was officially in charge of two knowledge areas (architecture and DevOps) in a global function.
This was an interesting experience, given the combination of being team freshman and subject matter expert at the same time. So I had to balance what I consider appropriate behavior for someone new to a team, with demonstrating thought leadership in my areas of expertise. I knew most folks from previous interaction and regarded them very highly for what they had delivered in the past. And seeing how they treated those team members that I did not know yet, I was quickly convinced that those were top performers, too.
From the receiving end, I was welcomed very friendly and that included the same amount of teasing everybody else received and gave. It was clearly a warm welcome for me and I truly appreciate(d) it. My colleagues also gave me the distinct feeling that my input was seen as valuable to the team as a whole. Or in other words: They gave me space to define and fill my role, which is much more than your official job description.
The tone for this was set by management and, as with so many other aspects, followed by the others. This is classic leadership by example. Of course, if you have a jerk on the team it will probably not help very much. But it is absolutely the manager who sets the tone. A few years ago I first hand experienced how a new boss literally killed a weekly team call that had gone successfully for years in just a fortnight.
An additional aspect for people who just started their career is letting them establish themselves in the organization. Especially for engineers who tend to be more reserved and have a somewhat introvert personality, which from a scientific perspective is different from being reserved (for more details, I have linked a video in this post). These people need to be given opportunities where they can demonstrate their capabilities in a “safe environment” and then be recognized for it. They will flourish in such a setup and typically deliver much more than you expect.
The worst thing you can do with such folks is to shout them down in meetings or conference calls. Very quickly they will go silent, suffer quietly, and start looking for somewhere else to go. This is one of the reason why leading a group of software developers is very different from e.g. marketing folks. But that is for a different post.