Sometimes people move teams. The reasons why can be varied. It could be this person’s skills are needed on a different set of work. Or maybe to drive their personal development you need to provide other opportunities for them. Or perhaps they are unhappy for some reason. Generally speaking it’s pretty healthy for a business to move people about. But regardless of the reason, it’s going to affect your organisation. By changing someone’s line management and transferring a person between teams you are changing the team dynamics of two teams. In order to help keep both the teams and that individual happy, you really need to understand what makes them tick.
If you’re the manager who is losing a person, you hopefully already have a working relationship with them but you may not have had the head space to figure out how this is going to affect your team. If you’re the manager that is receiving a new team member, you might already have a fair idea of what your team needs but you may not know the person that is joining you.
Depending on your organisation, the hand over of line management may happen casually between two managers, with little to no structure. When I looked online, I couldn’t really see anything to help this transition. At the very least you should have a conversation with the line manager who is giving up or receiving the line report. Before you have the meeting, try to summarize (in writing) what the reasons for the move are. It’s good for everyone involved to be on the same page.
For the process of handing over itself, I came up with a few questions you can ask or answer to ease the movement of people around the organisation.
Happiness
- What motivates / demotivates this person?
- Are they happy at work?
- Who are their friends at work?
- Do they have any triggers for things that upset them or that they have particularly strong opinions about?
- Are there areas where they’ve been particularly happy or excited to work on in the past?
Communication
- What are they like on a 1:1 basis?
- What are they like in a group setting?
- Have they raised any concerns or needs over the move?
Work/Life
- How well do they manage their work / life balance?
- What do they do in their free time? Any hobbies?
- How is their general well-being (both home and work)?
- What are their regular working hours/days?
- Do they have any “invisible” commitments outside work that we need to ensure they’re supported with?
Personal Development
- What personal goals are they working towards?
- Do they want or need training on anything?
- What was their biggest success recently?
- Have they struggled with anything recently?
- What are they hoping to get from the change?
- Do they have an existing buddy/mentor/coach – will that relationship change if they move?
Support / Management
- How do they prefer to be supported/managed?
- Are there any current issues or problems that need managing?
- What did they like / dislike about their old team?
- What are their strengths and weaknesses?
- Do they have any preferences/strengths/issues working with particular technologies or environments?
- When are they going to move and sit with the new team?
You might not have, or be able to get all the answers to the questions, but finding out as much as you can will give you a head start in being able to build rapport with your new line report. It’ll also help you settle them in and set them on the path to building new relationships with other people in the team. Try it out the next time you have people coming or going from your team.
For more on Metail’s culture and team, please visit www.metail.com/careers