Tuesday, October 15, 2013

I don't own my team

If you know me you know that I strongly believe that the language we use shapes our thoughts. I hate the dehumanizing use of resources when we mean people, or use of 'the business' when referring to people outside of IT.

The new phrase that I'm trying to eradicate from my language is 'my team'.

Since moving back into a team lead role I've started using this phrase again and it's been making me feel increasingly uncomfortable. It does so in two regards. Firstly, it's possessive as if I own the team. Secondly, it makes me feel that I'm solely responsible for the team and their output.

In conversations with other team members, I've switched the my to an our. When talking to people outside of the team, I'm starting to refer to my own team by the team name. I also noticed that  have been referring to other teams by team leader name. This needs to stop too.

By using our I feel like we're all in it together rather than me being above the team or owning them.

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