What is the most important thing a Team Leader can do for their team?

Is it help them organise their tasks? Challenge them to push themselves? Teach them new things?

These things can certainly help team members achieve the company's goals. However, our guest, Wojtek Korczyński, has a different idea of leadership.

Wojtek is an engineer with extensive experience in the IT industry. At NaviParking, he is a Team Leader of one of the two core Engineering Teams. He knows the responsibility that comes with leading a team. He approaches leadership with careful consideration of what his team needs and how his words and actions will impact them. Wojtek believes that what makes a good team leader is shifting the focus from the product to the people.

“People are the, I believe, essence of each team, of each work and of each product that we do. So, if we are talking about people and the people in terms of the role of a team leader, the main responsibility, I believe, is creating the emotional safety to all of the people in a team. So, I think that this is the core and the most important part… if people don’t feel safe at their work, I believe that they will sooner or later leave the work. And that is of course something that all of us would like to avoid.”

In this episode, Wojtek discusses what makes a good team leader, how to encourage teamwork in a remote work environment and his ultimate goal as a team leader.

“People should feel that they are somehow connected to the product they develop. Nowadays, I think that this is something that we really forget about, because all the changes that happened in the industry led to a moment in which one person does one part of a job, another person does another part of a job but they don’t feel like they are creating their own product.”

Wojtek also explains his approach to managing stress as a team leader. He explains the negative effects of stress, what good leaders can do to help their team members avoid it, how to deal with people who are causing it and how to establish boundaries with others in the company.

“As a team leader, one of my goals is to avoid team to feel that stress. I can see a role of a team leader as a kind of wall. The stress comes and pressure comes but my role is to be a wall that stops this pressure so my team members wouldn’t feel this.”

Watch the full episode to see an in-depth discussion on good leadership, and find out what tips Wojtek has for other team leaders to achieve success in their roles.