Being a Team Lead. Rasa’s insights

Steaming hot cup of tea, gigantic blanket over my legs, purring cat sleeping on the couch next to me and my own story that I’ve been writing for a couple of months – that’s how I’ve always imagined my career and future. It always has been me, myself, and I – leading a group of people was never on my bucket list. Why would I want to be responsible for ±15 living creatures, who rely on me? And, yet, that’s exactly what I do for a living now.

So, what happened in my life that made me realize that I want to become a leader of a team? One Person, that’s what happened. He was the very first person in my work life who actually cared – he went above and beyond for every single member of his team. And I wasn’t even one of them, yet, he made time for me twice a week – telling me all the secrets of a true leader. I’m not sure if he made that position look so appealing, or I got hooked on the idea, but I soon realized that one day, I would love to be THAT PERSON to someone else.

My journey as a Team Lead began at a call center, where I started working with a team of 13 German-speaking Logistics coordinators. People – amazing, position – full of challenges: keeping up with dynamic changes in product, making sure team’s performance is meeting expectations, filling in enormous amounts of forms, documents, sheets; a bunch of administrative tasks – schedule, vacations, sick-leaves, parental days-off, etc. I will not lie – I was scared and lost, and even thought that I might not make it. But after meeting team members one by one and in a team meeting I understood – they’ve got my back, just like I’ve got theirs.

After working in that call center for a year and a half I decided to change my career path and became logistics manager at a cosmetics company, where I had absolutely no people to lead. At first, I liked being back to only caring about myself but something was constantly missing – my team. It took me less than a year to come back to being a Team Lead, this time at CyberCare (Tesonet, back then).

Even though I knew what being a Team Lead is, I still was anxious and scared – what if the team will hate me? What if I fail as a manager? What if I’m not good enough at communicating with people… What if…? What if? My worries turned out to be unnecessary as I was greeted by people, who were very nice to me – helpful, kind, friendly, caring. Pretty sure I’ll never forget what my team members said when we met for the very first time – ‘You do your thing – help us, be there for us, and we’ll take care of the rest.’ What can I say, I was blessed with a great team. Not saying that we didn’t face hardships, of course, we did – yet we still managed to find a solution every single time.

I’ve been working at CyberCare for 2 years now. I don’t regret a single day – administrative tasks still are not my favorite, but watching and helping people grow is something I thrive on. I myself grew as a person along with my team and had opportunities to participate in unique projects, work on things I’ve never imagined I could. Working here helped me realize that people need people, it’s not going to work with only me, myself, and I. After all, being a Team Lead is all about being there for people, empowering them, making sure they feel safe at work.

While I continue doing what I love, I hope that someday I could proudly say – I was THAT PERSON.