5 Practical Strategies to Build Strong Work Relationship With Your Dev Team

As an engineering manager, you understand that the success of any project lies in building strong work relationships with a software development team. Positive workplace relationships can have a significant impact on developer performance, team morale, and the company’s growth.

However, building relationships in the workplace can be challenging, especially in remote or hybrid teams.

In this blog post, we will discuss why it is important to build strong work relationship within engineering teams and explore top strategies to build positive work relationships with software engineers and how to implement them in your workflow with Ace, AI co-pilot for engineering leadership.

Importance of work repationship

Why good work relationship is important for tech teams?

A report by Gartner highlighted that team relationships are key to creating high-performing teams, and that engineering managers must prioritize building positive relationships to foster collaboration, creativity, and innovation within their tech teams.

Building positive relationships in the workplace can lead to a range of benefits, including:

• Increased trust: When software engineers have strong relationships, they are more likely to trust and rely on each other, leading to better collaboration and more effective problem-solving.
• Better collaboration: Strong relationships make it easier for team members to work together and share ideas, leading to more creative and innovative solutions.
• Improved job satisfaction: Employees who have positive working relationships with their colleagues tend to be happier, more engaged, and more productive.

When team members feel that they are part of a supportive network, they are more likely to contribute ideas, take risks, and work together effectively to achieve common goals.

Challenges in building work relationships

Building relationships in the workplace can be difficult for many reasons.

Here are some of the challenges of building good work relationships that software development teams may face:

• Communication issues: One of the biggest challenges in building relationships with software engineers is communication. Communication breakdowns can occur when team members have different communication styles or have no possibility to discuss work issues constructively.
• Cultural differences: In software engineering teams that are made up of people from different backgrounds, cultural differences can be a challenge. Different cultures may have different work ethics, communication styles, and ways of approaching problems. These differences can create misunderstandings and conflicts.
• Work overload: The software development process can be very demanding, and team members may be under pressure to meet deadlines or complete complex projects. When team members are overworked and stressed, it can be difficult to build and maintain positive working relationships.
• Remote work: With the rise of remote and hybrid work, many software engineering teams are now working from different locations. Remote work can make it harder to build relationships, as team members may not have the opportunity to interact face-to-face.

If not addressed by a manager, these challenges can lead to a number of workplace issues. Here are a few examples:

• Misunderstandings: Communication breakdowns can lead to misunderstandings and mistakes. For example, if a team member doesn't understand a task or the requirements for a project, they may not complete it correctly, leading to delays and frustration.
• Conflict: Cultural differences can lead to conflicts between team members. For example, if a team member from one culture is used to working independently and another team member from a different culture is used to working collaboratively, they may clash when working together.
• Burnout: Work overload can lead to burnout, which can make it difficult for team members to work together effectively. Burned-out team members may be irritable or disengaged, making it harder to build positive working relationships.
• Isolation: Remote work can make team members feel isolated, which can lead to a lack of engagement and motivation. Without face-to-face interaction, it can be harder to build strong working relationships.

How to build good work relationship?

To overcome these challenges, managers should implement activities and best practices that will help engineering teams boost communication and build a healthy work environment.

In this part, we’ll offer top strategies that a manager can implement in the workflow right now and significantly improve collaboration between software engineers.

Here is the list of top strategies for building positive workplace relationships in tech teams that REALLY WORK:

Tip #1. Establish clear communication with regular team meetings

This is a MUST. The first thing an Engineering Manager should implement on a day-to-day basis is holding regular team meetings to encourage open and clear communication among developers.

There is an easy way to do this.

Use Ace AI, co-pilot for engineering leadership, that catches the signs of lowering performance based on Git and CI data and recommends to 1-on-1 meeting agenda to improve performance.

See how Ace AI recommendations work in practice:

Tip #2. Foster a positive work environment with constructive feedback

Encourage software developers to give and receive feedback constructively. This practice leads to higher morale and improved performance of engineering teams.

Ace AI also helps to foster healthy collaboration among team members by providing feedback for your developers based on their work in Git, Jira, and other tools.

It ensures that feedbacks are objective and helps engineers improve.

Tip #3. Recognize your top performers

Build healthy work relationships where software engineers feel valued and respected. Encourage collaboration, and celebrate team successes.

With its scheduling of 1-to-1 meetings to discuss achievements, and its ability to generate unique achievement agendas based on data from integrations, Ace AI can help teams stay motivated and engaged.

Tip #4. Prioritize work-life balance and prevent burnout

To prevent burnout and overwork within your tech team, it's crucial to promote a healthy work-life balance. This can be achieved by offering support during regular 1-on-1 meetings with your team.

Since it’s difficult to catch the first signs of burnout (especially when the team is quite big), Ace AI provides managers with insights and notifies them about potential problems based on activity in the integrated tools such as git, Discord, Slack, etc. Then it offers to send feedback to the employee and discuss the burnout issue or workload with an employee during 1-on-1 with personalized agenda.

Tip #5. Embrace diversity

Celebrate the diversity of your team members, and encourage them to share their perspectives and ideas.

It can be easier for those managers who run regular 1-on-1 meetings with their employees and provide them with professional development opportunities inside the company.

Ace AI provides materials and resources for inspiration and improvement.

Conclusion

Building positive working relationships is critical for the success of any engineering team and the whole company as a result.

As an engineering manager, you can easily implement these strategies to improve working relationships and boost communication with AI-powered solution like Ace AI.