As a leader, your job is not to be the boss and check on every task, but to provide value to your team, helping them grow, learn to fix things, and make decisions without you. One of the best ways to provide value is by asking questions. Questions clarify expectations, confirm understanding, and build relationships.

When you test medical device software, you must be very careful. But when development wants to push a cadence of two weeks per sprint, every sprint, you’ve just got to keep up! Interpret the regulatory requirements not as a set of disabling constraints, but as a challenge to find the optimal route to navigate through.

On any team, there are bound to be some differences. But even though work styles may differ from what you expect, they may not be problematic simply because they are different. Before making assumptions about what a teammate is doing or why, just ask to find out. Their differences may bring a helpful new perspective.