I would stress this the most: support your team. Give your team the technical and emotional support they need to do their jobs well and <i>have fun doing it</i>.<p>Some things I&#x27;ve noticed that had the largest impact on employee engagement:<p>-<p>1. Poorly defined development processes heavily impacts morale. Define your code standards, your process for picking a library to use, how you handle versioning of code (and which methodologies), how your team should escalate problems, and expectations of individual team members. Document this in a place where anyone on the team can view it.<p>2. All projects require documentation on how to setup a build. If that doesn&#x27;t exist, developers ramped up on the project will loathe the project from the start (and in some cases, the team lead). From scratch, setup a project before handing it off. Document everything you had to do.<p>3. Onboarding of new team members: make yourself or someone you appoint available at all times for the first week or so. Document and fix anything the new team member needed help with. Onboarding is hard, this will be an ongoing process.<p>4. Setup one-on-one meetings. Once every couple of weeks seems ideal in my experience. Don&#x27;t have an agenda, but have a few questions you resort to for filling in quiet spots for the more introverted types. Don&#x27;t be afraid to ask hard questions (did you have a problem with Robert in accounting last week? are you happy with your salary? what would make you happier?). This meeting is key to employee retention and team happiness.<p>5. Allow for an open discussion on all major decisions. Have a tool in place where anyone can raise problems. If someone can post anonymously to start a topic, that&#x27;s ideal. That is where some of the best business growth will take place.<p>6. Read a book on mentorship. Mentor your team. If someone surpasses your skillset on the team, you&#x27;ve succeeded. I&#x27;ve not read all of Maxwell&#x27;s books, but he has some really great insight in the couple I&#x27;ve read: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;John-C.-Maxwell&#x2F;e&#x2F;B001H6NROC&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;John-C.-Maxwell&#x2F;e&#x2F;B001H6NROC&#x2F;</a><p>7. Become known as an advocate&#x2F;mediator for those on your team and the higher-ups. Fight for your team when you need to, and fight for upper management decisions when you need to. Finding a balance is important, but never lose trust of those you lead.<p>-<p>In many cases, becoming a technical lead also means you are expected to learn the business side of things. It wouldn&#x27;t hurt to read business-oriented books. Anything by Jim Collins is great (Good to Great is a must-read):
<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Jim-Collins&#x2F;e&#x2F;B001H6GSHK" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Jim-Collins&#x2F;e&#x2F;B001H6GSHK</a><p>Best of luck, and congratulations on your learning opportunity!