# How I lead teams

> A remote, international team of 25, built around ownership.

- Topic: Working with me
- About: Andrew Dyer, customer experience and operations leader, Boston
- Canonical page: https://andyer.com/help/articles/how-i-lead-teams

I built and led a remote, international team of 25 over nine years at Workable. I defined levels and promotion criteria, and many team members were promoted internally.

**My take:** promote from within, and put the front line to work across the company. Support people know the product and the customer better than almost anyone, so I find work that grows their career and helps the team. At Workable, that meant:

- **Sales liaisons**, who joined account management meetings and caught trends in handoffs and renewals
- **Product and project work**, for people who wanted to shape what got built
- **Knowledge management**, for people who loved getting the answer right and findable
- **Management**, for 7 ICs who became first-time managers

**How I kept the ❤️ as the team grew:**

- **Onboarding** built product expertise and customer empathy by having new hires use the product from both the customer's side and ours.
- **Mission and values** came from a workshop with the team. We made versions to hang in our workspaces and kept highlights of the discussions for people who joined later.
- **High ownership,** from peer-led training to policies that let people use their own judgment on things like refunds.
- **QA.** I built our QA scorecard and ran calibration sessions so reviewers scored consistently.
- **Minimum expectations.** I don't expect everyone to perform exactly the same. I set minimum expectations, make sure people can see what they're working toward, and value steady improvement over burning out on overperformance.
- **When someone falls below them,** I find the specific gaps and coach them one on one. I've used performance improvement plans, but my priority is solving it before it gets that far.
- **Monthly team meetings** covered company updates, and anyone could shout out a teammate.
- **Minimizing social distance,** with team-building events and close communication. Memes included!

[Read the full case study](https://andyer.com/scaling-teams-with-purpose)