Building a strong foundation for your team is one of the fundamental responsibilities of tech leaders and is key to ensuring strong and productive outcomes. And it all starts with values.

This is the key insight of Prosper Nwankpa, President, Co-Founder, and CTO of Avanoo, whose approaches to enterprise culture development are made through storytelling and coaching. We had a chance to sit down with Prosper and talk about the work he and his team are doing at Avanoo. Amid discussions of team and culture building, Prosper goes into the importance of the right values and mindsets within engineering teams. Here is a recap of some of his points:

Value-driven teams naturally have a higher-level understanding of what they need to be working towards. Ensuring success is not a straightforward path, but with the guidance of values, there’s a source of truth involved and leaders have the responsibility of reinforcing that.

1. Keep things simple and lean, and lead your team by fostering values.

Driving your team to success not only falls on building a successful product, it’s being amongst your team and fostering an environment of empathy and transparency. Setting a foundation by reinforcing these values in every aspect of your day-to-day workflows will strengthen any team.

Similar principles can be applied to your interactions with your users. For example: users feel success when you provide them the tools they need to do so and the understanding of being in their shoes. A user undergoing a minor setback in their experience brings about specific emotions. Having empathy brings a level of transparency and breaks the barrier between your team and your customer.

2. Empathy brings transparency, transparency drives solutions, solutions deliver success.

The tech industry is a massive, massive field, and it’s growing by leaps and bounds at a rapid rate. Individuals who strive to be successful in this field have to constantly adapt to those changes and often an endeavor that requires a tremendous amount of effort.

Embracing this and encouraging your team to grow, upskill, and establish themselves as notable individuals in this ever-changing industry. Facilitate that culture of learning and teaching through experience while encouraging growth and just watch the impact that will have on your team. More experience tends to yield more resilient individuals, and resilient individuals are often flexible and thrive with team members. But it needs to be nurtured through motivation and encouragement. Having the ability to work and be successful in the face of pressure and adversity is achievable through having a solid support system within the team.  

We all want to generate impact with every action we take, it’s the nature of the industry we work in. Basic values and having a strong sense of teamwork is crucial to achieving that impact. Having that foundation can help ensure your team’s success in your goals while strengthening and fostering your relationships with each other. Strong teams are built to last.

Watch the full interview with Prosper here: