Remote Work at QualityMinds: Finding the Balance between Team Leading and Parenting

Today we are visiting our colleague Max in the office in Berlin. He is Team Lead of the Quality Learning Team and Scrum Master.

He works part-time and in a remote work model. He shares this management position with his colleague Verena (both work part-time) and lives in beautiful Berlin with his wife and their children.

Working as a Team Lead when you’re a parent? Is that possible? Of course it’s possible! At least according to Max, who is also a Scrum Master in a software team in addition to his role as Team Lead.

How did you come to QualityMinds?

Max: I was particularly attracted by the combination of learning and agility: I come from a Learning & Development background and the interface between agility & learning convinced me that I could develop further at QualityMinds.

Through my work as a Scrum Master, I understand what agility really means in implementation and what it feels like to work in an agile way. For me, it is important to live agile principles in everyday working life and maintain them in the organisation. This helps us to bring agility out into the world and to our customers. What does agility mean to us, where can we apply agile frameworks and methods and where not? We live this attitude at QualityMinds and that makes my work special for me.

We meet Max in the new QualityMinds office in Berlin, with a view of the TV tower.

Max: Most of the Quality Learning team works remotely – after all, we are based in Munich, Nuremberg and Berlin. In addition, many of our ‘Berlin Minds’ are often travelling to events or customer meetings. We therefore try to get together regularly for lunch breaks or an after-work beer in the office. Our jobs, which largely take place in the virtual world, theoretically don’t require an office. However, informal dialogue, getting to know each other and collaboration are usually a little easier when you get together in person.

What do you like about working from home and what do you like about the office setting?

Max: In the home office, I particularly appreciate the opportunity to organise my day flexibly. I have shorter journeys to school and nursery and can use the time I save for sport or housework. I also have a very well-equipped mobile workstation at home – not a makeshift solution.

In the Berlin office, on the other hand, I experience a change of scenery. The office is beautifully designed. Light, wood and clear shapes dominate the picture and I feel very comfortable here. In the office, I look forward to meeting my colleagues in the kitchen for a coffee and chatting with them outside of the meeting headings. Now in summer, I also love cycling through Berlin to the office – the city is really lively, green and liveable in summer.

How do you communicate with your colleagues from your home office and which digital channels do you use? Which challenges do you face?

Max: My usual internal communication tools are Slack and Teams. I’m currently also experimenting with audio and video formats. When chatting, the tone of voice of the sender is not conveyed directly, it only emerges in your head when you read it. I therefore often use audio messages to exchange ideas with colleagues who I rarely meet live. It’s quicker and I can hear emotional nuances. This helps me to interpret the messages correctly and avoid misunderstandings. In addition, the tools I know now also provide a transcript that helps me to recognise and assign messages.

Functioning asynchronous communication in particular is essential for us, as we are often with customers in consulting and rarely catch each other live. As I’m not always available at the same time as the other colleagues, it’s all the more important that we can also exchange information with a time delay.

Have you ever been able to contribute your own ideas to QualityMinds?

Max: One of my initiatives was the opening of our office in Berlin, as we had reached a number of employees after my arrival that we considered an office to be useful. Together with my colleagues, I was then able to choose suitable premises that we were allowed to set up as our own office. That was a great project for me, because now I have an office that I really enjoy travelling to.

A core principle at QualityMinds is: “Don’t ask for permission, ask for forgiveness.” Employees are encouraged to take the initiative without waiting for permission, and if mistakes happen, we clean them up together afterwards. For me, that is a strong sign of trust on the part of our management.

You have your role as a parent and at the same time you are Team Lead. How do you manage to combine both roles?

Max: I manage it by liaising closely with everyone involved. My wife and I have work contracts that are tailored to our needs. One of the things that is important to both of us is our daily consultation and forward planning. Who brings the children and who picks them up? Who has appointments and when, and how can we prioritise them? Are other external people involved or are these internal matters? Planning is always done on a daily basis and we have to constantly synchronise our calendars and stay dynamic.  

How do you reconcile your role as Team Lead with your part-time model? How do you liaise with your team?

Max: What’s special about our Learning team is that we have two Team Leads who work part-time. I share the tasks with my Team Lead colleague Verena. We have daily meetings together to distribute topics and pass them on. Given the time we have available, we naturally want to avoid duplication and at the same time ensure that no information is lost.

In my Team Lead role, for example, I am responsible for making sure that the team has everything it needs to work efficiently. Is everyone doing well? Does anyone need anything? Are there any obstacles that could prevent them from doing their best work? Is there a lack of information?

During my part-time work, however, I had to learn to say no and to consistently prioritise tasks or quickly bring them to the team. I think I have also learnt to give up because I trust my team completely, either to make good decisions themselves or to tell me honestly if information is still missing. This is also in line with the understanding of leadership at QualityMinds, but it took me time to understand what this means in practice. 

It has a lot to do with courage and trust, and that is also a core corporate value at QualityMinds. The people in our teams need the courage to make their own decisions and the confidence that they can make these decisions. And I need the courage to say: “Guys, I have to go to the daycare centre,” as well as the confidence that my colleagues are doing their job to the best of their ability and, as experts in their field, know better than me anyway. And quite honestly, that’s a really nice feeling!

How do you assess the social mood and acceptance of part-time models for men in the context of our modern working world?

Max: The traditional role models certainly still exist in our society. However, I have the feeling that it is becoming more and more normal for men to work part-time. Maybe I don’t see things from outside my own bubble, but in my perception it seems to have become more acceptable if I have to leave at 3.30 pm to pick up the boys from school or nursery. My wife also emphasised from the start that she has ambitions that go beyond the family and household. And I could totally understand that. It was therefore clear to us that we wanted to live this model of shared responsibility – with all its consequences.

However, the decision has proved to be absolutely enriching for me. The last few years have given me so much and I have certainly developed a lot as a person. The fact that I ‘had’ to spend time with the children has led to a great bond with them. This has given me the feeling that my wife and I are on an equal footing when it comes to parenting. So alongside my professional career, I also have a private one, and it’s great that I’m accompanying my children as they grow up and that I can be an equal carer for them alongside my wife.

Of course, working models like this still require people in partnerships who are willing to engage in this negotiation process and employers who allow their employees to adapt their work situation to their private life model. And I’m really happy to work for an employer as flexible as QualityMinds, who lives and promotes these values.

How has your part-time model been received at QualityMinds?

Max: In my professional environment, I meet with a lot of understanding for the flexible working model that I have. My employer and my team fully support me. In family emergencies, such as a sick child or a closed daycare centre, I write a short message in our Slack channel in the morning and then there is a lot of encouragement, shamrocks and teddy bears and I can look after the children with a clear conscience. And I think that’s special because, as a consultancy firm, we are subject to economic requirements. But people and family always take centre stage!

What technology/hardware did you get from QualityMinds at your workplace at home?

Max: At QualityMinds, I see how great importance is attached to ensuring that employees are optimally equipped so that they can work efficiently wherever they are. I received everything I wanted for my workplace: Laptop, headset, external monitor, laptop stand and other technical aids.

Have you already been able to test new technologies at Quality Minds?

Max: As an educator at QualityMinds, it’s easy for me to explore new things. Or to put it another way: I can’t avoid it! A brief exchange with IT or the day-to-day work in my Scrum team usually brings up a new topic for me that I have to get to grips with. Be it Office tooling or the technical infrastructure of software developers. I’m sure I won’t get bored so quickly!

Which training programmes do you use at QualityMinds?

Max: I really enjoy our agile learning coaching programme. Each mind has an agile learning coach who helps me to identify learning topics and make them addressable. This offer is available to all QualityMinds employees and is very well received.

A current topic from my learning coaching is ‘transformational leadership‘ and the question of which leadership style suits the way we want to work together. In my role as a manager, I naturally want to continuously grow and develop.

I also like to use ‘Open Up‘, a platform for psychological coaching that QualityMinds makes available to all employees. I have been working with a psychologist there for a year and a half and receive coaching from her on specific topics, such as work-life balance or conflict management, so that I can fulfil my various roles as team lead, scrum master, dad and spouse well.

What do you think of the regular team events at QualityMinds, especially the culture days at the summer event?

Max: I really enjoy seeing everyone at the team events. We are a wild, crazy, positive bunch at QualityMinds. When I come back from the team events, I have an even stronger sense of togetherness and see how cool our minds are, what characterises them and what they bring to the table.

I think it’s important that we promote this humanity and provide spaces for it. I could wish for a lot of things, but I probably wouldn’t be able to do half of them because I wouldn’t have the time. But I think it’s great that we make time for each other.

Conclusion

I particularly appreciate the flexibility of remote work and working from home because of the improved work-life balance, which allows me to better reconcile work and family life. As a part-time Team Lead, my challenge is to focus on the essentials and set priorities. The key to fulfilling both of my roles – as a leader and a family man – is close coordination with my team and my family. Regular dialogue breaks down silos and promotes collaboration – because we usually find the best solutions when we talk to each other.

You want to learn more about the flexible working models at QualityMinds? Read the interviews of our colleagues Bettina, Klaus, Mario, Katja, Tobias, Richard and Lukas here.