I am tech lead of my team. Another developer on my team has been taking actions that are putting me in an uncomfortable situation.
He is around 20 years older than me, and naturally carries more years' experience in the industry.
I respect his experience and constantly include him in tech discussions and decisions, since I want to use his experience for the good.
He, on the other hand, has been doing a couple of things that are making me unconformable, such as correcting me in meetings, on things that I say, most of them are right from my side, in other words, there is no correction, but he makes sure to rephrase what I have said, and then play the role of expert in front of others, mangers and more Junior developers.
He has also not been answering my emails to him, I have to constantly ask him to respond back.
He also makes sure to ignore my comments in code reviews and do not respond back, unless I talk to him.
I am new to this team as a tech lead, and I am still acquiring the ownership pf the code base, and it is true that at this point he understands better and deeper the code base - even because he was the main contributor so far.
I was entitled to accountable and responsible for the team, the team skills, and the System Architecture.
A couple of notes:
- I don't have any issue with any team member taking the lead on anything, but I do have an issue if I have people undermining my knowledge, or not respecting my opinions
- I am open to criticism as long as it is meaningful and constructive
- I don't believe sarcasm, disrespect, and doing things such as laughing at me on meetings, are really not helping at all, on the other hand I am totally open for him or whoever call me out, and give me feedback, whatever that is, etc.
- All of us make mistakes in our day-to-day activities, and I don't want to build a culture of finding the guilt but rather have learnings, and a nice atmosphere
Another interesting thing is that the company the other day has created business cards to everybody, and allowed the employees to put their titles as they wanted. And this particular guy put "lead developer"
Needless to say, I don't agree with the company allowing those things, but nevertheless.
I am informing my manager and asking her to moderate a talk between me and this developer, where I plan to explain that I expect him to work as a team, and the he should stop his behaviour, and respond to my emails, and follow my advice.
I am not stupid, or arrogant, I do know he is more experiences in number of years, and I have great respect for that, but that does not change the reality, he needs to listen to me, and many times my approach may be the best.
That's my job, and not his.
My question is: How can I handle the situation and have him understanding we are a team, and he needs to be a developer, communicate well with me, and act professionally by respecting my work, and my position?