Comment by boncester

Everyone's different and the way that teams work differ massively from company to company, but this is how I've done it in the past. First off, doesn't matter if you're the technical lead or the team lead, it's the same role for responsibilities sake. A technical lead is responsible for the deliveries and a team lead is responsible for the actions.

That's your winning hand right there. "Yeah I hear you, but I'm deciding as the lead to do X". Shit sandwich style you can wrap it with "I love this! Keep these coming! I need to know perspectives and ideas, no bad ideas remember, keep them ALL coming! I promise as long as we're not too toasty with too much going on, I'll listen and I'll keep doing that as long as you're happy that when I have to put my foot down, I can do that". Then the foot down statement. Then the "..but seriously, lets get a proper ticket in on this, yes I've decided what we're doing but we should still recognise the full story here so {insert annoying persons name}, write up a full ticket on your perspective here into the techdebt pile and tag me when it's done so I can cross reference it with my Architectural Choices doc."

In every way you're constantly saying "I am king here". It's not up for discussion, it's not debatable, it's not a choice it's a fact.

...finally if you need to revert to the 'At the end of the day I have to decide what I want to end up in court with, and right now I'm thinking this. Again I'm happy to hear different perspectives, but at the end of the day someone has to make these choices as the lead and today that's me."

...now if the annoying person starts to actually play the game and then starts actually feeding potentially good ideas, then great, you start getting them onside with "keep em' comin'!" and an occasional "...see this is perfect, I can't see everything, I can't know everything, I need us to be growing this picking the best choices and having you do this is excellent!".

...and if that starts happening, you might be growing a strong right-hand-man, I've seen people before that were underachieving but potentially capable pull themselves up and become awesome members of the team, truly carve out a niche for themselves. Sometimes they need a kick up the arse and sometimes they just need to recognise that they need to kick themselves up the arse :)