Tag: trust

The Culture I’m Looking For

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As I continue my job search, I’ve realized that a culture fit is the most important thing for me.  I have seen bad cultures, cultures that have soured over time, and best of all, great cultures.  I have a good idea of what I want, and what I want to avoid.  I’m very open with potential employers when I speak with them.  I have two basic requirements: a culture fit and a smart team doing interesting work.  I’d like to use this post to dive into the first.  Culture can mean many things and is one of the more subjective aspects of a company.  This list are the traits of what I consider an awesome culture.

Transparency

A good culture is transparent from top to bottom.  Decision makers should expect to explain why a decision was made.  Dictating direction without context should be avoided.  People shouldn’t be intentionally excluded from conversations and instead should be intentionally included.  Don’t fear disagreement.  This approach creates engaged employees who buy in, even if they don’t necessarily agree in the conclusion.  Keeping the process above board and out in the open is critical.

Trust

Team members must trust each other.  This trust manifests itself in a number of ways.  One way I always look for is how team members comment on their peers’ work.  Does the recipient respond angrily or dismiss the critique?  Is the critic genuinely looking to improve the solution or is he undermining the author?  Trust is required in both directions – the critic needs to trust the author will listen and the author needs to trust the critic’s intent.    

Growth

There must be opportunity within the team.  Emphasis should be placed on both technical and soft skill growth.  Leadership opportunities should be provided as often as possible.  A manager’s focus should be making her team successful.  Success should be measured not only in project deliverables but also in employee growth.  Teams that focus only on business outcomes will falter and lose people.  Individuals need to see growth and opportunity to stick around.

Collaboration

The team needs to work well together.  A collection of individuals working in silos never results in a high performing team.  Similarly, teams working in silos never result in a high performing organization.  We’ve all seen examples of fiefdoms in our professional lives; people who wrap their arms around “their stuff” and guard the walls.  That never makes for a healthy team.  Instead teams should work openly with adjacent orgs.  Trust that the best solutions will result from including others.

Accountability

Team members should expect to be held accountable.  Being held accountable doesn’t mean being flogged for failures.  It means that people take responsibility and learn from their mistakes.  It also means that leaders learn from missteps, better understanding how to position the team for success.  The team tries to do better the next time, constantly evolving and improving.  In the extreme, low performers are managed out and are not allowed to hold the team back.

These are the traits I’m looking for in a company culture.  These are also the qualities I try to instill in the teams I manage.  I believe they are critical regardless of the work we’re doing.  These are attributes of highly successful teams but aren’t easy to foster.  As a leader you must demonstrate them consistently and make sure your team is overtly aware.  If you are trusting someone, tell them.  If you have expectations, tell them.  If you’ve failed, tell them.

So how do I figure out company culture in an interview?

It is very hard to assess these qualities during the interview process.  These are some of the questions I use to suss it out:

What is the culture of the team?

Go after it directly.  If the interviewer stumbles or can’t describe it, red flag.

Is there someone who has left recently because they weren’t a culture fit?

Pay attention to why the person wasn’t a fit.  Is the interviewer factual or subjective in responding?  A response without emotional judgement is a good sign.

How does the team make decisions?

1:1 with an individual contributor?  Peer discussions?  This one speaks to collaboration.

Can you tell me about someone who has advanced her career here or elsewhere as a result of coaching?

Speaks to growth.  A good manager will be happy for someone who grows, even if it means it is somewhere else.  Sometimes there simply isn’t internal opportunity (for a management role as an example).


Do you have other cultural traits you look for?  Let me know in the comments!

Thanks
Chris

Back From My Career Break

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One of the hardest things I have ever done in my career is handing in my resignation to DellEMC.  I didn’t leave for another position but rather to hike the Appalachian Trail.  I departed work on April 6, 2018 to pursue an item on my bucket list.  I left behind a team that I adored.  They were vibrant, smart, motivated, and kind – best of all, they put up with me!  Saying goodbye on that team call was very emotional and heartfelt.  But, truly, I would do it all again.

I have been working for nearly 20 years in IT and have held positions with only two different companies.  I suppose it is four if you count being acquired – Genzyme by Sanofi and EMC by Dell.  In my experience, staying for long periods of time within organizations is rare in the technology industry.  Folks seem to move around a lot.  I stay put because I like to cultivate relationships.  The bonds of a team don’t form in a year or two and I believe that as a leader, you need to be in it for the long haul.  These relationships are what made leaving so difficult.  But it was something I needed to do.  I felt burnt out, stressed, and wasn’t able to give my best to the job anymore.  For a lot of reasons, a simple vacation wasn’t the answer.  I had tried that and couldn’t get the fire back.  I owed better to my team.  A change was needed and a drastic one at that.  I needed to take a break from working, a break without worrying about returning to a job.  I tried to get a Leave of Absence / Sabbatical but that didn’t work out.  At that point, I decided to resign.  For why I chose to hike the AT, you can check out this post on midlifehiker.com.  Suffice to say, for the first time in my professional life, I was unemployed.

And now I am back.  I cut my hike short because being away from my family proved to be more painful than the joy hiking brought me.  I hiked the southern half of the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to the West Virginia / Maryland border.  I learned a lot about myself in those 1000+ miles.  I believe I have returned a better father, husband, and person.  Being free from the responsibilities of daily life, focusing only on one foot in front of the other, was amazing.  It is easy to get caught up in the frenetic energy that surrounds us – be it work, home, or whatever.  We are generally busy people and slowing down brings that chaos into focus.  It allowed me to put everything aside for 10 weeks and just walk.  All I had to worry about was food, water, and where I was going to pitch my tent that night.  I certainly found a lot of other things to worry about, but the simple essentials were what centered me.  I also learned to be grateful for what I had, for others lending me a hand, and for my family and friends for their support.  I didn’t realize the network of care that surrounded me until I had to rely completely upon it.  I learned to be extremely thankful.  All of this has made me more intentional about the balance in my life.

As I return to the workforce, I would like a role working toward an end that I believe in – helping people, solving problems, making a difference in a true and meaningful way.  A company churning out generic widgets to make a buck isn’t for me.  I need an employer that values a balance between work and home.  My family is hugely important to me and I am a devoted father.  I am also a loyal and passionate team member.  I want to bring my rediscovered energy back into my work.  I will run through walls for my team.  I’m hoping to find a role leading a smart group of people doing exciting work in technology.  I am confident in my abilities and know that I will make a positive impact on any organization that I join.  If you believe I might be a fit for a role you have, I would love to speak with you.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopherhendrick/

– Chris

Managing a Remote Team

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In today’s larger organizations, it is commonplace to have teams spread out across the globe.  This is challenging for many reasons, not the least of which is developing the relationships that make you an effective manager and that allow the team to operate at their fullest potential.  Managing folks from far away is difficult and a skill that must be developed.  Remote employees often feel disconnected from the team and require more/different communication than the people on your team that you see every day in the office.

Communication is the most essential skill for managing a distributed team.  The spontaneous conversations that occur in a centrally located team simply do not happen when coworkers are spread around the state/country/globe.  These conversations need to be replaced by intentionally targeted time set aside for the purpose.  In my opinion, a manager should have 1:1s with every employee in her organization at least once per week.  This may get untenable once the group reaches a certain size but I believe it is critical for remote employees.  Even if it is just 30 minutes, it is essential for keeping in touch with the concerns of those you don’t see every day.  It is their time on your schedule to raise issues, talk about the local (home) office they’re in, or just have the casual conversations that build a relationship.  These conversations build some semblance of connection that would otherwise be impossible.

In addition to frequency of communication, the type of communication is also important.  There are a million blogs / articles / studies that talk about non-verbal communication and its importance in conveying meaning.  Certainly all layered meaning is lost over email.  Written (be it email, Twitter, or whatever) is the default communication method for many in technology but, much of the time, it is simply not sufficient.  When you cannot speak face-to-face (many companies limit the ability to travel), using the phone or preferably video conferencing are much more effective than email.  While this is not always possible, I find that having a five minute conversation over the phone is far more beneficial than trading a couple emails.  Take the time to pick up the phone.  For directs that sit outside your office, it would be odd to send an email for something quick when you could simply ask them in person.  Similarly for remote employees, make the call.

In addition to communication, there are other ramifications of having a distributed team.  When do you have a team meeting?  Do you have multiples to cover different geographies?  How do you form project team so that regions don’t become segregated?  If necessary (think operational support), how do you make sure skill sets are properly distributed?  All of these issues emerge when you start to spread the members of the team apart.  I don’t believe there are answers that apply in all or even most cases.  To a certain extent, the proper course is unique to the individual team.  I would say, though, that as managers of distributed teams, we must be sensitive to these complexities and develop skills / techniques to deal with them.  Some techniques I’ve implemented include rotating meeting times so that, in the event of non overlapping timezones, you rotate the pain of a non business hours meeting.  Similarly with project teams, mix them as best you can and rotate the leadership opportunities so that one region is not always in charge.  The solutions will be what the team needs – the important thing is to consider them carefully and be sensitive to the locations of your team members.

For those with teams dispersed over long distances, as opposed to a few local offices, culture is also a complicating factor.  People from different places operate in different ways.  Similarly to learning to interact with different personalities, managers should be sensitive to cultural differences.  In my experience, the manner in which folks in Asia work is far different from those in Eastern Europe.  Western Europe is different from those and the US is another case entirely.  Understanding and managing differently based on the cultural norms of the remote employee is another way in which we can bridge the divide of distributed teams.  Some people are used to working for an American company (in my case) and are thus used to a US style of management.  That can make things easier but does not remove responsibility from the manager to lean into those differences.

The final point I would make about remote management is that it pays to build a relationship with a manager local to your remote staff.  Assuming they come into a local office (rather than working from home), there will be a management presence of some sort.  It is important to have someone in that office you can rely on for local HR information, facilities, benefits, or any of the other items that may vary based on location.  It is also useful to have someone to use as a sounding board to better understand a particular employee or situation.  S/he will know the culture and the person better and can be incredibly helpful in navigating difficult situations.

Having a remote team is a level of complexity higher than one that is centrally located and these types of teams cannot be managed in the same manner.  Simply realizing that and paying attention to the differences on a daily basis will go a long way toward making you successful.

When People Leave

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People can leave your teams for a variety of reasons.  It almost always has something to do with the manager – don’t take it personally.  People can leave voluntarily or involuntarily.  For the latter, as a manager you may or may not have a say in it.  I’ve experienced people leaving for all sorts of reasons: better pastures, performance issues, lay offs, and code of conduct violations.  None of them are easy and all take a toll on both the team and yourself personally.  I’d like to explore managing through these experiences.

I’d like to start with the deep impact and employee’s exodus can have on your team.  Rest assured, there will be an impact felt for quite some time.  I’ll approach situations by the questions I’ve gotten from the folks that remain.  Absorbing the work of a former colleague is daunting for a team and the, “How will we get this done?” questions will come up.  The simple fact is that all your work is still there but fewer people left to accomplish it.  As with any workload issue, I think the best approach here is prioritization.  Get all the work out on the table and put it in order of business importance.  Confirm with those above you that the stuff on the bottom of the list may lag.  Then report back to you team any agreement / leeway you were able to negotiate.  It is a sign to them that you will advocate on their behalf – and will normally be appreciated.  Back fill head count may or may not be an option and even if that does come, it takes time and prioritization of current work will need to occur.

The second question I always get is, “Why did so and so leave?” or in the case of lay offs, “Why was so and so chosen?”  In 100% of cases, I find it best to simply not comment.  No good can come of going into details.  It simply churns the rumor mill (which is likely already in full swing).  I usually respond with, “I’m not going to talk about that, I hope you understand.”  Most employees wont ask the question in the first place but some inevitably will.  Respect for the privacy of the individual that left is the best policy here.  In some cases, particularly with a poor performing employee, folks will know why someone left and may thank you for it.  A silver lining here is that remaining team members will see that you’re willing to take action.

The last question I normally get, in the case of lay offs is, “Are there more coming?”  This is the most difficult for me because as someone who manages mostly individual contributors, I don’t know.  Unless the company has publicly announced that there will be, you don’t know.  In the case where you do know through some other means, you’re likely not at liberty to say.  It is best to reassure your team and get the work done.  It is truly one of the hardest things to manage through.  While I know it is part of the job description for management in a large corporation, it is very difficult.

This leads me to the final topic I want to cover in this post – how this affects you as a manager.  For me, this depends on the reason for the employee departure.  If it was a good employee and voluntary, it is natural to ask, “What could I have done differently?”  Self reflection is good to a point but don’t harp on it.  Figure out if there was a situation you can learn from but move on.  You cant control the thoughts of another person, a huge offer they were given, or a family situation that forced a job change.  Try not to dwell on it.

In the case of managing someone out for performance or code of conduct issues, the aftermath cuts both ways.  Someone that consumed an inordinate amount of management time is now out of the team.  But at the same time, someone no longer has employment and their life has been impacted.  That can hit you emotionally, acknowledge that but, assuming you did your best to coach up and retain that person, rest easy.  They weren’t a fit for the role and in the long term, it will be better for both of you.

Layoffs are the final and most difficult case.  Many times, the person(s) leaving are good employees who are being let go for skill set or financial reasons.  Corporations are businesses and have to be run as such.  Let me say this – the situation is worst on the affected employee.  The affect on the manager are secondary in magnitude to this.  By focusing on the latter, I’m not diminishing the former.  For any manager with a soul, terminating someone is difficult.  It is especially difficult during layoffs because it isn’t an isolated occurrence.  The mood of everyone is generally down and managers are asked to fire people and then do their best to raise the morale of the remaining team.  In these situations I try to be transparent about how I’m feeling.  If asked, “How are you doing?” I usually respond, “Pretty crappy.”  Because I am.  It isn’t easy to go through.  In my opinion, putting on a happy face is disingenuous and folks will see right through it.  You’ll lose a degree of trust the team has in you.  Be honest and work through the emotion together with your team.  I think this is the best way to bring the team through.

Even High Performers Stumble

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This post comes from a conversation I had with a reader regarding mistakes being made by good performers.  While there were jokes about some silly screw-ups, the valuable part of the discussion came in our responses to them.  People will make poor decisions and as managers, it is our job to respond in a way that corrects the behavior but also reinforces that the sky isn’t falling.  I’m not talking about transgressions that are so severe that they require HR but rather those that should serve as learning experiences.  As leaders we should focus more on the learning than the mistake – to often we vilify and then the opportunity for growth is mostly lost.

Anger or frustration are among the natural reactions when a normally high performer slips up.  We are most surprised when our expectations are not met.  And none of us likes the kind of surprise where you’re woken up at 3am because someone shot themselves in the proverbial foot.  For a below average or average performer, a high profile mistake can be anticipated – people make mistakes and sh*t happens.  While the same applies to high performers (they will make mistakes and sh*t happens), as leaders, we tend to turn a blind eye to this possibility.  It is natural to expect high performers to do well in everything – but that’s far from reasonable.  We must expect even our best team members to make mistakes once in a while.  The fact that we are likely to have given these folks the high visibility projects will amplify the mistake but shouldn’t make our response more harsh.  I support the notion that we should, in fact, do the opposite – our response should be softened.

The idea of softening response for high performers comes from an observation I have made – high performers are normally very hard on themselves.  No one can consistently derive their motivation from external sources.  The drive of a high performer comes from themselves and when s/he makes mistakes, they are normally internalized.  Any external source of criticism (say, from a manager) is simply piling on at that point.  When someone understands the mistake, that’s enough.  All the yelling in the world won’t make the mistake go away.  I also don’t like to dwell on issues over time.  “Water under the bridge” is a popular phrase for this.  I simply let it go unless it comes back again – consider the issue closed until a subsequent act opens it again.  So if I’m not overly critical and I don’t bring up the issue to reinforce the message, am I simply a softy and coddle my high performers?  Far from it.

Throughout my tenure in management, I have had high expectations for my team and no one feels that more than my outstanding performers.  I expect more and reward for it.  When mistakes are made, I choose to enforce the fact that it is over and done and nothing can change it.  I don’t add weight to what I believe high performers are already carrying.  Demonstrate to me that you comprehend the mistake and will learn from it and I’m done.  Deny or make excuses and we’ll have an issue but that normally doesn’t occur.  I find that focusing on what can be learned rather than the mistake itself is the important piece.  You can’t go back in time and undo a screw up, only respond to it.

One example, from rather early in my career, occurred with a production financial system.  There was a patch or some other system update underway and somehow rm / happened.  Operating system, gone.  The person at the keyboard was immediately dejected and pissed.  My first response was wtf but I kept this to myself.  My first words were simply, “OK, get your head in the game, I need you.”  My reasoning at the time was simple.  There was a lot of work to be done and I couldn’t do it without that person.  Communication up and out had to occur while the technical work of restoring from tape (remember DLTIIIs?) went on.  I needed focus and I needed the great performance I expected.  Don’t get me wrong, I felt like Bruce Willis in Pulp Fiction about his watch: “Bedside table, on the kangaroo!”  The key was acknowledging that and moving on mentally.  Getting from anger to fix-it mode as quickly as possible was key.  Granted this is only one type of mistake – one quickly diagnosed with an obvious remediation plan – but I believe the approach is a good one regardless of the situation.  Every second spent on anger is one that is taken from responding to the situation.

TED Talk on Leadership

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This video was left by a colleague (thanks Sudhir!) as a comment on my last post.  I love this line from it, “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.”  A great talk by Simon Sinek on leaders that inspire – please take a look.

Continued proof that there are a lot smarter people than I discussing the topic of leadership.  Even so, I’ve still got lots to add to the conversation.

-Chris

Why Trust is Critical to Leadership

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In my opinion, there is nothing more important to the leadership of a team than the trust that develops between the team members and its leader.  This is true across many industries and careers so, in that sense, this post won’t be dedicated to pulling out the distinctions for technical teams.  I believe most of what I intend to discuss is almost universally applicable.  To begin the topic, I’d like to reference a historical text that has been used to provide guidance on leadership.  In The Prince, Machiavelli famously stated that, “It is far safer to be feared than loved if you cannot be both.”  I mention the quote not to debate the main points of the book (that has been done endlessly) but to outline some possible aims of leadership.  I hope you will indulge the comparison.  In the context of leading organizations, I would modify Machiavelli and state that it is better to be trusted than it is to be feared or loved.  Leading out of fear simply gains followers based on a threat.  Leading as someone who is loved is too personal for the business environment.  Managing as someone who is trusted to act fairly and to do the right thing is, I believe, critical to the success of leadership.

Perhaps the comparison to Machiavelli is unfair based on context but I would like to investigate the three leadership styles in play to illustrate my thesis (apologies to Niccolò).  The first style of leadership, one based on fear, is one that I have seen (although not too often) in technical teams.  Leaders of this type tend to introduce fires, what-ifs, and other situations to drive a sense of urgency on the team.  While this may be effective for a short period of time, over the long run, it exhausts a group.  One cannot be expected to jump from crisis to crisis continually without tiring.  Not everything is a P0 and when the team wises up to that fact, the leader has lost all sway.  A leader that continually cries wolf will end up with a slaughtered flock when an actual crisis crops up and no one picks up their cell phone.  While I use the metaphor, this is not contained merely to the operational realm.  Setting false deadlines on projects, introducing new must-have deliverables that are really nice-to-haves, and casually mentioning performance reviews are all examples of this style.  In the business world, this is certainly not outwardly aggressive (that would be an HR issue) but is instead passive, meant to instill uncertainty and in it’s most insidious form, fear of termination.  From my description, it’s obvious I don’t approve, but I know there may be some that say I’m not giving this style a fair shake – please feel free to comment!

If not leading out of fear, what about being loved?  I’m planning an entire post on personal relationships in the technology team space so I won’t dive into that here.  I’d like instead to contain the discussion to the idea of being liked by everyone on your team.  Early in my career, this was a priority, and if I’m being honest, still lingers to this day.  I’ve come to accept that there are those that simply won’t get along with you and that is OK.  Some leaders however, do not accept this limitation and strive to be well liked by everyone in their group.  While this is good from an influence perspective, I believe it is fraught with risk.  The biggest issue I have with this style is the inability to have difficult conversations.  People are, in general, conflict averse and having hard conversations around performance is not something many people do effectively.  Take a look at your last performance review and try to find a place where your manager decided to be overtly critical.  Find a place where needed improvement was mentioned without a softening compliment soon after.  It is hard to be critical of each other, especially when we want to be well liked.  As leaders, this is extremely difficult because while we should all strive to grow our teams through constructive feedback, a negative reaction to criticism is a real probability.  Those that desire to be loved shy away from that tense situation and in the end, let their teams down.  Some practical examples may be a failure to deal with an under-performing employee, promoting someone based on tenure, or bowing to a more aggressive team member.  All of these examples may be well-intentioned but do not serve the team in the end.  I suppose that I prefer this style to being feared but they both fall behind trust.

Leading through trust involves a lot of things but most key in my mind is transparency.  Honesty with your team is critical.  This means conveying information you’re at liberty to, being open about your expectations, providing timely feedback, admitting your own mistakes, and being open to feedback from your team.

As managers, we are privy to large amounts of information prior to our teams.  Some of this information can be shared and some cannot.  Knowing where that boundary lies is critical to developing trust with your team (and in some cases, keeping your job).  It is important that you share relevant information with your team as quickly as possible.  A well informed team will make good decisions without the need to consult you.  This is empowering and creates and environment of constant communication – something good for any organization.  From a practical perspective, I convey this information in 1:1s, at team meetings, project meetings, and where ever else seems appropriate.  I try to focus on getting the right information to the right people at the right time.  This can be hard to accomplish and problematic if you accidentally exclude someone but is something I work at constantly.  In technical fields, as in other occupations, information is key and holding back or delaying is detrimental to the team overall and can hurt relationships if people feel intentionally left out.  While this may seem obvious, I have had interaction with leaders who have intentionally held back information so as not to “muddy the waters” but ended up being counterproductive.

Communication of expectations is also important in establishing trust not only with your team but among team members.  One practical example of this concerns annual reviews.  Whether the giver or receiver, the worst possible outcome is to be completely misaligned when it comes to someone’s performance.  If, as a manager, your employee disagrees completely with what you have written in a review, you’ve failed.  Performance, and expectations around it, should be a constant dialogue with your team.  Whether it is around something as large as an annual assessment or as small as the next project task, it is critical to be clear on what needs to be done and when it needs to be done by.  Team members will return this transparency of expectations by making commitments and hitting them (something I’ve mentioned in a past post).  This results in a completely above-board and trusting work environment.  And no surprises when it comes to performance.

Feedback between a team and its leader is the final part of trust that I want to address.  It is important to provide feedback to your individual team members in a timely manner.  Positive or negative, waiting a week to mention something from the meeting you just held isn’t very useful.  Be up front if someone does something that doesn’t meet your expectations but let them know in private.  If someone does something great, let them know as well – and do it publicly if appropriate.  As leaders we must also be open to feedback from our teams.  Do not wait for people to speak up, search it out.  Just as important as hearing criticism is acting on it.  You need to let the team know that you’ve heard where they’d like you to improve and are taking steps to do so.  Admit your mistakes and report out on your progress in rectifying them.  Nothing is worse than getting up the courage to talk to your manager around something that is bothering you and being blown off.  Constructive criticism is a two way trust relationship.  The person raising the issue needs to trust the recipient to hear, respond to, and take steps to resolve problems (as opposed to flipping out and storming off).  Likewise, the recipient of criticism must trust that the source is not trying to be a jerk and has an honest concern.  I think a mark of high performing teams is when team members can challenge each other to be better in an open and honest manner and that this feedback is received in an open and healthy manner.  No better place for this behavior to start than with the manager.

-Chris