Listen now!

In this episode:

Resources:

• Helping Geeks curriculum

• Powerfully Simple Meetings – Thought Leader Interview with Bryan Field – Sea:2Ep:10.6

 Transcript

[00:00:02]

Child 1: Daddy, I want to know, can I set up a lemonade stand?

[00:00:09]

Child 2: Dad, can I use a tape measure to measure my jump rope?

[00:00:13]

Announcer: “Becoming a Geek Leader,” Season 3, Episode 4.

[00:00:19]

Sponsored by Bright Hill Group’s Professional Speaking Services.

Tom: Are you a member of a professional association? Is your regional state or national group planning their upcoming annual meeting? I can help your meeting planners with keynotes and workshops on topics like communication, leadership, delegation, planning or conflict resolution.

[00:00:43]

Also, is your company planning an all-hands meeting? I can help your leaders plan a productive and memorable event. I can professionally facilitate your meeting and deliver content that is completely aligned with your goals. Here’s what Erin Kwan [SP] said after having me speak for her state-wide association.

[00:01:01]

Erin: I really enjoy working with Tom because he is practical and down to earth. He brings really good content. He’s very engaging as a speaker. And I think the audience really connects with him. They not only get good content, but they also get an entertaining presentation. So I would definitely recommend working with him. I will certainly call him in the future for any events that I have.

[00:01:21]

Tom: Check out brighthillgroup.com/speaking, that’s brighthillgroup.com/speaking for testimonials, videos of me on stage, information about my most popular topics and more.

[00:01:36]

Welcome to the “Becoming a Geek Leader” podcast. My name is Tom Cooper. As a geek, I’m on a mission to figure out better ways to lead others at work and at home. Through the “Becoming A Geek Leader” podcast, I’m sharing what I’m learning so I can help make you more effective at leading people, too. Ready?

[00:01:59]

Introduction

Wow. I just wanna take a minute to say thank you. I was just going over the stats for the podcast and November has been my biggest month ever. It’s a privilege to be a part of your day so thank you for inviting me along. If the podcast is helping you, would you please take a moment to pass it along to someone else who would appreciate it?

[00:02:20]

All right, let’s talk about today’s episode. We’re gonna talk about how tech is a small world so it’s a good idea to stay on good terms with everyone. You never know where you’re gonna see that boss of yours again. I’m also answering an email about how to run meetings more effectively. Also, our John Maxwell “Thought Leader” segment is all about influencing other people, and we’ll wrap up with a “Family” segment where I talk about how to communicate with others more effectively. Let’s get started.

[00:02:51]

Mentoring segment.

[00:03:09]

Announcer: Level one, individual.

[00:03:11]

Man: At Level one, you may even be a superstar technical resource. Level one focuses you on improving your technical skills.

[00:03:23]

Tom: I wanna talk about the topic that is near and dear to my heart. It’s the fact that the technology world is a small world, seriously. I was talking with the head of HR for a company recently and she’s been working on the issue of what they call regrettable churn. Now, regrettable churn is a term that HR folks use when they talk about when talented people, people they would love to have continue to be a part of the team, it’s when those people choose to move on.

[00:03:51]

And just today, I was talking to some team members of the client and I heard several stories about how they’d each chosen to leave prior jobs. And we know that people move on. Sometimes, it’s a good thing for you and a good thing for the company. Sometimes, they just can’t give you what you need in order to be successful. Maybe you’ve outgrown the position or the opportunity or the pay grade that they’ve got for you. That’s really happened to me in my career. But sometimes, they change their priorities and they end up letting you go through no fault of your own.

[00:04:21]

I’m working with a client right now that’s doing some prioritizing of resources in different places around the globe and they’re moving jobs from one part of the world to another part of the world. And some people are being let go not because they’re bad performers but because of other decisions the company is making. And sometimes, the fact is, they let you go because you’re not delivering. But regardless, I wanna talk about how to leave a job well.

[00:04:45]

We know that in a tech world, there are lots and lots of opportunities, and it’s difficult to make technology work. It’s difficult for systems to work. And there’s plenty of grass out there that certainly looks greener. Just to wrap some numbers around that. A while back, I did some work with the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce and discovered that there is a systemic and persistent deficit of good candidates in this market. In fact, there are more than 18,000 jobs a year that go unfilled because it’s so hard to find good team members. So it seems like if you’re a technology person, there’s always an opportunity out there.

[00:05:22]

But let’s get back to that head of HR who was telling me about a team member who chose to leave. This was an engineer who was smart and hard-working. After several years working for this employer, she decided to go to find greener grass someplace else. She negotiated her new deal with the new employer and then she went to her boss and she gave her two weeks’ notice.

[00:05:43]

That’s normal. That’s right, isn’t it? Except for the fact that she refused to communicate with anybody at her current employer about her future plans. “I’m leaving.” “Where are you going?” “I don’t have to disclose that.” And she didn’t. And she’s right. She doesn’t have to disclose it. But here’s the funny thing. As I was preparing for this episode, I’d spent literally less than 10 seconds to find out exactly where she went. She wasn’t helping her relationship. She was just being rude.

[00:06:15]

Now, Maya Angelou said, “People never forget how you make them feel.” People never forget how you make them feel, and I think that is absolutely right. But so what? I mean, there are tons of jobs, especially in a city like Charlotte. It’d be easy to find another job. Now, that’s true. But in spite of the fact that over a million people live in this metropolitan area, the number of people who make decisions at the senior levels is actually pretty small. And I’d been in this town for about a year when I was reminded of that.

[00:06:50]

I had connected with a tech guy and we had several conversations. And during one of our conversations, he said, “Oh, Tom, Elizabeth was here over the weekend and she saw that card you sent me. And she said, “Hey, I know Tom. I knew him first.” And it’s true. I had met Elizabeth through a non-profit she works with after I’d been here only a couple of months. But here’s the thing, it never occurred to me that even though they shared the same last name, they might be related.

[00:07:14]

It is a small world and you don’t realize how small it is because just like “Six Degrees of Separation” from Kevin Bacon, there’s fewer degrees of separation between the people who work in the tech world no matter where they are in the world, seriously. Now, as you move up in your career, how you end things is just as important as how you start them. And if you leave on a bad note, especially when there’s not a good reason to leave on a bad note, it leaves a bad memory about how you made someone feel bad. And that’s gonna be as big a factor in their communication about you as the quality of your work was, even if your work performance was amazing.

[00:08:03]

Now, you might say, “Well, they shouldn’t care. My work was excellent. And if they say something bad, I’ll just sue them.” Well, maybe. But you’d lose and you’d waste a lot of time and energy in the process. And not only that, but you’ve got to realize that the people you report to in your new company, they probably have a connection to the people in your old company. They might live in the same neighborhood. They might be in the same volunteer organization. They might go to the same church. Their kids might go to the same school.

[00:08:34]

They both might be members of the same professional association. And in their outside-of-work world, they might have an off-the-record conversation where they say something not so great about you. And they might even say something that’s factual that’s not so great about you. “You know, the quality of his work was pretty good, but I don’t like the way he left.” That’s all they have to say and it’s amazing the impact that that has. But what if you left your employment in such a way that they were actually sad to see you go?

[00:09:08]

Now, I’ve changed jobs many times over the course of my career and I’ve not done it perfectly every time. But when I left my first job in Washington DC, that must’ve been back around ’92, I know they were sad to see me go. I know because they ended up hiring three people to replace me so I was pretty confident I’d been delivering good value for them. I didn’t realize how much of a difference that made to them until probably 15 years after that. I got an email from my former boss and he told me how much he appreciated my work ethic, my integrity, and my commitment.

[00:09:43]

Now, let me ask you. If somebody asked about you from even 10 years ago, would your former boss remember you? And would their memory be a good one? All I’m saying is it’s a small world, a really small world. Just yesterday, I had an email from somebody I worked with before. We were in the same IT organization more than 10 years ago. He reached out for help with a problem his team is facing. It’s a small world. We just can’t afford to burn bridges. If you’ve got the opportunity, take the high road. The high road is worth it. And that’s today’s “Mentoring” segment.

[00:10:21]

Coach’s Mailbox.

[00:10:51]

Tom: In the “Coach’s Mailbox” segment, today, I’ve got an email from Gail. Now, this topic that Gail brings up is something that you’ll be able to use when you’re at Level two of the four levels of thinking as a geek leader.

[00:11:05]

Announcer: Level two, team member.

[00:11:08]

Man: Level two is where you work well with others, and together, you all succeed.

[00:11:14]

Tom: So Gail writes, “I’ve just been assigned to be the project manager for my first big project at work. They’ve been having team meetings, but I just can’t get people to show up. And when they do show up, I feel like I’m herding cats. I can’t get them to focus, they won’t pay attention, and they just don’t participate. Do you have any tips about how I can get these people to show up and pay attention?”

[00:11:40]

Gail, I feel your pain. Back in the day, I was a young engineer, my boss suggested I run the team meeting, and I thought, “How hard could that be? We just sit around and we talk. I like to talk.” Turns out it wasn’t anywhere near as simple as it looked. Running a meeting, it’s a skill and it’s something that you will need to hone and develop in your career. I don’t have time to get into all the aspects about running a meeting but I do wanna share some key points with you.

[00:12:11]

Now, when it comes to your meetings, why are you meeting? There are three different goals that you might have for a specific meeting. One, you might need to make a decision. So decision-making is one reason to have a meeting. Two, you might wanna broadcast update information out to people. You wanna let them know what’s going on. So that’s the second reason for a meeting. The third reason for a meeting is collaboration or problem-solving. So when you’re getting ready to have your meeting, you need to understand, what is my goal?

[00:12:46]

Most project meetings are really about collaboration or problem-solving, and that might be your goal. With that goal in mind, are you inviting the right people? If you are inviting the right people, are you using their time efficiently? Do you have a plan, a written agenda that you send out before the meeting? And I’ll tell you, just creating your agenda is gonna make your meetings better, and the time you spend thinking and planning that agenda, that’s gonna help you have a clear focus on your goals for the meeting and helping the team.

[00:13:23]

When you get ready to have the meeting, at the very beginning, start off by going over your agenda and the goals for the meeting. Just like when you’re getting on an airplane, they said, “This plane’s going to Dallas. If you’re not going to Dallas, now’s a good time to get off.” When you start your meeting, you can go right in and say, “Here’s what we’re gonna do today.” And that way, people can be engaged in the process.

[00:13:45]

At the end of your meeting, you wanna do a quick recap of the decisions that were made and the assignments that were given. You might say, “Thank you for your help today. Just a quick wrap-up and then we’re all gonna get out of here. Susie has the lead on Y and she’s gonna give us C by next Thursday. Susie, is that right?” You see, what we’ve done here is we’ve identified the decision, we’ve identified who’s going to do it and when they’re going to get it done. You might say, “Unfortunately, we didn’t get to Z today but I’ll bring it up at the next meeting.”

[00:14:15]

So here’s how you’re laying it out to make it easy for people. Let’s say you had something that was totally off-topic that was brought up and you put it in the parking lot. You could say, “All right, as I look at the parking lot, Roger brought up D. I’ll schedule a meeting in the next two weeks to talk specifically about D. Roger, will that work for you?” And now, you’ve elaborated on the things that everybody was supposed to do during that meeting.

[00:14:40]

As I mentioned, there is a ton that I could say about this topic, and unfortunately, I can’t squeeze it all into a single segment of a podcast episode. I do actually have at least one podcast episode with Bryan Field talking about meetings and how to make meetings better. And I also have another resource I can tell you about. If you’re looking for more help with this, here’s the good news. I’ve got a free course on how to run meetings that’s available at my website, brighthillgroup.com/helpinggeeks, that’s brighthillgroup.com/helpinggeeks. You can sign up for that. It’s free, and I go into more detail. And also, that course includes some templates that you can use for your meetings. Gail, I hope that’s a help to you. And that’s today’s “Coach’s Mailbox.”

[00:15:31]

Thought Leader segment.

[00:15:50]

Announcer: Level one, individual.

[00:15:53]

Man: At Level one, you may even be a superstar technical resource. Level one focuses you on improving your technical skills.

[00:16:03]

John: Hello, I’m John Maxwell. And as one of my founding partners, Tom has been trained by me and my team.

[00:16:10]

Tom: In our John Maxwell “Thought Leader” segment today, I wanna introduce the law of influence. This is our second law from John’s book, “The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership.” It’s a great book on leadership and I just wanna kind of dip our toe in the water of what that means. So the law of influence says, “The true measure of leadership is influence, nothing more, nothing less.” The true measure of leadership is influence, nothing more, nothing less.

[00:16:44]

Now, you think about leadership, I heard a quote from Margaret Thatcher. She said, “Being in power is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you’re not.” The more influence you have, the stronger your leadership is going to be. If you have low levels of influence, you’re gonna have low levels of leadership. Leadership is influence and your ability to influence people comes from valuing people. Now, I know it’s an old expression, but people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care about them, about their problems. And if you take a genuine interest in others, your influence is gonna grow with them.

[00:17:24]

I have to tell you, when I first got started, I thought leadership was all about me. And then I began to recognize that people didn’t think the same way I did and maybe that wasn’t right. So I shifted and I pretended it was all about others, but secretly, I still thought it was about me. And then many years later, I realized that I had been entirely wrong, that it was all about them, that it’s influence, that it comes from adding value and really caring about other people.

[00:17:52]

One of my mentors is Zig Ziglar. My dad pointed me to him years ago. He’s a sales guru. And Zig Ziglar said, “You can have anything in life that you want if you help enough other people get what they want.” And a lot of people just don’t understand that. Now, how do you help other people get what they want? Well, it really comes from thinking differently. Instead of thinking about, “What have you done for me lately,” you start thinking about, “How can I help you? What can I do to make a difference?” When I change my focus from me to you, all of a sudden, it’s different. And what if you ask questions like, “Are you getting all the support you need from me? What support do you need from me? What can I do to help you grow?” When you begin to do that, all of a sudden, the amount of influence you have with others begins to just skyrocket forward.

[00:18:45]

Years ago, I was teaching a class on leadership and one of the participants said to me, “Tom, leadership and management are the same thing,” and I said, “Steve, I am so glad you are here.” It gave me the opportunity to share with him that that idea, that management and leadership are the same, is one of the five most common myths about leadership. And people frequently do get management and leadership confused. Management can be a part of leadership. But just because you can manage something efficiently, that doesn’t mean you’re a leader.

[00:19:16]

Management is about doing things right and leadership is about doing the right things. Management is about doing what we did yesterday more efficiently and consistently in control, managing risks. But leadership is providing direction, enthusiasm, and inspiration. It’s really about influencing other people. People often think management and leadership are the same, but they’re absolutely not the same thing.

[00:19:42]

If you’re focusing your time and attention on the little things, to make sure that people are coming to work on time, or how long they’re at lunch, that’s not leadership. It’s just not leadership because it’s very different to work for a boss who’s watching the clock all the time from watching a boss or working with a boss that is inspiring a team and that where the team is focused on delivering towards an amazing goal.

[00:20:05]

All right, another myth is the entrepreneur myth, that entrepreneurs are great leaders. But if you stop and think about that, that doesn’t make any sense. Just because somebody identified a gap in the market and created a new product, that doesn’t mean that they’re actually leading other people. There are plenty of people who are inventors and entrepreneurs who aren’t making a dime, or who can’t grow their team past a certain point. And we touched on that last week, when we talked about the law of the lid.

[00:20:31]

How about knowledge, that knowledge is power? Now, I’ll tell you, as a geek, oh, my goodness, this one is so rampant. “I’m the smartest guy in the room about Technology X. Therefore, I have all the power about that.” Yikes. That is totally not true. You cannot force people to follow you. And you know that’s true because you have found in your career, there were plenty of times where you had the right answer but people just wouldn’t listen. And you found yourself going back a while later going, “They should’ve listened to me. They just should’ve listened to me.” And maybe they should have, but your knowledge didn’t give you the influence that you needed.

[00:21:13]

Next is the pioneer myth. You know, whoever got there first, the pioneer, the one who’s carving a new trail that they’re a leader. But that’s not true. There are plenty of people who are pioneers who are loners, who are off on their own. And it’s not the same thing at all as taking initiative. And finally, the position myth. Now, this one is the biggest misconception of all, that once I get the position, I’ll be a leader. I can tell you, I have held positions with a leadership title where I have not led very well. And I have held positions where I did not have a leadership position where I actually did a halfway decent job of leading and influencing others.

[00:21:50]

The same is true for you and it’s true for everybody else. It’s not the position that makes the leader. It’s the leader that makes the position. If you’ve got a position, it might give you a temporary head start when you first meet new people, but it’s not gonna keep you there for very long. If you don’t have influence, if you can’t lead, you just won’t be effective. Leadership is influence. That’s the law of influence, that it’s our ability to influence others, nothing more, nothing less. It’s a simple point when you stop and think about it but it’s so easy to miss until you do that. If you wanna be a leader, you’ve gotta have followers.

[00:22:32]

And here’s the thing. In today’s world, people are not gonna follow you unless they want to follow you. The law of influence, the true measure of leadership is influence, nothing more, nothing less. And that’s today’s John Maxwell “Thought Leader” segment on the law of influence.

[00:22:52]

Family segment.

[00:23:10]

Tom: Now, in the “Family” segment, what I have to talk about today is something that you can use at Level one of the four levels of thinking as a geek leader.

[00:23:18]

Announcer: Level one, individual.

[00:23:21]

Man: At Level one, you may even be a superstar technical resource. Level one focuses you on improving your technical skills.

[00:23:32]

Tom: In today’s “Family” segment, I wanna talk about how other people think differently than we do. Our priorities are frequently very different from theirs. And I wanna illustrate that by some early-morning visits from my seven-year-old and nine-year-old daughters.

[00:23:47]

Now, I should say that morning is not my best time. I’m often groggy until I’ve been up for an hour or two. So if you wanna get something from me, it’s probably best for you to give me a little bit of time to get moving. Nevertheless, it’s not an uncommon experience for my kids to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and be raring to go and excited about opportunities to start their day. Here are a couple of recent burning questions that necessitated an early-morning knock on my bedroom door.

[00:24:20]

Child 2: Dad, can I use a tape measure to measure my jump rope?

[00:24:26]

Tom: Let me assure you, measuring a jump rope was not the top of my priority list when that question was asked. Another question was…

[00:24:37]

Child 1: Daddy, I want to know, can I set up a lemonade stand?

[00:24:43]

Tom: Just like I wasn’t particularly interested in jump ropes or lemonade stands when those questions were asked, when you approach somebody else, it’s likely that their minds may be preoccupied with other thoughts. As I was getting ready for this episode, I was reminded of commentary that Dale Carnegie provided on an advertising letter he received.

[00:25:03]

In the book, “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” he recounts, after the author of the letter wrote, “Our company wants,” Carnegie commented, “Who cares what you want? I’m worried about my own problems. The bank is foreclosing the mortgage on my house. The bugs are destroying the hollyhocks. The stock market tumbled yesterday. I missed the 8:15 this morning. I wasn’t invited to the Joneses’ dance last night. The doctor tells me I have high blood pressure and neuritis and dandruff. And then what happens? I come down to the office this morning, worried. And I open my mail and here’s some whippersnapper in New York yapping about what his company wants. Bah.”

[00:25:40]

Before you ask your question, you should ask yourself, “What does the other person want?” We get so wrapped up in thinking about the things that we want that we overlook the things that might be important to the other person. If you can put your brain in their position, if you can think about the things that matter to them, it changes the interactions that you have.

[00:26:07]

So certainly, you can’t be responsible for handling somebody’s medical problems or their financial problems or their family problems. But you know what? You might be able to listen to them talk about those issues because in our culture, people don’t listen very often. And even if you can’t address or solve those issues, you might be in a position where you could at least connect with them about those issues. And they’re gonna want to do things that matter to you if you can make it a priority to hear from them before you launch into your request.

[00:26:42]

In fact, one of my clients said to me he did an exercise where he made it a point one day to say, “Every time I make a statement, I commit to asking three questions.” So instead of just talk, talk, talk, he would say something and then intentionally ask a sequence of three questions. He said it made a dramatic difference in the type of interaction he had with other people. I thought it was a great idea. So the fact is people are thinking about things that are not the things that matter to you. And the more you can do to get inside their head, the more likely you are to get the kinda response that you want.

[00:27:20]

Now, for the record, the jump rope turned out to be 6 feet 6 inches long and that particular day was too cold for a lemonade stand. And that’s today’s “Family” segment.

[00:27:30]

Episode Hack.

[00:27:54]

Tom: So to recap. In today’s episode, we talked about how technology is actually a small world, and we have to be careful not to burn our bridges because people never forget how you make them feel. We also covered a couple of aspects of effective meetings, how having a solid plan and doing a quick recap at the end of the meeting is a powerful way to close it out. In our John Maxwell “Thought Leader” segment, we talked about myths of leadership and how important influence is. And in the “Family” segment, we talked about how other people are distracted by things unrelated to our concerns and our priorities.

[00:28:31]

For today’s “Episode Hack,” I want you to think about who do you need to influence and what are they being measured on? What are they worried about? When you can wrap your brain about the things that matter to them, you’re gonna find there much more willing to help you with your stuff. Focusing on the needs of the other person will increase your influence with them. So who is it you need to influence and what specifically can you do to connect with them on the things that matter to them? And that is today’s “Episode Hack.”

[00:29:06]

Closeout

Is the podcast helping you? Make sure that you don’t miss out on the latest info. Head over right now to brighthillgroup.com/join to be sure that you stay in the loop. When you do, you’ll get my PDF, “Become a Geek Leader in Two Easy Steps,” and you’ll be notified as soon as new podcast episodes are available. Plus, you’ll get updates and ideas that I don’t share on the podcast. Head over to brighthillgroup.com/join right now.

[00:29:39]

This is Tom Cooper. Thanks for listening. Be sure to join me next time for another episode of “Becoming a Geek Leader.” Join me in my mission of discovering better ways to lead others at work and at home.

[00:29:51]

[Music]

[00:30:05]

Listen now!

In this episode:

• Three hats you need to wear as an effective geek
• How to get the recognition you deserve at work
• Why you’re not getting the results you want

Resources:

• https://brighthillgroup.com/recommended-resources/
  
• https://www.gartner.com/doc/2835119/renaissance-developer-skills-guidance-modern
• 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership

Transcript

Tom: Steve writes, “I’m an engineer in a manufacturing company. I’ve been working professionally for a few years now, and if I do say so myself, I’m smart and hard-working. I care a lot about my work and I’m passionate about my ideas. My problem is my boss doesn’t listen to me. Not only that, but I’ve been told by my boss and HR that my directness and attitude are getting me in trouble. I don’t understand what they’re talking about. Even if I’m making a critical comment, what I’m saying is true. There’s nothing wrong with speaking truth, is there?”

[00:00:29]

Announcer: Becoming a geek leader. Season three, episode three.

[00:00:34]

Sponsored by Brighthill Group Executive Coaching Services.

Man: This episode is sponsored by BrightHill Group’s Team Leadership Services. Dysfunctional teams are painful and cost you time and money. They also suck the life out of you and take the fun out of work. How about your team? Is it time for a tune-up? How prepared is your team for the challenges ahead? I can help create a simple development process for your team members. Something easy for you to use. Not another project for you to manage.

[00:01:02]

Growth doesn’t happen by accident. Whether it’s through a leadership assessment or helping you plan a leadership retreat, give me a call to talk about how to set up an affordable program to improve your team’s teamwork and to help your team members perform like a well-oiled machine. Check out brighthillgroup.com/geektraining, that’s brighthillgroup.com/geektraining for quick videos on my team building and leadership retreats. Then give me a call at 240 668 4799. That’s 240 668 4799.

[00:01:40]

Tom: Welcome to the Becoming a Geek Leader podcast. My name is Tom Cooper. As a geek, I’m on a mission to figure out better ways to lead others at work and at home. Through the Becoming a Geek Leader podcast, I’m sharing what I’m learning so I can help make you a more effective at leading people, too. Ready?

[00:02:02]

Introduction

In today’s action-packed episode, I’m going to talk about growing your career by wearing some new hats, getting the recognition you deserve, a hard limit that may be keeping you from more success at work, and a story about my son embracing failure that led to a great Thanksgiving outcome. I guess Ms. Frizzle from “The Magic School Bus” book series was right when she said, “Take chances, make mistakes, get dirty.” So, let’s get started.

[00:02:33]

Thought leader segment.

[00:02:53]

Announcer: Level one. Individual.

[00:02:55]

Announcer: At level one, you may even be a superstar technical resource. Level one focuses you on improving your technical skills.

[00:03:06]

John: Hello, I’m John Maxwell and as one of my founding partners, Tom has been trained by me and my team.

[00:03:12]

Tom: Starting with today’s episode, I’m adding a new element to the podcast. Now, many of you who know me know that John Maxwell has had a huge impact about my thinking when it comes to leadership. And one of his most popular books is called “The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership”. It’s a good book and it’s well worth your time to read. And starting today, I’ll be including a brief description of one of the laws as part of the podcast.

[00:03:42]

In today’s episode, I want to introduce you to The Law of the Lid. The Law of the Lid says that leadership ability determines a person’s level of effectiveness. So what does that mean? It means that each of us has developed a certain set of skills. We do what works. Everybody does what works. When something works, we repeat it. And as a result, we perform at a certain level. But what if? What if we could learn things that worked even better that got us some more results? And to help illustrate that, I want to share with you a story of two brothers.

[00:04:20]

In 1937, brothers Dick and Maurice started a drive-in restaurant in California. Now, they were good restaurateurs. In fact, their restaurant was a success. It was so successful that after just three years, they were splitting profits from the restaurant of \$50,000. Now, you can only imagine how much \$50,000 was in 1940. These were good times. In fact, just 10 years later, things were going so well for them, that now they were splitting \$100,000 a year. That’s good stuff. They had…they were smart at running a restaurant.

[00:04:59]

They had developed repeatable systems for every element of…in the restaurant. And they were good managers. They ran their restaurant really efficiently, Now, based on their success, they thought, “You know what would be really smart for us to do? We’ve got these systems, we’ve got success as restaurateurs, we should franchise.” And they decided to sell franchises. And you know what happened? It did not work. They only sold 15 licenses to franchisees. And of the 15, only 10 actually every opened up a restaurant. Now, why didn’t it work?

[00:05:33]

Well, Dick and Maurice were really good at running a restaurant, but there weren’t really good at taking it to that level of franchisee-ing. They ran straight into this idea of The Law of the Lid. Their leadership ability limited their effectiveness. So, let me ask you this. Have you ever had a really good thing that should have scaled, but it didn’t? Have you ever had a really good idea that other people just wouldn’t buy into? And you think about this, you’ve got a good idea and you’ve got all the important elements that are there, but, for some reason, all the pieces don’t add up to a whole. And this is exactly what happened to Dick and Maurice. They just didn’t have the leadership skills to make it go.

[00:06:22]

So, looking back, how do we know now that their idea was actually a good idea? Well, in 1954, Dick and Maurice met Ray. Ray was a milkshake machine salesman. And he was very happy to sell milkshake machines to Dick and Maurice. They were his best customer. And so, he looked at the potential in franchising and he negotiated the rights to sell the franchises based on the work that Dick and Maurice had done.

[00:06:55]

In 1954, Dick and Maurice McDonald sold franchise rights to Ray Kroc. Over the next four years, Ray Kroc opened 100 McDonald’s restaurants. In the next four years after that, Kroc opened an average of 100 restaurants a year. Kroc had a leadership lid that was higher than McDonald’s leadership lead. And he was able to apply his leadership skills to create the juggernaut that became the McDonald’s franchise chain.

[00:07:30]

Looking at you and your situation, what if you could raise your leadership lid? What if you could improve your leadership ability by, I don’t know, 1% a week? Just 1% a week. That compounding interest would really add up, wouldn’t it? How would that change your career? How might it change your life? That’s The Law of the Lid. And that’s today’s thought leader segment from John Maxwell.

[00:08:00]

Coach’s Mailbox.

[00:08:32]

Announcer: Level two. Team member.

[00:08:35]

Man: Level two is where you work well with others, and together you all succeed.

[00:08:41]

Tom: Today I’m answering an email from Steve. Steve writes, “I’m an engineer in a manufacturing company. I’ve been working professionally for a few years now, and if I do say so myself, I am smart and hard-working. I care a lot about my work, and I am passionate about my ideas. My problem is my boss doesn’t listen to me. Not only that, but I’ve been told by my boss and HR that my directness and my attitude are getting me in trouble. I don’t understand what they’re talking about. Even if I’m making a critical comment about somebody or something, what I’m saying is true. There’s nothing wrong with speaking the truth, is there?”

[00:09:16]

“I really do have great ideas, and I think my boss ought to implement more of my ideas, and I should be rewarded. I’m saving the company tons of money and helping them do things that, without me, they would completely fail at doing. I’m so frustrated that I’m thinking about quitting. So, should I quit and go find a company that values good ideas and that will reward me fairly for being a great contributor?”

[00:09:44]

Steve, I feel your pain. In previous episodes, I’ve said that, early in my career, I believed that my brain power and my geek work, combined with my own two hands, was gonna be the key to my success. And the rest of everything at work was in a sliver of percentage that I called politics/BS. I do understand what it’s like to not be heard. My second job at a college, I had some conflict with senior leaders. I was working for a small mom-and-pop company. I worked directly for the vice president Pop, and Mom was the president of the company. It was many, many years ago, and I don’t really remember the details of this incident, but what I do remember is I was so offended by something the president said about my work that I left her an angry and critical voice mail defending my position.

[00:10:35]

Now, I’m pretty sure that, if you’d asked me, I would have said that everything I said in my message was truthful. She just couldn’t handle the truth. That’s her problem, not mine, right? Here’s the thing. As engineers, we like to think of ourselves as rational thinkers who make decisions on facts and logic. The fact is that even engineers are strongly affected by our emotions. In you email, you described passion for your ideas, and that’s an example of your emotions coming into play. And why do you care? It’s because your ideas are good, they’re helpful and they move the company toward its goals. And that’s good. But in order for people to hear your ideas, you have to be able to communicate those ideas in a form that other people feel good about.

[00:11:23]

Maya Angelou once said, “People never forget how you make them feel. People never forget how you make them feel.” And that’s one of the core lessons all of us needs to consider. I’m reminded of that joke where an engineer decides to apologize for upsetting someone. And the engineer says, “I’m sorry you got upset when I told you you were stupid. I thought you already knew that about yourself.” Now, how do you think that made the so-called stupid person feel? I guarantee you they are never gonna forget that.

[00:11:57]

So here’s my feedback to you. I’m willing to bet that you’re right. That you are smart, and that you are hard-working, and that you’re adding a great deal of technical value to your employer. That is really good. Keep it up. You are investing in one part of your career success, in technical skills. Stanford Research International reported that a study showed the importance of technical skills to your career success. Their study proves that technical skill are critical to your achievement. And continuing to invest in those technical skills is an important component of your overall success.

[00:12:35]

However, the study showed that 13% of your career success is technical skills. Thirteen percent. The other 87% is made up of what I used to call politics/BS. Now, back in the day, I thought it was 2%, and actually, it’s 87%. It’s not really politics and BS. It’s actually about understanding how people work and how to relate to others. So, let’s get back to that voice mail I left for the president of this small company I worked for.

[00:13:09]

My boss, the husband of the company president, sat me down for a tough conversation. At the end of that conversation, it was communicated clearly to me that I needed to apologize for my insubordination and my disrespect. It was a tough message to hear. And it was tough for me to actually do it, too. I remember having that conversation. I remember going home and thinking about it and trying to decide exactly what I was gonna do, and eventually I did go and confess my insubordination and disrespect, and she was gracious to me. But it was a tougher choice for them, too. Because they could have fired me. They could have fired me immediately and I would have had no recourse at all. And so, I’m grateful that they invested in me and they helped me grow through that season.

[00:13:56]

Here’s the thing. If you continue to invest in your technical capability but you don’t invest in your people skills as part of your growth at work, it’s not gonna matter which company you work for. You’re still going to be frustrated. Let me just say that again. You are gonna be you wherever you go. If you’ve made big investments on the technical side but you have not made the right investments on the people side of things, no matter where you go, you’re gonna face the same problem.

[00:14:28]

So, do you wanna have other people support your ideas? Recognize you for your contributions and reward you? Then let me encourage you to invest in the 87% as well. Learn how to communicate, how to delegate, how to manage conflict, and how to plan you work with others. And you’re gonna see a great deal of success. Steve, I hope that’s of help to you. And that’s today’s Coach’s Mailbox.

[00:14:54]

Thought leader segment.

[00:15:13]

Announcer: Level two. Team member. Level two is where you work well with others, and together you all succeed.

[00:15:22]

Tom: That’s true. Earlier in my career, I believed that 98% of my success as a geek came from geek work and the other 2% was a category I called politics/BS. Now, I’ll tell you that I invested heavily on the 98% and I really did not invest much on the 2%. But I recently came across an article from “Gartner” that was called “The Renaissance Developer: Skills Guidance for Modern Application Programmers”. If your company has a “Gartner” subscription, I highly recommend you read the article. It was…it’s well worth your time. I’ve included a link to the article on the “Gartner” website in today’s show notes on the web page. Now, this article is specifically directed at software developers. But I would suggest that it’s applicable to anybody who does technical work.

[00:16:11]

In the article, Danny Brian, the author, makes the case that you’re gonna need to wear three different hats based on the work that you’re doing. You’re gonna change hats from time to time. The first, you need a coder hat or a geek hat. Second, you need a communicator hat. And third, you need a hat that lets you be a suit. When you’re wearing the geek hat, you’re gonna need to invest in your technical skills. But as you move up the ladder, as you begin to have more influence in the organization, you’re gonna need to shift your thinking from deep technical knowledge in one area to a more broad-based definition of success. You’re gonna need to think about learning and applying things cross-functionally. Things that are outside your wheelhouse. Outside you technical wheelhouse, perhaps. And if you’re a coder, you might need to learn a new language or a new framework. Some other platform.

[00:17:11]

You may need to understand more about how people use technology. If you’re networking person, maybe you need to think about databases, or maybe you need to think about coding languages. Not to become an expert in those areas, but just to get a sense for what those other areas do. Because your ability to deliver value in the organization is going to require your technical excellence as applied in multiple disciplines. Expanding the scope of your technical knowledge does matter. Now, one thing I wanna point out, there’s a consequence to doing this.

[00:17:45]

The more broad your thinking is and the wider your ideas are across different technology platforms or across technical areas, you’re less likely to continue to be the smartest person in the room within your chosen area. Now, it’s actually okay, but it’s something you simply have to come to terms with. When you realize that you can have more impact, you can have more growth, you can get to more success by broadening your understanding and giving up some of the depth that you’ve previously had, you begin to see it’s okay for somebody to know more than you about a specific technical area.

[00:18:25]

I’m working with a client right now who’s an auditor by trade. And he said to me just last week, “I recognize that I’m not going to be the smartest auditor in the room. That somebody’s probably gonna have more auditing skills than I currently have. But I’m gonna have to be okay with that as I move forward.” And that client is exactly right. So you’re gonna have to be willing to no longer be the smartest guy in the room. But you’re gonna be smarter because you’re gonna know more about areas outside your discipline. And that means if you are a project manager, maybe you need to learn more about technology.

[00:18:59]

If you’re a technology person, maybe you need to learn more about business process, or maybe you need to learn more about technology to solve business problems in a particular area. Maybe if you’re in one department within an IT organization, you need to have lunch with people who are in another department and understand the kinds of problems that they’re running into. The kinds of needs that they have. And that begins to lead us into hat number two.

[00:19:24]

So let’s talk for a minute about the communicator hat. The only way great ideas can ever get implemented is if they’re communicated in a way that other people can understand. When you’re growing your skills as a communicator, Danny suggests that you need to look for ways to improve your communication and collaboration. Now, one tool that I would recommend is the book “How to Win Friends and Influence People”. It’s a great starting point to help you become more persuasive. And the higher you go on the ladder, the more your communication and persuasion skills become important.

[00:20:01]

I just want to take a second here to say I talk to senior leaders all the time. I cannot emphasize enough how much people at the sea level struggle to find people who have great technical skills and can communicate and collaborate with others. And you know that’s true. You know there are plenty of highly technical, very smart, very capable people that you don’t let talk to customers. They say, “Give me the specifications or let me go do the work and get out of my way. But don’t make me talk to customers.” And I’m telling you, if you can develop skills when it comes to communicating well and collaborating with others, it will transform your success in your career. It is going to be worth your time, I promise.

[00:20:46]

Now, the third hat that Brian talks about in the article is the suit. And this is all about understanding the business drivers. Seeing where your solutions fit and why does the business need your help. Years ago, I worked for a software as a service company. And we had a software tool that easily generated 5X ROI. That means that if our customers paid us \$1 million, we could prove demonstrably they would see at least \$5 million in cost reduction. And because of this, it seemed obvious to us that customers, A, needed this tool, and, B, could easily seize so much return that everybody ought to buy. Right? I mean, if I made you a deal where you put a \$1 bill in my hand and I would put a \$5 bill in yours, you’d take that deal all day long. Right? You’d have to be an idiot not to. Right? Well, not so fast, and this is where the suit hat comes on.

[00:21:40]

Because the business guys, or our clients, did understand the ROI, but they also understood that it takes time and effort to make changes based on the reports from our tools. Even if they could…even if it cost them another \$1 million. So, \$1 million to us for our software and another \$1 million in labor, so they still got \$ million extra back. Not a bad deal, right? You give me \$1, I give you \$3. That’s a deal you should be able to take all day long. Or you give me \$2, I give you \$3, either way, it’s a win.

[00:22:12]

It wasn’t worth it to them. Why? Why wouldn’t it be worth it for them to get demonstrable return on investment? Because, in that industry, our clients often had parts of the business where they were losing \$100 million or \$200 million a year through waste and inefficiency. And if they could take that same time and attention their team members put…instead of putting on the \$5 million-a-year problem, or the \$1 million-a-year problem, right, they could be focusing attention on these much, much bigger problems, and that would be far better off for them than just getting a \$5 million return on investment.

[00:22:48]

For us to be successful, we had to become better suits if we were gonna address our clients’ needs. Now, eventually we did develop products that tackled some of the bigger problems our clients felt, and we were successful. But if we hadn’t learned about their business and about their priorities, we’d have been left in the dust. As a suit, you need to recognize business value. You need to intentionally step outside your comfort zone and connect with people in the business, and then think of ways that your technical skills can be applied to the highest value and most urgent business problems. As a geek leader, if you really want to grow your influence, you need to grow skills when you’re wearing the geek hat, the communicator hat, and the suit hat. And that’s today’s thought leader segment, thanks to “Gartner”.

[00:23:37]

Family segment.

[00:23:52]

Man: Level two. Team member. Level two is where you work well with others, and together you all succeed.

[00:24:01]

Tom: As I record this episode, it is Thanksgiving week in the United States. Thanksgiving is one of the favorite holidays in America. I love this holiday. It’s all about making the time to reflect on the blessings we have and invest time with family and friends in celebration. Now, in most American families, we put out a great feast for Thanksgiving day. With turkey, stuffing, potatoes, cranberry sauce, and many other delicious treats.

[00:24:27]

This year, one of our Boy Scouts decided he wanted to grow his skills in Dutch oven cooking. Now, for those of you who don’t know, a Dutch oven is a large cast iron bowl that’s got a heavy cast iron lid. Scouts learn to prepare dishes, even complete meals, using the Dutch oven, by placing the Dutch oven on the coals of a fire. To make the heating even, what you do is put coals on top of the oven, too. It’s not quite as simple as just setting the oven in the kitchen for a specific temperature. And my son Joel prepared a sweet potato casserole to contribute to our family feast.

[00:25:03]

And he started a charcoal fire in our fire pit, and he put the Dutch oven on the coals and put the coals on the top. Now, his coals started to burn out earlier than he planned, and now the temperature wasn’t gonna be hot enough. What was he gonna do? Well, fortunately, we still had some more charcoal and he was able to scramble to get some more charcoal lit to put back on to heat the casserole back up. Now, I think he was disappointed that things didn’t go perfectly. But eventually, the sweet potato casserole was done and it provided a delicious element for our family meal. I’m proud of him for stepping outside his comfort zone and for trying something new. And his experience yesterday reminds me of two thoughts about learning.

[00:25:47]

First, the head of Pixar, you know, the folks who put out Toy Story, he said, “Failure is an inevitable consequence of trying something new, and, as such, should be seen as valuable.” He’s saying that failure is valuable. Let me just read that quote to you again. “Failure is an inevitable consequence of trying something new, and, as such, it should be seen as valuable.” Failure is a part of our journey, and when things don’t go perfectly, we don’t need to get upset about that. We need to remember that struggle is normal and struggle is to be expected.

[00:26:26]

Secondly, I’m also reminded of the proverb that says, “The master has failed more times than the student has even tried. The master has failed more times than the student has ever tried.” This proverb teaches us that mastery comes through trying, stretching, learning, and failure. I just wanna wrap up by saying, the sweet potato casserole, yum. And that’s today’s family segment.

[00:26:55]

Episode Hack.

[00:26:57]

Man: In the Episode Hack segment, Tom shares one action-oriented takeaway from this episode. Something you can apply right away.

[00:27:16]

Tom: Man, we have covered a lot of ground today. We talked about three hats you need to wear as a technical resource. We talked about The Law of the Lid. How your leadership ability is directly related to your success, and how making mistakes is part of the journey to success. And then how you can improve your influence skills to get more recognition and reward at the office. So, in today’s Episode Hack, I wanna encourage you to make a plan about how to grow your skills as an influencer. What I want you to do is take a few minutes to set a specific goal, identify the smallest possible steps you can take toward that goal, and then give yourself a deadline.

[00:28:02]

For example, you might say, “I wanna be a better influencer. I’m going to read three books in the next three months on influencing people. I’m gonna take a look at Tom’s website, brighthillgroup.com/recommended-resources for a list of books to choose from. I’ll read one in December, one in January, and one in February. And each month, I’m gonna pick at least one idea from a book and work to apply that idea in my work.” Creating a specific, measurable, and action-oriented plan to grow your influence skills. That’s today’s Episode Hack.

[00:28:40]

Closeout

If you liked the podcast, could I ask you to give me a hand? It turns out it’s a big deal to have a rating in iTunes. Now, I’ve heard other podcasters asking for ratings and reviews, and I wondered why they kept going after it again, and again, and again. Do you wanna know? Because almost no one actually does it. It only takes a minute and it’s a huge help.

[00:29:02]

So why is that? Great ratings help iTunes decide that this podcast is worth promoting. And when you put a rating or a review, it helps it appear as a top podcast in the iTune search. Could you please take a moment to do it right now? There are three simple steps. One, go to the iTune store, podcast. Two, search for Becoming a Geek Leader. And three, give the podcast a great rating. Thanks.

[00:29:34]

This is Tom Cooper. Thanks for listening. Be sure to join me next time for another episode of Becoming a Geek Leader. Join me in my mission of discovering better ways to lead others at work and at home.

Listen now!

In this episode:

In today’s episode, I want to talk about two important topics first, in the thought leader segment, I’m going to share with you how to use the yellow light principle to make sure you uncover problems before they become serious problems.

Next, in the coaches mailbox segment, I answer a question from Gino about how to get people to buy into his ideas.

Resources:

• How to get people to want to help you – Sea:1Ep:1
• “My Favorite Things” – a quick one-page downloadable PDF that lets you focus on exactly what is important to the other person.
• Let’s Get Real or Let’s Not Play: Transforming the Buyer/Seller Relationship

Transcript

[00:00:01]

Tom: So getting back to your CFO, I would ask, “What did you mean about cloud strategy?” And I’d ask him questions about, “Where did you hear that? What was the context? What benefits do you think we would get from moving to the cloud?” Now your goal is not to cross-examine him or make him seem stupid or catch him being dumb. Your goal is not to look for a way to point out how wrong or foolish the other person is. What you’re trying to do is get an understanding of exactly what he’s thinking.

[00:00:31]

Announcer: Becoming a Geek Leader, season three, episode two.

[00:00:37]

Sponsored by Brighthill Group Executive Coaching Services.

CEO Whisperer Jerry Colonna said, “If you’re not consciously, intentionally creating your culture, culture’s going to get created around you or despite you.” I work with leaders and their team members to help create a positive culture. Sometimes this is by coaching one or more high potential team members to help them develop the skills to create the environment for their teams. Other times I’m brought in to work with someone who needs help getting back on the path. If you’d like help creating a great culture, developing your team members, or even taking your leadership to the next level, check out brighthillgroup.com/go/coaching. That’s brighthillgroup.com/go/coaching. I offer individual and small business rates. Let’s get started.

[00:01:30]

Welcome to the Becoming a Geek Leader Podcast. My name is Tom Cooper. As a geek, I’m on a mission to figure out better ways to lead others at work and at home. Through the Becoming a Geek Leader Podcast, I’m sharing what I’m learning so I can help make you more effective at leading people, too. Ready?

[00:01:53]

Introduction

As I kick off today’s episode, I want you to know how much I appreciate you. Thank you for listening. I am grateful to be in touch with you and also to be able to hear from you. So if there’s a topic, a question or a concern you have about the podcast, please reach out to me. Send an email to coach@brighthillgroup.com. That’s coach@brighthillgroup.com. I really do love hearing from you.

[00:02:21]

In today’s episode, I’m gonna talk about two important topics. First, in the Thought Leader segment, I’m gonna share with you how to use the yellow light principle to make sure you uncover problems before they become serious problems.

[00:02:37]

Next, in the Coach’s Mailbox segment, I answer a question from Gino about how he can get people to buy in to his ideas. Let’s get started.

[00:02:48]

Thought Leader segment.

[00:03:10]

Tom: I recently was reminded about a fantastic book on the topic of collaborating with others to solve complex problems. And in today’s thought leader segment I’m gonna be sharing with you one of the ideas from that book. The book is called “Let’s Get Real or Let’s Not Play.” And I really love the way the authors tackle the problem of getting a diverse set of ideas from people and getting people on the same page. I highly recommend the book.

[00:03:38]

In this book, one of the ideas that the authors Mahan Khalsa and Randy Illig share is the idea of a yellow light. Now, a yellow light is something that you can use when you’re at level two of the four levels of thinking as a geek leader.

[00:03:56]

Announcer: Level two, team member. Level two is where you work well with others, and together you all succeed.

[00:04:06]

Tom: Now, let’s talk about the yellow light principle. We all know that when we’re driving and we’re approaching a traffic signal and we see a light turn yellow we have two choices. We can choose to accelerate in hopes of beating the red or we can slow down in case we have to stop. Now, none of us likes to stop. Nobody likes to be held back, and so our tendency tends to be we want to speed up when we see a yellow light. Now this can be disastrous when it comes to working with a customer to define a solution.

[00:04:40]

And a red light is something that is going to be ultimately a showstopper. It’s a problem that is a major issue or it’s something that cannot be overcome, a requirement that cannot be met. That’s a red light. For example, I worked years ago on an identity management project for a large company. The company was growing and we needed to be able to add new users, remove users, and modify permissions for users on systems throughout the entire organization. Now, this area was a new area for us to tackle, and we were working with a small vendor who is nimble and agile and promised to be able to solve the problems for us, and so we were excited about that.

[00:05:18]

But after investing years and millions of dollars in this project, we finally had to pull the plug. That project died a painful death.

[00:05:29]

Looking back, as is often the case, we really didn’t understand a lot of the complexities about the business and the business rules that we were trying to implement. And it was only when we began to try to build a system that automated those business rules that we really dug in and could figure out how complex the problem really was.

[00:05:49]

As I reflect on it now, I think we were overly optimistic about how simple it would be to solve the problems and we were overly optimistic about the vendor’s capabilities.

[00:05:59]

Now, knowing what I know now, we overlooked a lot of yellow lights that really ended up being red lights.

[00:06:06]

Now, when it comes to red lights, I want to point out that finding a red light is not a failure. Getting a red light, if something’s going to fail eventually anyway, you want it to fail fast. If the project is ultimately going to fail, you succeeded when you get it to…when you learn that early, when you get it to fail early. Because pouring more money into a project that’s ultimately gonna fail is an even bigger loss.

[00:06:32]

Now, this yellow light principle. The idea here is that we’re gonna recognize things that might become a problem, and we’re gonna bring it up as early as possible. The earlier we discover problems or even potential problems, the cheaper and faster it is to solve them.

[00:06:51]

As we’re talking to customers, they’re giving us signals about how they’re

feeling and what they’re thinking. Now, I know a lot of us are not really touchy feely and it’s hard to connect with that. But so much of the work that we do is related to that EQ, that understanding that emotional connection that needs to happen with people and cultivating your awareness of that is really, really valuable to you.

[00:07:18]

Now, the customer is gonna give you signals about what matters to them and they’re gonna give you those signals in the inflection that they use or their emphasis or in their pace or their tone. These are all things that are not what they say but how they say it. Of course, you want to listen to what they say. Of course, that matters, but it also matters how they say it. And as you are paying attention to their inflection or their tone or their emphasis or their pace, they’re gonna give us also non-verbal communication. How are they standing or sitting? How are they…? What facial expressions are they making? All those give you a clue about what’s going on inside their head.

[00:08:08]

As you begin to learn to be aware of those signals, then you can choose what you’re gonna do with them.

[00:08:15]

And I like the way they say in the book, “Yellow lights are doubts, stalls, concerns, fears, objections, or tough questions. Doubts, stalls, concerns, fears, objections, or tough questions.”

[00:08:38]

As you look at that list, a yellow light is anything that might give you a clue that something is not working perfectly, and that’s what we’re talking about.

[00:08:49]

Now they give some examples in the book, and I like these particular ones from the book. They say, “What happens when your customer wants something that you know you cannot do or maybe you can’t do it in the time or the budget that they’ve got available?”

[00:09:04]

They offer the three-step response. One, first say, “I think we may have a problem.” Two, “We do a lot of the things you’ve mentioned. We do those things well but we don’t do X and, candidly, we don’t plan to be able to support that in the near future either.”

[00:09:25]

Number three, “Customer, what do you think we should do?” I love the simplicity of this approach because you raise the issue. You’re not saying, “You definitely have a problem.” You’re saying, “I think we might have a problem.” Then you state simply what you think the problem is, and the third step is you ask the customer, “What do you think we should do?” So, “Customer, I think we may have a problem. We do a lot of the things you’ve mentioned and we do them well but we don’t do feature X and we’re really not planning to do it any time in the near future. What do you think we should do?”

[00:09:58]

Now, at this point, you’ve opened a dialogue and you’re in a place where your customer can give you great feedback and you might get a green light. Your customer might tell you, “We should move forward because that feature, even though we said we needed it, it’s not all that important after all.” Or, you might get a red light that says, “Look, if you can’t give us that feature, it’s a deal breaker.”

[00:10:19]

The value in this approach is you’re really beginning to collaborate with the customer and you’re getting a sense from your customer about what really matters to them.

[00:10:29]

You’ve probably heard me say before, “It’s important to say it out loud. Say it out loud.” If you come across a yellow light, you want to say it out loud, and I like this three-step approach. “I think we may have a problem.” State the problem simply and tactfully, and then ask the question, “What do you think we should do?”

[00:10:48]

I want to take just a second here to remind you that it’s not our job to implement technology X, whatever our favorite technology is. Of course, we should be experts at what we do. Absolutely, that’s right. Of course, we should use our technical talent to create elegant systems and solutions for our customers. But fundamentally, fundamentally, our job is to help customers use technology to solve business problems. We’re not in the technology business. We’re in the solve business problems business and we happen to use technology to do that.

[00:11:27]

And when you, on your levels of thinking, are able to start to move up the chain a little bit, if you’re able to do more work that helps you understand what the customer wants, you’re going to add more value to the business. And when you think about how to solve business problems using technology and not just how the technical stuff works, your influence is gonna increase and the value it brings to the business is gonna increase. And what that means to you is that you’re gonna find you have more support for your ideas, you have more resources to solve the problems that you face, and your projects are going to be more successful.

[00:12:06]

So leveraging the yellow light principle is a way that you can get everybody in the room on the same page and believing and buying into the same idea, and it’s gonna help you identify problems early so that you can tackle them early, and that’s today’s Thought Leader segment.

[00:12:28]

Coach’s Mailbox.

[00:12:59]

Tom: Today, I’m answering a question from Gino. Gino writes, “I’m the lead technical analyst for a financial system reporting toolkit at a large technology firm. We’ve been using the same on premise system for more than five years and we’ve done a lot of customizations. Over the years, we’ve gone through multiple upgrades and it’s now time for us to upgrade again. I’ve been planning this for a long time, but in the midst of my planning I get a message from the office of the CFO asking about cloud options. Specifically, he came to me and said, “Can you describe our cloud strategy?” I don’t know what to tell him.”

[00:13:37]

Of course, we can move our stuff to the cloud. The problem is not moving the technology to another platform like the cloud. The problem is, all the customizations that are demanded by the people in the line of business and all those people report to the CFO.

[00:13:52]

Now, one of the things he said is his goal is to allow us to make major leaps forward in our capability, but I don’t see how to do that unless we remove the customizations. My question is this, “How can I get the CFO to realize that his people and his processes are the problem, not the technology?”

[00:14:16]

The answer to this question about how to get people to want to buy into your ideas, how do you gain that buy in, that’s something that you can use starting at level one of the four levels of thinking as a geek leader.

[00:14:29]

Announcer: Level one, individual. At level one, you may even be a superstar technical resource. Level one focuses you on improving your technical skills.

[00:14:43]

Tom: Gino, you asked, “How can I get the CFO to realize his people and his processes are the problem, not the technology?” And I want to tell you, I feel your pain. I remember using…I was responsible for a similar system in a Fortune 500 company, and our business partners demanded that their business processes could not be changed, that the software had to be modified to meet their specific and unique needs because their business process was perfect. And of course, what that meant was we had to make the software do things it wasn’t designed to do and it meant that when it came time to do upgrades, it was really hard.

[00:15:16]

Because of the significant amount of customizations, each upgrade required an extensive test plan for all the customizations and we had a budget to essentially rewrite almost all the customizations too because the vendor didn’t care about our customizations.

[00:15:30]

I don’t think I can really get into the details of your specific situation without more information from you, but I do think I can offer you a few specific principles you can apply as you work your way through this challenge.

[00:15:42]

First, it’s important to note that you’re always safer if you assume that people make bad decisions as a result of ignorance rather than bad intent. Let me say that again. It’s always safer to assume that people make bad decisions because they’re ignorant rather than because they have bad intent.

[00:16:01]

In your case, I’d be willing to bet that the CFO doesn’t understand the cost and complexity related to maintaining custom versions. The tradeoffs required to move to a hosted system like the cloud instead of an on-premise system and the complexity of getting his people to change their business process. Fundamentally, if you want to influence your CFO, if you want him to buy in to your ideas, you’re gonna have to make clear to him why it’s in his best interest to make the changes that are needed.

[00:16:30]

Any time you’re trying to get somebody to buy into your ideas, there are three things you need to think about. Number one, what do they care about? What do they care about? Number two, do you have enough personal connection with them so that they trust you when you speak? And number three, I like the way John Maxwell puts it when he says, “Connectors do the difficult work of keeping it simple. Connectors do the difficult work of keeping it simple.”

[00:16:57]

Let me take a couple of minutes to unpack these for you. Number one, what do they care about? Now, you already have some insight. Your CFO told you the goal he’s after is to allow you to make major leaps forward in your capability.

[00:17:14]

Now, you and I both know, we have to be very clear about exactly what we mean. In this case, there are two things I think you need to have clarified before you can move forward. Let’s talk about the cloud. Like most new technologies, this one’s pretty far along in that hype cycle. The term is used frequently, it’s in a lot of literature, it’s in ads, it’s on television commercials, and the challenge is, I think, very few people actually know what it means.

[00:17:43]

I’d bet if you ask five different people what it means to be cloud-enabled or to be able to work in the cloud, you’d get at least three different answers. You might get six.

[00:17:52]

If I were in your shoes, I’d want to sit down and ask the CFO, “Why are you interested in cloud enablement?” and really dig into that. And then next, in your question, Gino, you said that the CFO said, “Major leaps forward in our capability.” Again, I’d want to sit down with a CFO and ask for specific examples of times where he wanted some new capability and he hasn’t been able to get it.

[00:18:17]

When you understand the driving factors behind his request, you’ll be far better equipped to make a case that’s gonna resonate with the CFO.

[00:18:28]

You’ve already said that based on your experience, unless the business process is simplified, the promised efficiencies of moving to cloud probably won’t happen. You may not even be able to do the things you do today in the cloud.

[00:18:42]

And I just want to say that while this may seem obvious to you, it is very likely not to be obvious to your CFO, so this is where you have to say it out loud.

[00:18:55]

In order for your CFO and other leaders to make good decisions, they have to understand the consequences of their choices. Spending some time with them to really understand what they’re after is extremely valuable and it will give you a whole lot of help as you’re trying to make the case about why they should or shouldn’t do anything.

[00:19:14]

When you meet with the CFO, you’re gonna want to ask the question, “I heard you say you wanted us to make major leaps forward in capability and I love that idea. I want to make sure that you and I are on the same page. Can you give me an example of some capability that we currently can’t offer you?”

[00:19:33]

Now, you might not actually get an answer to this question. You may or you may not. Now, if you don’t get an answer, maybe he likes the idea of that capability thing but doesn’t really…can’t give you a specific example. Then you can take a run at it from a different direction. You could ask, “Has there been a time in the past that you wanted or needed something that our tool couldn’t do for you? I mean, I assume you asked us to help you with that but we weren’t able to help.” And if he can give you an example, and he probably can, “What was the impact of not having that capability? How much did it hurt you or how painful was it or why was that important to you?” Understanding his motivations and drives are gonna be very valuable to you because you want to really understand his concerns.

[00:20:21]

When he’s telling you his concerns, you’re gonna want to write down the specific words that you hear him using. You want to repeat back exactly what he says.

[00:20:32]

So you’re saying, “You want to be able to get new versions of the software installed faster?” For example, right? And that process of saying it out loud, of repeating it back, that lets the CFO know that you heard exactly what he said.

[00:20:49]

And the reason for writing down the words he uses is that when you are making your case in that future meeting where you’re coming back to talk about which direction you’re gonna recommend the organization go, when you’re making that case, you want to use the same words that he used when you’re talking about helping him get what he wants.

[00:21:09]

And there’s a ton more we could go into on this one point. But if you want other people to buy into your ideas, the key point here is you want to understand exactly what the other person cares about.

[00:21:21]

So that’s point number one, what do they care about? Number two, do you have enough personal connection with them so that they trust you when you speak? Now, I could go into a ton on this one as well. If you want more information about this, you should go back and listen to season one episode, one of podcasts, and I’ll include a link to that in the show notes on the website as well. Also, there’s a resource that I had that will really help you when you’re starting to learn about what’s important to other people. There’s a one-page resource that I’ve got that you can download that is called “My favorite things,” and it’ll help you make that personal connection.

[00:22:02]

So our goal here is connection. We want the other person to feel a connection with us. I just cannot overstate the importance of that personal connection. A lot of times, as engineers, we feel like it’s obvious that our solution is correct. Our recommendation is to be trusted because our competence speaks for itself. That’s our starting point. That’s what we generally believe when we’re getting started, but here’s the thing. It doesn’t actually work that way. It is important that we be competent. Of course, we have to be competent, but it’s not enough.

[00:22:40]

Fundamentally, people do business with people they know, like, and trust. Let me just say that again. Fundamentally, people do business with people they know, like, and trust. They expect that you’re competent, but if you want to have influence with them, they have to like you and they have to trust you also.

[00:23:01]

We want to be in a position where we’re able to connect with the other person on some common ground. Connectors connect on common ground.

[00:23:09]

Now, we started talking about…technically, we started talking about what do they care about, what outcome or result or solution do they want. That’s on the technical side, and I want to talk about, personally, what’s going on because we have to get a little more personal.

[00:23:27]

I’ve watched my mentor John Maxwell for many years as he does this. He’s always intentional about finding some common ground. What’s interesting to me is, he can be on a conference call with a thousand people and there’ll be a Q&A session going on and somebody will come on and they’ll say, “Hi, I’m Julie and my question is X,” and they’ll ask a question. And here’s somebody that he has never met, he’s never met this person. How in the world can he have connection with somebody he’s never even met?

[00:23:56]

But before he answers the question, he takes a moment and he asks her a question. John will say something like, “Hey, Julie, where are you from?” Now, in John’s case, he’s been speaking and teaching for probably 50 years. He’s traveled all over the world, and invariably, no matter where Julie lives, John will be able to say something like this, “Oh, you live in Scranton? You know, Julie, I remember I visited Scranton several years ago. I was doing a speaking engagement there. There was a deli down on Main Street that I really liked. Have you ever eaten there?” And all of a sudden, he’s gone from a totally cold, totally disconnected relationship, to sharing something he has in common with her.

[00:24:38]

Now, he might not bring up a specific detail like that because, candidly, he probably doesn’t remember the details like that. But he might say, “I do remember I visited Scranton a while back when I had a speaking engagement.” Orm maybe he’s never been to Scranton and he says, “You know what? I spoke in Philadelphia a while back. How far is that from Scranton?” He’s talking about what matters to her, And even if he hasn’t been to her town, he has brought something up that does matter to her. He’s established some common ground, and that’s somebody he doesn’t even know.

[00:25:11]

Now, in your case, you want to find something that you have in common with the other person. You want to find something that you and that person can agree on. Maybe it’s a sports team. It might be something academic. It could be anything at all. Connectors connect on common ground. If you want to influence somebody else, if you want to win them to your way of thinking, you need to find common ground. Look around their office. Look at the bumper stickers on their car. Listen to them as they tell a story about their family or their dog or their car or anything else. Making a priority of finding common ground matters. If you can find something that you can relate to, it’s important.

[00:25:50]

Now, let’s say, for the sake of argument, that you can’t find anything in common at all. There’s nothing you can imagine that you have in common with the other person. But if you can have some…if you identify something that’s important to them and you can express some interest in that, maybe they’re into rock climbing and you know nothing about rock climbing, you don’t have to pretend you love rock climbing because that’d be crazy, but you can ask questions about it. You could say, “I really don’t know anything about rock climbing. How did you get started doing that?”

[00:26:22]

By focusing on what’s important to them and you’re making that personal connection, that’s going to make them more likely to want to hear what you have to say, and you don’t have to have a 20-minute conversation about rock climbing. You can have a one-minute conversation about it. You’re just trying to find some common ground you can stand on. That’s how you go about winning somebody to your way of thinking.

[00:26:46]

So we’ve talked about what do they care about and we’ve talked about do you have enough personal connection for them to want to hear what you have to say, so let’s talk for a second about number three. Connectors do the difficult work of keeping it simple.

[00:27:02]

When I think about this topic, my head begins to spin. This is so important and it is very, very difficult. In fact, the more you know about a topic or a subject, the harder it is to be simple. As I mentioned before, even widely used words like cloud are not simple because people don’t even agree about what they mean. This problem is so widespread in multiple organizations where I worked. I found it valuable to create a glossary of important terms.

[00:27:30]

People would use acronyms and terms and words that meant something specific to them and I was shocked at how often people in the organization actually disagreed about what those things meant, and we would spend time making sure that we were on the same page. Because if we were talking about different things, of course, we were not gonna be on the same page. We weren’t gonna get to great solutions. So I literally would create a Word document that was a glossary of terms and what we meant by those terms.

[00:28:00]

So getting back to your CFO, I would ask, “What did you mean about cloud strategy?” And I’d ask him questions about, “Where did you hear that? What was the context? What benefits do you think we would get from moving to the cloud?” Now your goal is not to cross-examine him or make him seem stupid or catch him being dumb. Your goal is not to look for a way to point out how wrong or foolish the other person is. What you’re trying to do is get an understanding of exactly what he’s thinking. And once you know where his thinking is, you can start to do the difficult work of keeping your communication simple as you translate from the terminology that you would naturally use to words that make sense to him.

[00:28:44]

I just want to take a second here to say it’d be ideal if the CFO and other leaders were willing to do the hard work of understanding the technology terms but that’s not gonna happen. It’d be great but it’s not gonna happen. So you’re gonna find, you’re gonna be far, far more successful if you do the work of translating from your native tongue, from the technology speeds and feeds, into terms that are relevant to the other person. This is why you wanted to write down the words that the CFO was using when he was describing his problems, when he was describing his goals, because you’re gonna want to find a way to translate your words and your acronyms and your ideas into a language that makes sense to him.

[00:29:27]

You simply won’t get what you want if you don’t communicate what you want simply. You simply won’t get what you want if you don’t communicate what you want simply. Connectors do the difficult work of keeping it simple.

[00:29:43]

So Gino, I know you’ve got a lot of hard work ahead of you and I hope these three ideas are helpful to you in your process. When you want to get others to buy into your ideas, you need to know what do they care about, do you have enough personal connection with them, and have you done the difficult work of keeping it simple for them? And that’s today’s Coach’s Mailbox segment.

[00:30:07]

Episode Hack.

[00:30:30]

Tom: In today’s episode, we talked about the concept of a yellow light and we also talked about how you get buy in for your ideas. We talked about how you need to know what they care about, how you have to have a personal connection with them, and that, as a connector, you need to do the difficult work of keeping it simple. For today’s Episode Hack, I want to talk about how you can immediately use the yellow light principle.

[00:30:54]

In the book, “Let’s Get Real or Let’s Not Play,” they say, “If you feel it, hear it or see it, find a way to say it tactfully. If you feel it, hear it or see it, find a way to say it tactfully.” Remember the three-step response. One, “I think we may have a problem.” Two, state the issue tactfully. Three, ask them, “What do you think we should do?” If you make the time to bring up a yellow light, you might find it immediately turns green or it might turn red. Either way, you’re far better off, and that’s today’s Episode Hack.

[00:31:35]

Closeout

Hey, can I ask you something? Did you hear something helpful on today’s episode? Why not share it with a friend? On my iPhone, it’s as simple as hitting the three little dots on the bottom right of the screen, selecting “Share Episode,” enter your friend’s email and hit Send. Why do this? Two reasons. One, your friend or coworker will thank you. You’ll be seen as a source of helpful and valuable information and they will appreciate you for it. And number two, I need you to help me get the word out about this podcast. I’m working hard to bring great ideas and great content to you and it’s a big help to me if more people hear those ideas. Go ahead. Share it now. I’ll wait. Thanks.

[00:32:25]

This is Tom Cooper. Thanks for listening. Be sure to join me next time for another episode of Becoming a Geek Leader. Join me in my mission of discovering better ways to lead others at work and at home.

Listen now!

In this episode:

• Helping a team make a decision (even when they don’t want to)
• Google’s research on what it takes to create a high performing team, and
• An INCREDIBLE interview with Paula Paul about why diversity matters to teams.  It’s powerful, educational and may help you create better products, too.

Resources:

•  Code.org – learning resources for all ages, and sponsors of the yearly ‘Hour of Code’ in December (volunteers welcome!)
• TEALS – increasing access to CS education in our school systems
• Technical? Non-Technical? Both!
• How Men & Women See the Workplace Differently
• Paula’s BuzzFeed article
• Reply All podcast that changed my thinking about diversity
• Leslie Miley’s data-filled article about the problem of diversity
• NY Times article on Google’s Project Aristotle
• Project Oxygen infographic

 

Transcript

[00:00:00]

Paula: I am the only female software engineer. I’m an architect but the rest of the software engineers are all male and the only women are program managers and quality assurance folks. So I also think that there’s a little bit of a, you know, where are people comfortable seeing women, and I think that people are comfortable seeing women in those caring roles like program management and quality assurance but there’s still a stigma around engineering that’s kind of goofy to me.

[00:00:33]

Man: Becoming a Geek Leader Season 3 Episode 1.

Sponsored by BrightHill Group’s professional speaking services.

Are you a member of a professional association? Is your regional state or national group planning their upcoming annual meeting? I can help your meeting planners with keynotes and workshops on topics like communication, leadership, delegation, planning, or conflict resolution. Also, is your company planning an all-hands meeting? I can help your leaders plan a productive and memorable event. I can professionally facilitate your meeting and deliver content that is completely aligned with your goals. Here’s what Aaron Kuan [SP] said after having me speak for her statewide association.

[00:01:20]

Aaron: I really enjoy working with Tom because he is practical and down to earth. He brings really good content. He’s very engaging as a speaker and I think the audience really connects with him. They not only get the content but they also get an entertaining presentation. So I would definitely recommend working with him. I will certainly call him in the future for any events that I have.

[00:01:41]

Tom: Check out brighthillgroup.com/speaking, that’s brighthillgroup.com/speaking for testimonials, videos of me on stage, information about my most popular topics and more. Welcome to the Becoming a Geek Leader podcast. My name is Tom Cooper. As a geek, I’m on a mission to figure out better ways to lead others at work and at home. Through the Becoming a Geek Leader podcast, I’m sharing what I’m learning so I can help make you more effective at leading people too. Ready?

[00:02:18]

Introduction

Welcome to Season 3 of the podcast. I have to tell you, I’m really excited about what’s coming up. I’ve heard great feedback from you and I’m looking forward to tackling topics like goal-setting, priorities, getting others to take responsibility and have a sense of ownership, building consensus, better influencing skills, career growth for geeks, and so much more. Now today, I’m tackling three areas that I think are gonna be really powerful. First, I’m gonna answer a question about how to get a team to make a decision when they don’t wanna make a decision. Then in the Mentoring Segment, I’m gonna talk about how Google used data to identify the core characteristics of high-performing teams. And then, in the Thought Leader Segment, I’m really excited about…I’m sharing an interview I did on the importance of diverse teams with my guest Paula Paul. This is gonna be an action-packed episode and I can’t wait to hear what you have to say. After you’ve listened to this episode, drop me a line and tell me what you think. Let’s not mess around. Let’s get started right now.

[00:03:20]

Coach’s Mailbox.

[00:03:50]

Man: Level two, team member. Level two is where you work well with others, and together, you all succeed.

[00:03:59]

Tom: Today, I’m answering your email from Bill, who writes, “Tom, I’m responsible for a project where the team members come from different parts of the company. I keep having the same challenge over and over again. I just can’t get everyone to agree. Without a decision, progress just stops. We have meeting after meeting and I still can’t get them to make a decision. How do I get this done? I feel like I’m hurting cats.” Bill, I know exactly what you mean. It is so frustrating to have no decision. Frankly, no decision is worth than a bad decision because at least with a bad decision, you have an opportunity to learn something. No decision is just wasted time.

[00:04:41]

So, I wanna quickly share a tool which may be helpful to you. When it comes to decision-making, most of the time, you might have one, maybe two people who are passionately in favor of an idea. Then you’ve got maybe one or two who feel like, “This is a bad idea,” and then everybody else falls into what I call the “mushy middle.” Now, some people lean toward yes from the mushy middle. Some people lean toward no. But overall, they just don’t care. They certainly don’t care enough to go on record and take a chance on being wrong or criticized so they say nothing.

[00:05:15]

Now, one way to get a decision when you’re in this situation is to take a vote by hand. And you’re gonna ask them to vote for one of three different categories and the categories are: I love it, I hate it, or I can live with it. Now, let’s say that your team needs to decide about the new blue widget, whatever that is. You’ve had some questions about it, a discussion but you feel like you’re treading water. You don’t have 100% agreement and you feel like you’re stuck. So Bill, here’s what you can say, “Okay, guys, we’ve talked about the new blue widget question and I think we’re at a point where, based on what we know right now, we need to make a decision. Now, I know we don’t have 100% certainty. There are still some unanswered questions but I’m pretty sure that we need to make a go/no-go decision now. I’m not gonna put you on the spot, but I am gonna ask you to vote for one of three options.

[00:06:08]

One, “I love it, this new blue widget is the best thing ever.” Two, “I hate it. The new blue widget is a terrible idea.” Or, and now this one’s an important one, “I can live with it. The new blue widget might be a great idea, it might be a bad idea, but based on what I know right now, I can live with it.” You see, this way you’re giving people two get-out-of-jail-free cards. Get-out-of-jail-free card number one: based on what we know now. I mean, you might find out something tomorrow that convinces you this is a terrible decision. But based on what we know right now, we’re making a decision. Get-out-of-jail-free free card number two: I can live with it. This lets the mushy middle safely say, “I don’t care. Do whatever you want.”

[00:06:53]

Bill, this is a tool I have used lots of times to help bring a group to consensus. Love it, hate it, can live with it. It’s an easy way for you to find out who opposes the idea. Now, how to handle the guy who hates it, that’s a topic for a future segment. But I hope this helps with your situation, and that’s today’s Coaches Mailbox segment.

[00:07:12]

Mentoring Segment.

[00:07:30]

Man: Level three, Team Leader. Level three, as the boss of a team, your job is to recruit and develop individuals and team members who follow your lead.

[00:07:45]

Tom: In today’s Mentoring Segment, I wanna talk about what Google can teach us about effective teams. Google’s got a reputation for being one of the most intelligent engineering companies in the world. They’re very geek-oriented and they hire the smartest possible people they can hire. Now, as they’ve been on their journey, for a while, they even eliminated manager positions altogether. They had no managers at all, and they learned that simply didn’t work for a whole bunch of reasons. So, Google did what they do well. They used data and analytics to help identify what characteristics are found in great bosses.

[00:08:25]

Now, you think, in a high engineering company, that the best engineering ideas would matter the most, but what’s fascinating, really fascinating is that geek skills came in eighth out of eight possible factors in a good boss. Eighth! Now, it wasn’t that it wasn’t on the list at all, but what surprises me is that it was so low on the list. It’s fascinating. Have you checked out the show notes? You can find my infographic that shows all eight factors in being a great boss and the order of importance, as Google found out in their Project Oxygen.

[00:08:59]

Now, building on that knowledge, Google began to ask the question, what makes some teams better than other teams? What makes some teams better than other teams? And again, using data they collected from their internal research as well as a ton of behavioral psychology research, they did identify patterns of what things are present in high-performing teams. Now, this was not an easy problem to solve. They looked hard at the data to see what they could learn, and initially, they were stumped.

[00:09:30]

Abeer Dubey is a manager in Google’s People Analytics Division and he said, “At Google, we’re really good at finding patterns. There weren’t strong patterns here.” And back in 2010, psychologists from Carnegie Mellon University, MIT, and Union College did some research on effective team performance. And I’m gonna quote from a New York Times article on this topic that says, “Researchers eventually concluded that what distinguished good teams from dysfunctional groups was how teammates treated one another. The right norms, in other words, could raise a group’s collective intelligence, whereas the wrong norms could hobble a team even if, individually, all the members were exceptional bright.”

[00:10:14]

Now, do you know this is true? I mean, have you worked on a team with some really, really smart people who couldn’t get along, who couldn’t work as a team? We see this in sports. We see it in work. We know this is true. Just because you’re super smart doesn’t mean you’re gonna work well as a team. So Google continued to crunch the numbers and they surveyed team members and leaders, and you know what they discovered? They discovered that human connection, personal connection is critical to high-performing teams. If you want the best team performance, you have to create teams with norms that elevate the connections of people with each other. Your team needs to listen to each other, provide a safe place for people to express their ideas in a way that won’t make them face personal criticism or character assassination. Now, it seems kind of obvious but it’s really, really powerful. If you can create a safe place for your team to communicate honestly with each other, it’s gonna dramatically improve your team performance.

[00:11:21]

See, I’m gonna include a link to the New York Times article on the website on the show notes because it’s definitely worth your time to read. Here’s the thing. The people on your team, they’re people. They need to feel heard and they need to know that the contributions they’re making matter to you, to the team, and to the company. I’m sure you’ve heard me say before that I believe that because people matter, we must lead them well. Even a hardcore engineering firm discovered that because people matter, we must lead them well. And that’s today’s Mentoring Segment.

[00:11:58]

Thought Leader Segment. 

[00:12:17]

Man: Level two, team member. Level two is where you work well with others, and together you all succeed.

[00:12:27]

Tom: Now, today’s Thought Leader Segment, I wanna talk a little bit about diversity and inclusion. And as a white guy in tech, I’ve always known that the field has been male-dominated. I mean, I went to a small school and I only remember a couple of women in my computer science classes. And my adviser and one of my professors was a woman and she helped me a great deal. And I also have a good friend who worked in the game industry and he told me about the misogyny and just the discrimination that he saw in that industry. And I’ve got friends who work in Silicon Valley and they talk about the boys’ club. But that just hasn’t been my experience. And looking back, I think what I’m realizing now is that I was pretty fortunate because, in my career, I had the opportunity to work with lots of people who didn’t look like me.

[00:13:14]

I could think of numerous female engineers with whom I worked and I’m grateful for their work, and what I learned from them on the journey. And I also built a team when I was working as a technology leader multiple times and I found, as I was recruiting the best fit for the team, I had the opportunity to acquire team members who didn’t look like me from a race and national origin perspective or from a gender perspective. And so, it really didn’t connect with me that this was a significant problem. And I’ve been ruminating on these ideas for a while and I confess that it was only after I heard a recent Reply All podcast episode with Leslie Miley, who was talking about the challenges of diversity, that I really began to reflect on this issue in more depth. And Leslie was the most senior black engineer at Twitter and he got frustrated because Twitter apparently wasn’t super committed, from his perspective, to really changing the picture of Twitter.

[00:14:07]

One of the things he said on the podcast that really hit me is he said, “There’s a ton of research about diversity making teams better. It’s ridiculous we’re not talking about it.” And I’ve not thought about that. I’ve never thought about the issue of what research there might be, and he ended up leaving Twitter over that issue. And that leads me to ask the question, what significant breakthroughs in technology simply are not happening because our teams are too homogenous? They’re too white. They’re too male. So with that in mind, I wanted to bring in someone to talk about this issue from a different perspective, and I had the opportunity last year to hear Paula Paul speak on this topic and I thought it’d be great to have her be a part of the podcast. I’ve told you, I’m on my mission to learn how to be a better influencer at working at home and I’ll be sharing what I’m learning and that’s the really the goal in today’s Thought Leader Segment.

[00:14:52]

Now, Paula says that she entered the workforce as a software engineer and product developer with IBM in the early 1980s. And since then, she’s shipped commercial software, Evangelyze.net for Microsoft, and held executive positions in corporate IT. After flipping the table mid-career, she came back to technology through a passion for teaching people to code. Paula’s currently an architect with AmWINS Group, Inc. and enjoys work in the community as an Anita Borg Institute Syster, diversity speaker, and mentor. Paula, welcome to the podcast.

[00:15:22]

Paula: Well, thank you, Tom, and thanks for the opportunity.

[00:15:25]

Tom: I’m excited to dig into this, and I’d like to hear from you about what are some significant things that you think about when it comes to the question of diversity and inclusion in technology?

[00:15:39]

Paula: Oh sure. It always goes back to people and you can have all the studies out there that illustrate the benefits of diversity and even going back in history to things like the development of airbags in cars and currently even just voice recognition systems that are keyed more to certain types of voices, male voices, and the airbags in early car systems that were geared towards the 175-pound male. So there’s all sorts of evidence that diverse teams produce better products, but it’s tough when you’re the actual people involved on the team and people in general including women and everyone. People are more comfortable working with people like them. And I do go back to my early days at IBM and, you know, my first manager was black. The manager of the A-team developers was a woman. And by the time I left IBM in the early ’90s, I worked with people who were openly gay and lesbian.

[00:16:42]

So, those were my early experiences in my career 30 years ago. So that shaped my perception of what it was like to work in technology. But when I worked with people who have been in technology 4, 5, 10, 15, or even 20 years, I do understand, I grew to understand over time that their perceptions were shaped differently by, you know, sort of the media glorification of Silicon Valley and the geek persona where it’s an aggressive male field. It wasn’t that way when I started, and in fact, many of the significant contributions to technology have been from women. It’s just that recent history has painted it differently. But I think we’re starting to, by talking about this topic, we’re actually starting to change that perception. So I’m very happy that you’re doing this podcast and appreciate that you’re including me.

[00:17:41]

Tom: Oh, glad to have you in. And, you know, as you’re talking about that, I was just reflecting on the fact that my mom wrote a payroll system for her employer and she was employed as a psychometrician but she was smart enough in the technology space to be able to step in and do those things. She’d been watching me do geeky stuff even as a kid and she was intrigued by it and got involved with that. And my wife’s mom actually worked for the NSA and she was a developer working for the NSA many, many decades ago. So, you know, it’s interesting how, to your point, that there was a season in time where there was a perspective about what it meant to work in technology. And it’s funny because I was talking to my mother-in-law about this recently and she said, “Well, I got a degree in psychology. I thought I would, you know, pursue that type of work. And then I found out that I was really good at mathematics and the NSA was recruiting for people who were good at mathematics. And so, I ended up, you know, going to a job fair and I found myself working at Fort Meade.” She didn’t set out to be a developer. She set out to, you know, to do something entirely different, but it turned out that that was a fit.

[00:18:46]

Paula: Yeah.

[00:18:46]

Tom: So, when you think about that view that you talked about, that glorification of the boys’ club, male-dominated, you know, kind of thing in Silicon Valley, what do you think we could do to help change the perception of what it’s like to work in technology?

[00:19:01]

Paula: Well, I think you pointed out something really important, that you had early influences in your life that showed you, you know, all sorts of different kinds of people working in technical fields, mother, you know, other female people in your life. So I think we lost a little bit of that portrayal in the media. If you Google “software engineer…” just go to your browser bar and Google “software engineer.” You’ll see that even there, we still have a little bit of work to do.

[00:19:30]

Tom: A little.

[00:19:32]

Paula: So, I do think there are a tremendous number of women who are making significant contributions to technology in the field. But we’re still kind of portraying it as a male-dominated, you have to be a geek kind of field. And it’s a slow thing to change through time, but the new generation has some great influences. There are lots of education opportunities out there. I mentioned I’m a veteran of volunteering with Code.org for the Hour of Code every year in December, encourage everyone out there to please sign up at Code.org. Go into the school system, particularly if you’re a woman and you have some inkling to, you know, show kids what it’s like to get into the browser and do some of these coding exercises. Just visibility to other kinds of people doing this kind of work is the place to start.

[00:20:29]

Tom: If I could just interject for a second, I’d love to hear some more from you but I just had a conversation, oh gosh, probably eight or nine months ago with Valerie Truesdale from Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, and one of the things she talked about was this concept of getting people into schools to teach some things about this. And one of her frustrations is that a lot of the teachers are intimidated about these ideas. They’re intimidated by the question of technology and how is technology gonna work and what needs to happen around that. And she was saying, you know, they need help at the local school system with people who can help think through, how do we equip kids and teachers to be able to do some of these things. So I love the idea of volunteering in that respect.

[00:21:10]

Paula: Oh yeah, and Code.org has an entire system. You just go and sign up and then teachers in the area have access to your profile and I’m already starting to get invitations from Code.org and I Skype into the classroom and talk about technology. Can I come into the classroom? So if you’re interested, please do help. There’s an organization called TEALS that was started by a fellow from Microsoft that also is an organization of volunteers to go into the school system. It’s also still sad to me that only 5% of high schools in the country offer any kind of AP comp sci. So I do think that you have to have early exposure to computing. I was lucky to have that exposure when I was young, and it’s just crazy to me that, in this day and age where we all depend on technology for everything, that we don’t make that a cornerstone of our public education.

[00:22:08]

Tom: Well, that’s a really interesting point. I just wanna point out, what we’ll do is we’ll take some of these links and URLs and we’ll put them in the show notes so that people can easily click on that from the website. And I think you’ve touched on something important. Somebody was talking about Millennials being, you know, so tech-savvy. And somebody else commented on that and they said, “Well, actually, they’re tech-dependent because it was the Boomers and the Gen X-ers who figured out how to make all this stuff work and now it just magically works for the Millennials.” You know, if it doesn’t work, they’re kind of shafted. So I think the idea of teaching people how things work is really important in the school system.

[00:22:46]

Paula: Exactly. And I am an engineer at heart, so like one of the first things I do when I go into a classroom is I ask the kids, “Yeah, what do you think really happens when you go to a browser, open Google, and you type some words into that?” And you get the funniest, funniest answers but it encourages the thinking about what’s really happening there. It’s like, some people will say, “Well, the computer goes somewhere.” I was like, “Well, where does it go? How does it get there, you know?” So, I think there are so many things that you could inspire natural curiosity about, which is really inspiring engineering thinking. And that’s not something that anybody should be afraid of or intimidated. I think also what I run into a lot of times is…and I have to say it is a bias of mine. I think I do hear it much more from women than men. They are much more likely to say, “Oh, I’m not technical.” And I’m like, “Do you have a cellphone? You’re technical.” So I think people, that’s the one thing that is sort of a pet peeve of mine is I wish we would just eradicate that phrase from the vocabulary. Nobody should be saying, “I’m not technical.”

[00:23:55]

Tom: Well, on that front, though, I mean, I definitely can relate because, no matter how geeky you are, there’s always somebody geekier.

[00:24:03]

Paula: Yeah, sure.

[00:24:04]

Tom: And so no matter how much experience I’ve had in my career as I moved up the ladder, there were definitely engineers who worked for me who kind of scoffed at my technical acumen because they’re like, “Well, you’re not really technical anymore,” you know.

[00:24:18]

Paula: Yeah. I think that whole thing came from Silicon Valley mindset and, you know, somebody has to win and somebody has to lose the hypercompetition. That’s not the technical environment that I grew up in at IBM. If anything, the environment at IBM came from a military background and you had a job to do. You were trained to do it. You know, it was much more pragmatic and I really don’t like the hypercompetitiveness that’s kind of evolved where you’re kind of building yourself up by tearing other people down. You know, that gets nowhere. It doesn’t really benefit anything. And I like collaborative programming. I like tossing ideas on the table and saying, “Well, that’s why this won’t work or that’s why this would work.” You know, it’s not to make people feel inferior. It’s about trying to make a better product, so…

[00:25:15]

Tom: Well, that’s interesting too because I think a lot of times we bring our own perspectives to it. I remember a brilliant engineer woman that I worked with and she was great, but she may be crazy because I felt like every idea I came up, she told me was wrong and bad. And that was my idea that I was bringing that she was saying was wrong and bad. What she was saying is, “Have you thought about X? Have you thought about Y? What about Z?” You know, and things I hadn’t thought of. And so, you know, she was making my ideas much, much better but my perception was, “Why is she always tearing me down?”

[00:25:48]

Paula: Yeah. I also think that the evolution of technology and like there are so many… We were just passing around an article recently about what it’s like to learn JavaScript in 2016 and the myriad of libraries and what’s the flavor of the day. And I do think that people start to become afraid that they’re behind or that there’s something that they should know that they shouldn’t or that they don’t. And I think that we’re starting to take technology all way too personally. I tell people that, like, being wrong is terrific because, if you’re wrong and you realize it, you’ve learned something. If you’re not wrong, then you did something that’s useful and beneficial. So, you know, they talk about entrepreneurs failing fast. I think you just have to let go of your perceptions of right and wrong sometimes with technology. Either it does what you want it to do for the right reason or it doesn’t do what you wanted to do and you need to fix it. It’s like, yeah, you know, you should take yourself out of it.

[00:26:53]

Tom: I think, absolutely, and I can see there are a lot of things that we could delve into. I’m having to hold myself back from going way off the retro [SP] with you. So, we talked about how do we set people’s vision for what it might look like for moving forward. How do we help people in the earlier years start to recognize that they might see themselves in that kind of role? But what do we do about now? How do we get people today to behave differently or think differently or to build more diversity into their teams and their solutions?

[00:27:23]

Paula: Well, I think that’s the tougher problem. I’ve definitely gotten very excited about the future generation and some of the initiatives like Code.org and TEALS in public school systems. But, you know, you have to face a reality at some point when you go to work that the people who have been in their careers, 5, 10, 15, 20 years in technology and corporate IT environments in Silicon Valley, their entire career has been shaped by their perceptions in that glorification of Silicon Valley, glorification of the geek persona phase, and that’s what they’re used to. So, you know, you can’t necessarily blame them for their perception that that’s what it means to work in tech. So, the first thing is, can those people, can everyone just take a step back and say, you know, “What was it that shaped my perception? Is that something that was, you know, media that I was fed as a young person or is that really truth or is there another way to look at it?” So, the first step is if people are open to looking at it from a different perspective. That’s the first step. And it takes a long time to change perception that’s been drilled into you for 20 years.

[00:28:45]

Tom: Yeah. I mean, as I’m kind of exploring this with you, one of the things that comes to my mind is we always told ourselves we were hiring the best people we could find and that they were the best and that’s why we were hiring them. And I think that there was truth in that, and yet we didn’t necessarily…we always like to think, “Oh yeah, we’re looking at the technical requirements. That’s really the most important thing.” But I’m not sure that we ever looked at it and said, “Should we be looking for other things? Should we be, you know, prioritizing having some diversity not because we’re trying to check the box or because we’re trying to satisfy HR, or there’s any sort of quota or something that might be addressed. But what if that helped us make a better solution?”

[00:29:30]

Paula: Sure, and that’s where the kinds of questions that you ask in an interview are important because, if you can find a way to determine if someone has a different perspective or maybe solves problems in a different way, yeah, that’s valuable. You know, it’s hard to find those questions. I remember my interview at Microsoft, you know, the classic Microsoft interview and I got the question of, you know, “Go to whiteboard and whiteboard out your card shuffle algorithm.” And I’m like, “Oh my gosh, how many times has this been asked of people? So I’m like, “Okay, fine.” So I’m like, “Well, can I have any resources that I want, anything?” And they’re like, “Oh, sure.” And I’m like, “Oh, great.” So I said, “I want, you know, basically infinite compute power and infinite storage and I want to pre-compute all 52 factorial shuffles, store it in memory and then my algorithm is randomized between 1 and 52 factorial.” And they sat back and they’re like, “Huh.”

[00:30:32]

Tom: It’s great. I love it.

[00:30:35]

Paula: That would be so fast. Yup.

[00:30:38]

Tom: I love that.

[00:30:38]

Paula: So yeah, it’s like that’s the kind of, you know, I think we need more people that are just willing to go off script and say, “Well, what could it be?” And so, you know, that’s not that…I mean I’ve had another interview where they had a written test and one of the questions was something about a link list. And I’m like, “Oh, link list. That’s like old school.”

[00:31:04]

Tom: Right on, baby. Right on. You’re speaking my language now, fella.

[00:31:06]

Paula: [crosstalk] so now, you know, double-headed, double-threaded or single-headed, double-threaded and all the benefits of each and, you know, sort of the other questions as well. And I go into the…they called me back and I was like, “Cool.” And then a fellow, you know, a younger guy and probably in his 30s walks into the room with my test and his opening line was, “Well, you did surprisingly well on the test.” And I was like, “What did that mean?”

[00:31:34]

Tom: Considering what?

[00:31:36]

Paula: So, you know, it’s all just people and you just, you know, I think that seeing a skinny, not young white woman with blonde hair wasn’t what he was expecting to hear that level of technical expertise from, so it’s like, okay. That’s a hard thing to get past but you can’t necessarily blame those people either because their perceptions are shaped by what they’ve seen in their career.

[00:32:09]

Tom: Hmm, yeah, that’s really interesting. I mean, surprisingly well compared to what?

[00:32:14]

Paula: Yeah, I don’t know.

[00:32:15]

Tom: Yeah, no, I mean but that does say a lot about, you know, what kind of thinking he was bringing to the table. I’m curious, did you move forward with that organization?

[00:32:28]

Paula: I’m a little ashamed of this but like I just got a bad vibration from that encounter, so I sat and talked to the gentleman for a few minutes and I said, “Well, you know, I’m just a hack and not really a product developer. I just was curious about this company and wanted to learn a little bit more about it.” So when I talked to my friends about that particular interview, I say it’s the only interview my life that I’ve ever thrown. I just went down on the mat and, you know…

[00:32:57]

Tom: No, but I think if we could just camp on that for a second, I think that was brilliant because so much of the time, when we’re looking for work, we are trying to sell ourselves. Our goal is to get the job offer. But it really doesn’t serve you to get a job offer if it’s for a company where you’re gonna be miserable and you’re interviewing them too and he…you know, maybe it was only that one person who carried that sort of perspective but maybe not.

[00:33:25]

Paula: Maybe not.

[00:33:25]

Tom: And so, for you to have come across that and be able to uncover that, I think that’s a very important thing, and I would argue that that was a very successful job interview for you.

[00:33:36]

Paula: Yes. Well, I actually know a little bit more about what happened to that organization through time and I would say yes, that was a successful interview for me because I, you know, Charlotte is a small town and you meet people and then there were some other comments I’ve heard about, you know, organizations imploding for cultural reasons, whether it becomes a, you know, kind of alpha male environment… And don’t get me wrong about the term “alpha male.” I’ve been on projects where I’ve been the “alpha male,” but sometimes you have to have different approaches to solving problems. Not everything is command and control.

[00:34:17]

Tom: Oh, absolutely not, absolutely not. There is always a need for somebody to make a decision, but that having been said, how you go about determining the approach to make the decision, is it a collaborative or is it a top-down decision, you know, when the house is on fire, somebody has to say, “Let’s get out.” You know, and that’s a command and control type decision. We’re not gonna discuss whether smoke inhalation [SP] is a good idea or not.

[00:34:41]

Paula: Yeah, yeah.

[00:34:43]

Tom: But there are so many times to you point that having a collaborative give and take allows us to develop far better solutions than to say, “This is the way it ought to be.” I mean, I was working with an organization. They said, “We’ve got this really talented engineer and he’s doing a great job. He’s moving up but one of the problems he has is he expects his people to solve problems exactly the way he solves problems and he’s angry with them if they don’t follow his way because his way is the way.”

[00:35:09]

Paula: Yup, that’s an approach…it all…I think some of it goes back to just good old Myers-Briggs too, so that person is definitely a J.

[00:35:16]

Tom: Right, right.

[00:35:18]

Paula: I’m a P, so I kind of understand like where my approaches to things can infuriate other personality types and you just have to try to adjust to people. At the end of the day, you can’t do all that much as one person. If you really wanna make an impact or ship large software systems or products, you need to figure out the people part.

[00:35:42]

Tom: Oh my goodness. You’re singing my song now because I’ve got this framework I call the “4 Levels of Thinking as a Geek Leader.” And I say level one is where most of us reside, which is the individual contributor. There’s only, you know, one is too small a number to achieve greatness. So if we’re gonna do something significant, we need other people. So that’s where you get to level two, where you start to think about those kinds of things. So I’d like to spend a few more minutes with you and talk about the challenges, and you’ve already touched on this, but challenges you’ve had as a woman in technology. And what are some of the things that you’ve been able to do in that process either that worked well or didn’t work. I’d be curious to hear about that.

[00:36:20]

Paula: Oh sure. And I think everyone has challenges in their career even just growing up if you have a sibling, right? And I’ve thought about some of the challenges I’ve had. I certainly haven’t handled all my challenges very gracefully through time, but some of that’s independent of whether I was male or female. But I do think there’s probably some things I’ve faced that are unique to women and some of the differences in approach. I think, over time, I’ve just come down on being more of myself. When I was making a career transition 10 years ago, the CEO and chairman was a very kind man and told me that he hoped I would find another role that would allow me to be more myself, and that stuck with me. Because over time, when you’re in that industry that has been painted as male-dominated and aggressive and, you know, certainly even Microsoft was going through antitrust progression [SP] at the time I was at Microsoft and you could learn some bad habits.

[00:37:30]

So, you know, the more in my later years, recent years, the more I’ve become myself, the less stressed I am. But then on the other hand, the more I’m myself, I am a very direct person. I like to exchange ideas openly and frankly and that doesn’t always feel good to everyone. So, it’s a balance but I have to look at myself and say, “Okay. Am I being true to myself? Am I trying to be reasonable and collaborative with people?” And as long as I’m being true to myself, I can’t control the reactions that other people have. It’s tough. I’ve also been very fortunate to have a family that’s fully supporting me in my career adventures and, you know, sometimes you have to make some tough decisions if you don’t have that kind of support.

[00:38:21]

Tom: Sure, sure. Yeah, so you’ve had to think about toning down your reaction to things to be less aggressive, is that what you’re saying?

[00:38:33]

Paula: I have done that in the past and I do think about what I’m saying when I say it, maybe more so than some of my colleagues have had to. But also I’ve always…

[00:38:49]

Tom: Geeks without a filter? Come on. Geeks? Can’t be geeks without a filter.

[00:38:53]

Paula: Yeah. And it’s funny because I’ll talk to one of the, you know, senior men in the technical organization and I’ll say, “Well, I showed this to someone and kind of pointed out that maybe there was a better way of looking at it,” and he is more like, “I wouldn’t just said that, you know, the guy is an idiot.” I’m like, “Well, you could probably say that.” And I don’t always, you know, I don’t completely filter myself but I speak in a tone that’s more, “Here’s my opinion.” I actually enjoy being an architect because I always…don’t joke, but I do state that architects don’t have control over resources, timelines, or budget. We work through influence. So I’m very free to state my opinion and say, “Hey, this is just my opinion but you might wanna look at it this way.” And if they follow that advice, that’s great. If they don’t, then something goes wrong that’s also fine. They learn something if something that I state is an opinion doesn’t work out to be, you know, the chosen route, that’s also fine. Those are other peoples’ decisions to make.

[00:40:04]

Tom: Well, and you touched on something there, I think, is very important because sometimes, the organization needs to fail. Yup, because the organization is not ready to do the thing that needs to happen. And that’s very difficult as an engineer because we tend to be very binary in our thinking, like this is the obvious right thing to do. How can you not do the right thing?

[00:40:27]

Paula: Yeah. I think we’ve lost something in these…I think of it as the Silicon Valley adolescent years of technology. I think we’ve lost a bunch of people who are, on the Myers-Briggs scale, more perceiving. We’ve encouraged a lot of judgmental people with the, you know, kind of aggressive approach that draws a lot more judgmental people and I think I am more perceiving and I’m more willing to say, “Hey, that could work but this could also work and maybe there are some tradeoffs. Let’s talk about the tradeoffs.” I think the industry has kind of driven off a lot of perceiving people and programming itself lends it to the kind of sensing judgmental where you’ve got this debugger and you’re stepping through code and it’s either right or wrong. And so, I think it will also improve diversity if we include more of the perceiving types, you know, intuitive types in the process and I see that happening on the design side and so forth. So I think it’s just a matter of time until the profession kind of levels itself back out.

[00:41:33]

Tom: You’ve raised a really good point and I think it was Marshall Goldsmith that said something along the lines of, you know, in business, unless you’re talking about a question of ethics, there’s rarely one right answer.

[00:41:47]

Paula: Exactly, yup.

[00:41:48]

Tom: And so when we commit ourselves to thinking that there’s one right answer, then, you know, obviously in a calculation, of course there’s one right answer to calculation, but so little about what we do in business when we start to solve business problems. What color should the screen be? That’s not a right or wrong.

[00:42:06]

Paula: Yeah. I think I do drive some people crazy because, you know, not everybody has the same definition of what an “architect” means and like I don’t come in and say, “Thou shalt or this is the way that it must be done.” I encourage people to do certain things in certain ways or to look at certain frameworks or to evolve where they’re going, but I’m not a thou-shalt architect. I’m a kind of player coach architect, and I think that people sometimes want there to be a thou shalt. It’s like, “Well, no, that’s why we hire smart people and you’re actually gonna have to think.”

[00:42:46]

Tom: That’s a challenge because it is hard for us to be welcome. There’s some comfort actually in just having some clarity about what we need to do, and I find the higher that we go organizationally and in business, the more ambiguity we have to manage.

[00:43:03]

Paula: Yup, yeah.

[00:43:04]

Tom: So, I think that’s a challenge because a lot of us who kind of cut our teeth on, it was right or wrong. I mean, your shuffle or your bubble sort, it either works or it doesn’t, you know.

[00:43:15]

Paula: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that’s, you know, the world that we live in. Technology is a profession that, if you are not comfortable with change and if you’re not comfortable with evolution, you really should think about something else because I joke that, if technology was something you could just get in and put your head down and just stick with the status quo, I think I’d still be punching code on punch cards. So, I mean we look at…

[00:43:43]

Tom: A different world.

[00:43:44]

Paula: Yeah, everything is about constantly learning and constantly improving, so you just have to accept that.

[00:43:50]

Tom: No, I think you’re spot on. So, if I was a hiring manager in a company and I was thinking about adding to my team, what could I do to help break my paradigm to help me think differently, to be able to bring in people who didn’t necessarily look or think like me.

[00:44:10]

Paula: Well, I’m not a recruiting professional. I’ve done some hiring in my day but I do think, certainly in the Charlotte area, the recruiters have a lot of power over what candidates do and don’t get presented. So, the first thing I would do is I would look at my recruiting partners and really start asking them about diversity candidates, people that think outside the box and make sure that they’re not filtering people based on their own native biases. I definitely get a lot more recruiter contact for program management, product management, you know, non-technical-ish roles than technical roles. So, I think that that’s a piece of the puzzle, and certainly in Charlotte or anywhere, is know your recruiters very well and encourage them to bring you diverse candidates. If you’re not comfortable, you know, talking to diverse candidates, that’s sort of a different question but maybe that’s just about you getting out and going to different kinds of organizations or talking to the local coding camps here in Charlotte about the type of people that go to those coding camps that tend to be a very diverse crowd, and just, you know, get out there and look around, pick your head up and see what’s going on in the community.

[00:45:40]

Tom: Yeah, it’s a good point. It reminds me of something that Leslie Miley said when he was talking about building these diverse teams and he said that just because somebody doesn’t have the same educational background that you might normally want, that doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t be a fabulous team member.

[00:45:54]

Paula: Yeah, exactly.

[00:45:55]

Tom: And I think so many times our job descriptions are fairly mechanical and in requirement, you know, must have, must have, must have. And so, being able to break free a little bit from that paradigm, and I wonder too, if you broaden your search, to your point about if more opportunities come to you in what might be called less technical roles, although I might challenge that, but for like program management or product management, then maybe the idea is to say, “Well, why don’t we open our search to also include people who have been doing those types of roles because they might be able to bring perspectives and tools and capability into us that are a better fit, you know, from the diverse perspective, to give us better solutions?”

[00:46:40]

Paula: Oh yeah, I mean even, when I was at IBM, it was still the day when they gave the PAT, or the Programming Aptitude Test, and my manager told me that some of the people who scored highest on the PAT were actually musically inclined.

[00:46:55]

Tom: Oh, absolutely.

[00:46:56]

Paula: So I think that, you know, we might be painting ourselves into a corner by only saying, “You have to have a computer science degree.” There’s a lot of work that goes on in incorporate IT that’s nowhere near what you study for a computer science degree.

[00:47:12]

Tom: Right on, right on.

[00:47:14]

Paula: And I do think that there’s a lot of room and a lot of job opportunities for…I call it kind of “journeyman programmers” that have very good logic skills and an innate ability to learn, which is an awful lot of people. And they can come into the field and be very productive. So I think if you are looking for talent, just, you know, do yourself a favor and maybe just talk to people that you might not otherwise get a chance to talk to through classic recruiting channels.

[00:47:47]

Tom: I love that. And I appreciate your thinking and your perspective and I could tell that, you know, that you and I could go on for hours.

[00:47:55]

Paula: Yeah, I do love this topic.

[00:47:58]

Tom: I’ve been enjoying you very much and I think that the audience is gonna be thrilled to be able to hear these ideas too. And I think, you know, helping us to think about these issues shapes the way that we pursue the next activity because we think about things and then we take action on them. And so, just an awareness that building more diverse team is helpful is I think the first step in the process. And then, thinking about, “Okay. Now that I’m aware, what am I gonna do differently?” So, thanks so much for being a part of the conversation today. I’ve really enjoyed having you be a part of this and…

[00:48:31]

Paula: Well, thank you.

[00:48:32]

Tom: Yeah, and that is today’s Thought Leader Segment.

[00:48:36]

Episode Hack.

[00:49:00]

Tom: Wow, this has been a long episode, and I hope you found it valuable enough to stick around. We covered a lot of ground today. We talked about how you can use the love it, hate it, can live with it approach to get a group to make a decision. We talked about Google’s Project Oxygen about team…about being a good boss and we talked about Google’s Project Aristotle and how they concluded what I concluded as a geek leader, that because people matter, we must lead them well. And then finally, we heard from Paula Paul about diversity in tech and really that’s the core message of today’s episode, how diverse teams perform better and what we can do to build better and more diverse teams.

[00:49:46]

My hack today is this. One, recognize that diverse teams do far better, regardless of technical capability. Diversity brings better results. Two, intentionally, seek out a diverse set of perspectives. Look for a diverse set of perspectives. Three, if you’re looking to hire and you’re not seeing diverse candidates, change your requirements to widen your search. Steve Jobs was right when he said, “Think different.” Want a more diverse team? Think different. And finally, bring this up with your team. Discuss the idea that diversity matters, that it leads to better solutions. Listen to the interview together and brainstorm about how you can get better ideas with diverse perspectives. And that’s today’s Episode Hack.

[00:50:36]

Closeout

Hey. Can I ask you something? Did you hear something helpful on today’s episode? Why not share it with a friend? On my iPhone, it’s as simple as hitting the three little dots on the bottom right of the screen, selecting Share Episode and your friend’s email and hit Send. Why do this? Two reasons. One, your friend or coworker will thank you. You’ll be seen as a source of helpful and valuable information, and they will appreciate you for it. And number two, I need you to help me get the word out about this podcast. I’m working hard to bring great ideas and great content to you, and it’s a big help to me if more people hear those ideas. Go ahead, share it now. I’ll wait. Thanks.

[00:51:26]

This is Tom Cooper. Thanks for listening. Be sure to join me next time for another episode of Becoming a Geek Leader. Join me in my mission of discovering better ways to lead others at work and at home.