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Yellow Lights and Getting Buy-In for Your Ideas - Sea:3Ep:2

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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!

Becoming a Geek Leader

Getting Consensus - Great Teams and Paula Paul on Diversity in Tech - Sea:3Ep:1

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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.

Listen now!

Becoming a Geek Leader

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

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In this episode:

1. The five ways meetings can go south and
2. What to do to keep your next meeting on track

Resources:

• Download the white paper
• Bryan Field’s website. – https://www.meetingresult.com/
• Bryan’s book: “Powerfully Simple Meetings” on Amazon
• Don’t miss Tom’s FREE online course Simply Effective Meetings 101
• 4 Levels of Thinking as a Geek Leader – This easy-to-read graphic clearly illustrates the 4 Levels of Thinking, individually breaking down each level.
  .

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Becoming a Geek Leader

3 Lessons I Learned from almost cutting my thumb off - Sea:2Ep:10.5

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In this episode:

I’m sharing three key lessons I’ve learned in the aftermath of having a serious accident in my workshop.

What good can come from an incident leading to surgery and months of rehab?  Listen now!

Resources:

4 Levels of Thinking as a Geek Leader – This easy-to-read graphic clearly illustrates the 4 Levels of Thinking, individually breaking down each level.

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Transcript

[00:00:12]
Announcer: Becoming a Geek Leader.

Sponsored by Geek to Great

[00:00:15]
Tom: Have you ever had one of those really annoying customers who always seems to be looking to start an argument. Have you ever had a team member who just couldn’t let go and delegate work, but was always complaining about being buried? I’ve been there and I know how frustrating that can feel. I also know these things don’t generally get better on their own. People need help learning exactly how to communicate, delegate, manage conflict with others and plan more effectively. Now you know it would be great if you had a simple plan to address those needs, but you’re crazy busy, too, right? That’s why I created the Geek to Great 101 program. It’s a simple system designed for you to take a portion of your already scheduled team meetings, to play a video for your team, ask a few questions from the leader’s guide, and your team members will be able to fill in their own personalized action plan. It’s a great way to put a simple professional development program in place. Your team members will be able to share their plan with you and you can help them actually do it. Train your whole team for less than \$500. Find out more information and get immediate access to your first free lesson at brighthillgroup.com/helpinggeeks. That’s brighthillgroup.com/helpinggeeks.

[00:01:41]
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?

Family segment.

[00:02:22]
Tom: Hi and welcome to Becoming A Geek Leader. This is another special episode in season two. Today is going to be a little bit different from most of the podcast episodes. This one I’m recording as I’m preparing to recover from a pretty serious mistake that I made. So I wanted to share with you three lessons that I learned from incurring a serious injury in my wood shop. These are ideas that you can apply even at level one, that individual contributor level of the four levels of thinking as a geek leader. So I want to thank you for joining me and I want to start out by saying that I’m gonna be fine. So lots of stuff to cover, so let’s get started.

[00:03:04]
Announcer: Level One, Individual. At level one, you may even be a superstar technical resource. Level one focuses you on improving your technical skills.

[00:03:18]
Tom: If you’ve been listening to my podcast for a while, you may have heard me talk about my pop. My mom’s dad. He was a research chemist and he was a hard-core geek, man. He could geek out with the rest of ’em. He had a bumper sticker on the back of his car about Avogadro’s number. Man. But what pop liked to do in his spare time was he did woodworking and one regret that I have is that I didn’t actually ask him to teach me more when he was alive. But after my grandfather passed away many years ago, I inherited many of his shop tools and I had always been involved in doing some work with my hands, but I really had not done a lot of fine work. And my grandfather was a cabinet maker. He did a lot of fine, detailed carpentry-type work. So over the last few years, I have enjoyed being able to start to grow my skills in that area and so I spend a decent amount of my spare time in my wood shop doing some wood projects.

[00:04:17]
So of late, I’ve been working on a project for my wife. We have…she would love to have a desk to work on and we’ve got an area in the house that would be perfect for it, but we just couldn’t find a piece of furniture that really worked. And so I said, “Well, why don’t I make something that’s custom for that space?” So this is a pretty big table. It’s about 10 feet across and it’s about 2 and a half feet deep and we’re making it out of oak and it is just, the wood is just beautiful. I can’t wait to be able to get the whole thing put together. But if this gonna be more of a table and actually a desk, it’s gonna need to have drawers. So Holly found a set of cabinets that we could cut down to fit to make work underneath the tabletop as a desk. So I’ve gotten far enough in the project where I’ve got the tabletop built and I’m working on the cabinets. And I was very pleased on Saturday to discover that I could set up my table saw in a way that I could cut the cabinets down to be short enough to fit nicely under the tabletop. And that’s really where our story begins.

[00:05:16]
So as I was working on that, I had the cabinet up on the table saw and I was working my way through the four cuts that I needed to make. And it was on the fourth cut that I made a serious misjudgement and I managed to cut my hand on the table saw blade. Pretty severely, in fact. I managed to cut through a tendon on my left thumb and what’s really unfortunate is I’m left-handed, so that puts me at a significant disadvantage going forward. And this brings me to my first of the three lessons from a serious injury in my wood shop. Lesson one, it only takes one second to make a misjudgement. It only takes one second to make a misjudgement. I have used a table saw for years and years and years, safely. I’m actually fairly careful in my shop. I insist that everybody wears protective gear. We’ve got ear protection and eye protection and hand protection. I have push sticks by my table saw…by all my saws actually. And I’m very careful to instruct my kids on safe workmanship in the shop. In spite of those precautions, in spite of not working when I’m tired, in spite of all the things that I’ve done, it just took one second for me to make a bad choice about where to put my hand. Now it was combined with other choices that I’d made as well, but fundamentally it just takes a second.

[00:06:38]
Now what’s interesting to me about this particular lesson is that everybody makes mistakes. Everybody make misjudgements. Now I’ve got to be honest about my reaction. I was in pain and then as I was on my way to get care, I was angry with myself for having made a mistake, but the fact is that we all make mistakes. Sometimes they’re big mistakes. Sometimes they’re little mistakes. I’ve made mistakes in the shop before and I’ve been fortunate that some of the mistakes I’ve made haven’t been more serious. In this case, it was a pretty serious implication. You know, what’s interesting is in the last week since this happened, I’ve had discussions with friends about this mishap and what I heard is two of my friends had incidents with a chainsaw that could have been debilitating and one of my friends, who I know is very careful, managed to cut himself with an axe just in the last week as well. So everybody makes mistakes and you can’t focus on the mistake and you can’t beat yourself up because the fact of the matter is there’s no point in looking in the rear view mirror because that’s not the direction I’m going.

[00:07:44]
I got a good lesson in this kind of attitude from my uncle. My uncle is in his 70s and he got an infection in his left arm. He was left-handed and ended up having to lose his left arm to that. So here he is in his 70s, learning to live his life as a right-handed person because he doesn’t have a left hand anymore. And he’s got a great attitude and he said, “Don’t focus on what you can’t do. Focus on what you can do. Don’t focus on what happened yesterday. Focus on what change you can do today to make things better for tomorrow.” And I just love that attitude and that approach. So really it just takes a second to make a misjudgement and everybody makes mistakes. Not only does everybody make mistakes, but nobody likes it. Once you make a mistake, you can’t focus on the mistake. You got to turn your attention to thinking forward.

[00:08:35]
Now let’s talk about lesson two. When a crisis happens, it’s too late to prepare. When a crisis happens, it’s too late to prepare. Now I will tell you that I was very surprised when it happened and I was in pain and not happy about that, but all that time that I had spent working with Boy Scouts, learning about and teaching first aid really paid off because I didn’t have time to say, “Oh, what do you do when you get hurt? What do you do to deal with this type of injury? What is going to happen physiologically to me after this thing happens?” Because I had already made the investments in thinking about what could go wrong and what I needed to do when it went wrong, I was ready. And that included knowing who to call, knowing where to go and knowing how to get there. I’m grateful for the help that I had in the process in getting quick medical care from professionals who could say, “Nope, that’s too serious for us to deal with at the urgent care center. You need to go see somebody in the emergency room.” And even the emergency room person said, “That’s too serious for me to deal with for you. We need to get you to a surgeon,” and I’m preparing to have surgery even tomorrow to work on this.

[00:09:43]
So my question for you around this is what is your plan for when the yogurt hits the fan? As you’re thinking about your projects and the work that you’re doing, what risks are you overlooking or are you pretending just don’t exist? I’ve told my kids for years, as they’ve been working with me in the wood shop, that you don’t have to be terrified of the tools, but you do have to respect ’em, that the reality is that the tools are unforgiving and they are very dangerous, and so you’ve got to be wise about the way you use them and I was actually unwise. So what is it you need to prepare for next? What is the thing you need to do? So you know, for me, one of the things is it just reinforces how important more detailed first aid training is for my kids. They need to know, what do you do when somebody’s had a serious injury? How do you respond? What’s important to matter?

[00:10:38]
Another lesson for me around this, you know, when crisis happens, it’s too late for prepare, is I should have had more help in the shop. I did that reading about Sully and what happened in the Miracle on the Hudson and I was really interested in what the NTSB had to say and one of the points that I read about, as I was doing the research about for that other bonus episode of that podcast, is that a lot of times, pilots who are in crisis situations get overwhelmed with all the things that are going on and they forget to fly the aircraft. In this situation, I got overwhelmed because the complexity of the cut was too much for me to manage by myself. Physiologically manipulating this stuff, it was just too much and my brain overloaded and I made a bad choice. Another thing for me to think about from preparation perspective is do I need to invest in better safety gear? There are tools that will make my saw safer and maybe I should be looking at making those changes, too. But I have to be thinking about what I’m gonna do to prepare for what happens next. 

[00:11:45]
So we talked about it only takes a second for a misjudgement and you’ve got to focus forward and not backward. We talked about when a crisis happens, it’s too late to prepare. And now let’s talk about lesson three, it takes a team to get back on track. You know, from the moment that I had this injury, from the very moment I had this injury, my mother in-law said, “Hey, do you need help?” Yes, I need help. To everything…she helped organize and helped my kids get the stuff they needed emotionally and physiologically to take care of the needs that I had. My wife was terrific about standing by my side and getting me to where I needed to be. My mother in-law was great about suggesting that my eldest son come with us to the hospital. And Joel was great. He was terrific to be with my wife and me, to be an encouragement to us and help us navigate that journey that we were on. It took a team just to get us from the moment of crisis forward. And because I had built a team, because we had worked together as a team, because we were prepared for it, we could respond when the opportunity came. Now I should have had a team in the shop with me. Realistically I was working by myself and if I’d had some help, I probably would not have gotten overloaded. If I had planned better, I probably wouldn’t have gotten overloaded. But having that team there to support me would make a big difference. And even today, I’m working with a team. I met with a surgeon yesterday. We’re making preparations to connect with a physical therapist post-surgery and it goes on and on and on. And even as I go through this, I’ve had friends reach out to me to say, “Hey, Tom, we know you’re laid up because you only have one hand and it’s your good hand,” so much as…as good my left hand is. “Can we help you?” And being willing to accept help is challenging for me, but it’s a good thing for me to do and I’m grateful that I’ve got the team kind of coming alongside of me.

[00:13:45]
Now the prognosis for my recovery is actually very good. I’ve talked with some friends and I’ve talked with a surgeon and basically what they tell me is that the likelihood is that I’m gonna get most if not all the functionality back in my left thumb, but we’re really not gonna know for several weeks. So those are the three lessons I have from my serious injury in the workshop. Lesson one, it only takes a second for a misjudgement and you got to focus forward, not backward because everybody makes mistakes. Lesson twp, when a crisis happens, it’s too late to prepare. You’ve got to be ready before the crisis hits. And lesson three, it takes a team to get back on track. So those are the three lessons and I hope they’re helpful to you. 

Episode Hack.

[00:14:47]
Tom: For today’s Episode Hack, I really wanna focus on lesson two. When a crisis happens, it’s too late to prepare. So what I want you to think about is in your projects, in the things that you’re doing, what are some things that could go wrong? Is there anything you need to simplify? When it comes to thinking about working with your team, what areas would be helpful if you had trained team members who could step in and do work with you or for you? And when it comes to those areas where team members could help you, who are you gonna train? On what? And by when? Just to be very practical, thinking about this project I’ve been working on for my wife, realistically I’m not gonna be able to get back to it for a couple of months, is my guess. Unless I can train the kids to help me do some of the projects that are ongoing and so I can supervise and help them, but maybe this is a great opportunity for me to invest with my kids. Think about for you and your projects and the work that you are doing, who on your team needs to know something? What do they need to know and when are you gonna teach ’em? And that’s today’s Episode Hack.

[00:16:02]
Thanks for listening to the podcast. I appreciate having you on the journey. Now I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen in the next steps for me from a recovery perspective. As I mentioned, my surgery’s tomorrow and I’ll be working on physical therapy after that as well. But in a future episode, I’ll make sure that I include a Family segment that talks about what’s happening in my recovery and maybe there’ll be some lessons I can learn and apply from that, too. Thanks for listening.

Closeout

[00:16:26]
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 co-worker 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.

[00:17:17]
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!

Becoming a Geek Leader

Employee Performance Problems and How to Have Effective 1-1 Meetings - Sea:2Ep:10

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In this episode:

Resources:

4 Levels of Thinking as a Geek Leader – This easy-to-read graphic clearly illustrates the 4 Levels of Thinking, individually breaking down each level.

.

Season 1 Episode 9 – tips to delegate well

How purpose is tied to how well your team members work.

Giving great feedback to team members

Joel Peterson’s top ten tips for giving good feedback 

1.  What information do I need to get?  What information do I need to share?
2. Is it a good time to talk about their professional development?
3. Are they stuck?  Do they need my help with anything today?
4. How are we doing on goals – is it time to check in on progress (at least 1/quarter)
5. What do I need them to do next? (delegation)

1. “This is your time.  My goal is to be accessible to you, to help you and for you to use this time to your benefit.  I expect that you’ll come to this meeting prepared to talk to me about what YOU need. In fact, the first 10 minutes are dedicated to YOU – the meeting starts with your agenda.  Come prepared to talk about:
   1. What do you need from me?  Where can I clear roadblocks for you?  What information or contacts can I give you?
   2. What do you need me to know?
   3. What is next for you?  How can I help you with your goals/professional development?

Transcript

[00:00:00]
Becoming a Geek Leader, Season 2, Episode 10.

Sponsored by Geek to Great

Tom: I spoke with doctor Pierre Bamberger from Tel Aviv University’s Business school about engineers becoming leaders and he said…

[00:00:13]
Pierre: If you take an engineer and you want to turn him into a leader in an organization, you can’t just assume that [inaudible 00:00:21] know or sort of learn over time how to become a leader.

[00:00:42]
Tom: Right.

[00:00:25]
Pierre: Some of them will. The vast majority won’t.

[00:00:28]
Tom: Some of them will but the vast majority won’t. So here you are. You’re a talented engineer. Maybe you’re running a team of technical folks but the fact is they won’t magically get better at things like communicating clearly or delegating effectively or dealing with conflict in a healthy way. They need to learn those skills. That’s why I created Geek to Great 101. It’s a simple way for you to help your team members with an easy plan to improve these skills and more. For less than $500, your team can start to make progress. Find more information and get immediate access to your first free lesson at brighthillgroup.com/helpinggeeks. That’s brighthillgroup.com/helpinggeeks.

[00:01:19] 
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?

Introduction

[00:01:41] 
In today’s episode I’m talking about tools that a manager can use to help lead your team well. Now, if you’re not a manager today or even if you don’t want to be a manager, stay tuned because even if you’re not the boss you can use these ideas too. Let’s say your boss isn’t doing these things well now. You can take advantage of the ideas I’m about to share with you to help your boss do a better job being your boss. And if you hang with me, I’ll show you how you can get your boss to start using these ideas and how you can have more success, too.

[00:02:15] 
Also, I want to take a moment to note that this podcast marks the end of season two. I can’t believe we’ve already covered two seasons together. I went back and looked over some of the topics that I’ve covered so far in the first two seasons. Things like performance reviews, dealing with disrespectful team members, what to do when you make a mistake to make up for it, networking, listening and how to get promoted. We’ve covered a lot and as I’m working with my clients, new ideas come up all the time and I’m excited to share time with you and I appreciate you for including me in your life. I just want to say thank you for bringing me with you today.

[00:02:55] 
In this episode I’m going to cover two ideas. First, in a mentoring segment I’m going to talk about how to deal with employee performance problems on your team. In the coach’s mailbox segment, I’m going to answer a burning question from Samuel about “How am I supposed to do one on one meetings? I don’t have time for that?” And also including a behind-the-scenes segment where I’m going to talk a little bit about the technology that enables people to find a podcast like this one and how I get the word out about the podcast. I’ve got a lot to cover so let’s get started.

[00:03:30] 
In today’s episode, I’m talking predominantly about what a manager can do to get better performance from team members. Now, these skills are skills you’ll use if you’re at level three of the four levels of thinking as a geek leader.

[00:03:48] 
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.

Mentoring segment.

[00:04:20] 

Tom: As I work with clients, one of the issues that comes up over and over again is team members who simply aren’t delivering. Now, we’ve all had that time when we thought we delegated a job but it turned out that delegatee didn’t deliver what we wanted. When you’re the boss, that’s your problem to solve.

[00:04:41] 
So let’s say that you’re a boss and you have a team member who just isn’t performing. Why is it that they’re not performing? Are they lazy? Are they unmotivated? Are they unskilled? Unfortunately, because you’re the boss, it’s your job to figure that out. there are three reasons that employees do not perform well. First, they just don’t know what you want them to do. Second, they don’t know how to do it and three, they don’t know why it should matter to them or the team or the company. I want to tackle these in order.

[00:05:16] 
In a previous episode, I mentioned that I once worked for a boss who insisted that he was “crystal clear” about his expectations. He wasn’t. it was not clear to me exactly what he considered excellent work, and I did struggle to deliver what he wanted. Sometimes I nailed it and other times, well, not really. So one problem is your team member might not understand exactly what it is you want. The one thing you can do to tackle this is to ask them to repeat back the assignment. I point out that many times a boss gives an assignment but doesn’t define how they will know when the assignment is complete. It’s a good idea for you to be specific and clear about exactly how you’ll know it’s done. Let me give you an example. You might say to a team member “This month, I need you to take ownership of creating the monthly report. You’ll need to collect input from everyone on the team, combine their input into a single report showing our accomplishments this month and then I need you to edit it so that I can forward it to my boss without having to make major changes. The report is due on the 30th. That means I’ll need a final draft from you no later than the 25th so that we’ll have time to make any last minute changes and still deliver it on time.”

[00:06:39] 
Here I’m clear, specific and I’m including a due date. What is it that needs to be done? The next problem is people might not know how to do the work. If this is the case, if you have a team member who is not skilled enough to do the work clearly and properly…let me point you to season one, episode nine where I talk about delegation. You can go to the website brighthillgroup.com, you can search for delegation. That will bring up season one, episode nine. I’ll also include a link to that in the show notes for today’s show. In that episode, I talk about ways that you can delegate work effectively even if a team member’s not well skilled or you can help uplevel their skills and minimize the amount of time you spend doing or redoing their work. So that should tackle helping a team member know how to do the work.

[00:07:36] 
And the last problem is one of motivation. I want to say here that no one can motivate someone else. There’s been a lot of work done in this area. I recommend the book Drive, the surprising truth about what motivates us by Dan Pink. There’s some good research that he covers in that book and it’s a good read too but let me just say that you can’t make someone else feel motivated. There’s nothing you can do to do that. You can set up an environment that unleashes their internal intrinsic motivation but you just can’t create motivation in another person. A while ago I wrote a little bit about this in a blog post which talked about three things you need to do to retain great employees and I will include a link to that post in the show notes as well.

[00:08:30] 
So you can’t motivate me and I can’t motivate you. Motivation is an inside job. It’s an internal thing. So what can you do to unleash my motivation? Here’s all you have to do. Get your stuff in alignment with what they want. Now, I don’t have time in this episode to go into all the detail of how to do this but I do have a couple of ideas that can be of help to you. First, answer the question “Why does this task matter? Why should we do it at all?” It might be that it’s for regulatory compliance and if it is, that’s table stakes. You don’t get to play the game unless you put up the stakes. If you’re out of compliance, you’re out of business so some things are not negotiable and they’re a requirement in order to function.

[00:09:25] 
But let’s say that it’s not regulation. Let’s say it’s something else. For example, getting that software release done is going to have a business impact, right. Launching that new product is going to have a business impact, right. What is the reason behind the request? Why is it that you’re asking this person to do something? What is it that you’re hoping to get out of it in order to deliver value? If you can identify that for your team member, it’s going to open the door for them to align their feelings with the request so that they say “Oh, now I get why I should do it and they work hard on it.”

[00:10:03] 
In a perfect world, you would have clear and direct path between the organization’s goals, your department goals, your personal goals and all the goals of your team members. I know that that’s not always the case but what you can do is look for ways to link the work assignment to something bigger and when you do that, you touch on purpose. Why do we do it? People want to have a purpose that’s bigger than the task itself. Nobody wants their work waster and when you link the task to a higher purpose, that is a great way to get people to buy into doing the work. When your team member is not performing, there’s a very good chance that you’ve not made clear what they need to do or you haven’t made clear how to do it or you haven’t aligned their work with a bigger why. Why do this task at all?

[00:11:04] 
Now, let’s say that you have done your job properly. You’ve made sure that they know what to do and how to do it and why to do it and they still aren’t delivering well. You probably need to give them better feedback and that comes down to being specific about what you wanted, noting how what they did didn’t match expectations and then telling them that you want them to do better next time.

[00:11:29] 
I was talking with a client one time and she said: “I specifically told my team member to do X.” But she did the exact opposite of X. Now, I was dumbfounded. I mean, it is upsetting to think that you would tell somebody to do X and then have them do the exact opposite of X, right. I asked her “How did you respond when you found out what your team member did?” My client replied “I didn’t say anything about it.” “Wow. You did nothing? You said nothing? Fascinating.” Now, let me ask you this. Do you think that problem went away? It sure didn’t.

[00:12:14] 
For some more details about how to give feedback, in the show notes I’m going to include a link to an article I wrote on how to give feedback and in that article I’ve embedded a short video on the topic as well also including a story about a time that I got some feedback at work that wasn’t so great.

[00:12:32] 
So let’s go back to that report I mentioned above. Let’s say you gave that assignment to a team member and they’ve done a report before so they definitely know how to do it and they understand the importance of the report but in this case, it was due to you on the 25th, right, because you said “I need it by the 25th in order to get it done and turned in on time by the 30th.” But in this case, they sent you a document on the 26th, so it’s a day late, and they did it at the end of the day and it doesn’t have everybody’s input. It only has some of the team members and what they did was they just copied and pasted all the updates from the team members they did talk to and emailed it to you at the end of your work day.

[00:13:17] 
So I’ll go back and ask you how are you going to respond in this situation. After scanning that so-called report, I’d be pretty unhappy and I’d want to understand what happened because, clearly, something got disconnected somewhere. Now, I would want to respond in person. Not over the phone and not via email. Sometimes you have to but any time you’re providing correction, correction is best delivered verbally and in person. If you put it in writing, all sorts of things can go sideways. You sometimes have to put it in writing if you’re dealing with HR or you have to document a performance problem but we’re not talking about that. We’re talking about giving some feedback to a team member as part of their regular work.

[00:14:06] 
So I would let them know that I need to speak with them preferably in person, not via email, and definitely not on the evening on the 26th, right. When you first get it, you’re hot about the fact that they’ve totally screwed the whole thing up. you don’t want to do that but let’s say, in this case, the next morning, the morning of the 27th, you swing by that person’s office and you say “Hey, when you get a minute, can you please stop by my office? I want to catch up about the status report.” Now, when they arrive, you can say “I got your email last night and the report wasn’t exactly what I expected. I’m curious. What do you remember about the assignment?” Now, here you’re not judging them, you’re not criticizing them, you’re not condemning them. in fact, what you’re doing is communicating curiously. Now, clearly, you had a set of expectations and, clearly, they didn’t meet them but your job here is to determine why that happened. Did they not understand it? Did they blow it off? What happened there?

[00:15:07] 
Now what’ll probably happen is they’ll probably know that they’ve dropped the ball and they probably will have a ton of excuses about it. Your job here is to listen to what they have to say and repeat back their recollection about the assignment and, by the way, if they don’t actually ever answer that question, I would ask the question again. “Hey, I appreciate your reasons for not getting it done. I’m curious, though, I didn’t hear your answer to my question. What do you remember about the assignment?”

[00:15:38] 
So you repeat back their recollection and you can repeat back an excuse or two. “Your dog ate your homework, your kid was sick, the car broke down.” Whatever it is, right? Then ask them this “May I offer you some feedback?” Now, they will say “Yes.” They will. Almost a 100% of the time at this point of the conversation they will say yes. If they say no, which they won’t…but if they say no, your next conversation is with your HR rep. Seriously. You’re trying to give some direct feedback to a team member and they’re flatly refusing to accept that feedback? That’s a conversation for HR.

[00:16:12] 
Now, feedback, when you’re giving it to a team member, needs to be direct, it needs to be honest and it needs to be kind and here’s an example of how you can be direct, honest and kind. You can say something like this. “My expectation was…” And repeat the expectation as you originally assigned it to them. “We talked about it being on the 25th and we talked about it incorporating input from everybody and we talked about editing, right. All those pieces that we talked about in that original assignment.” You just say “My expectation was…” And then you say “I can’t help but notice that you missed a deadline. The content is not edited in a way that I can send it to management and it’s not complete because it doesn’t include everybody.” Just being specific. You’re not giving out an opinion. You’re saying “I noticed these facts.” Then you say “I need your report done properly. I have to send it to my boss in three days. How soon can I expect to get your new, final draft?” You don’t have to get mad at this point. You are the authority. You don’t have to get mad if you’re the boss because you are the boss and you’re not giving them an opinion. You’re not saying “Hey, that report stinks, right.” You’re not doing that. You got a report that was not according to measurable criteria and you’ve been clear and you’ve set the expectation. Now, at this point, they can propose a date. If you’re okay with the date they propose, fine. If not, tell them when it needs to be in your hands. You’re not being mean. You’re holding people accountable. It’s good for them and it’s good for you. When you define your expectations upfront, you make sure they know how and why to do the work and then hold people accountable, that’s a formula for getting more great work from your team members and that’s today’s mentoring segment.

Coach’s mailbox.

[00:18:38]
Tom: In the coach’s mailbox today I’ve got an email from Samuel and Samuel writes “Tom, I’ve heard you mention the idea that I should be having one on one meetings with my team members but I don’t see how I can ever make the time to do that. My boss expects me to get stuff done and taking time during work hours to meet with team member, time that neither one of us is actually working on work seems like a real waste of time. Is there some way that I can make one on one meetings productive? I mean, is it okay to combine that in a working session?”

[00:19:13] 
Well, Samuel, thanks for the email and I can appreciate where you’re coming from because it can seem like time talking is just time wasted especially when you and I have both been in meetings that were a total waste of our time. Most meetings, they’re actually useless. There, I said it. If I had a nickel for every useless meeting I’ve sat through, well, I’d have a lot of nickels. Although I guess I did get paid for attending most of those meetings so I guess I already got those nickels but let’s go back to your question. Why bother having one on one meetings at all? Your goal really ought to be using those one-on-one meetings to make your team more productive and your one on one sessions ought to be directly linked to better team performance and if they aren’t, then it is a waste of time and you shouldn’t do them. So let’s talk a little bit about what a good one on one meeting looks like.

[00:20:14] 
Having a regularly scheduled one on one meeting with a team member is going to help you achieve a number of goals but only, only if you do it right. So let’s talk about what’s the purpose of a one on one meeting. I can think of five possible reasons to have any meeting with a team member. Here are the five reasons. One, a status update or to give them feedback on the status. Two, planning their professional development or maybe teaching them something they need for development. Three, collaborative problem solving. Four, goal setting or task planning or five, delegation or giving them a work assignment. Those are the only five reasons I can think of that you would want to meet with people.

[00:21:00] 
Now, in a series of well-planned one on one meetings, you can realistically tackle all five of them but you cannot tackle all five in a single one on one session which is why I think you need a process because your process is the key. If you have a simple and repeatable process for one on one meetings, you’ll find that they can be time really well spent and if you have a formula for those meetings and you follow the formula, it’s going to be simple for you and simple for your team members too. it’s going to pay big dividends to you in terms of your productivity.

[00:21:37] 
Now, Samuel, you mentioned number three, collaboration. Now, collaboration can be a good thing but generally speaking, I recommend that a collaboration or brainstorming or a teamwork session, not happen in the one on one. If you stray too far from the core purpose of the one on one which is about individual performance, then you’ll forget why you’re there and then the meeting roams all over the place and you don’t get the value that you’re after but if team member’s stuck and they bring it up in a one on one, that is a good time to collaborate. If you find that the question they’ve asked is a bigger question or it’s going to take a longer time to resolve, you might need to schedule a separate working session just on that particular topic. You want to make sure that your one on one is focused and stays on its original schedule.

[00:22:27] 
Also, when it comes to collaboration, most of the time it’s relevant to have more than just you and that one person involved. So setting a specific meeting up just for that collaboration can be more effective than just doing it in a one on one setting with your team member. So let’s say that you schedule a 30 minute one on one meeting with your team members every other week. Even if you have 10 people who report to you, that’s only about a day a month and that investment of 10 hours should pay back at least double that in terms of productivity, better quality and less rework and if it doesn’t, then either you’re doing it wrong or you just need to stop doing one on ones.

[00:23:07] 
For your one on one meeting, you need to have an agenda and I’ve got a list of questions that you can ask yourself as you’re preparing for the agenda. So these questions are going to be in the show notes, so feel free to look at the show notes for that information and here are the questions, questions you’re going to ask yourself. One, what information do I need to get from my team member? During this one on one, what do I need to learn from my team member? Also, what information do I need to share with my team member? What is an update from the business, from the leadership, from the project status, whatever it is, other people in the team, what information do I need to convey to the team member?

[00:23:49] 
Second, is now a good time to talk about professional development? Third, are they stuck, do they need help with anything? Now, maybe you’re going to have to hear that from them or maybe you’ve observed that there are some things that haven’t gotten done on time and if that’s the case, maybe they’re stuck and maybe you can help them. Fourth, how are we doing on our annual goals? Is it time to check in on progress? Now, your progress on goals ought to happen at least once a quarter.

[00:24:18] 
And then five, what do I need them to do next? What’s something that I need to delegate? What’s a task I need to delegate to them? So those are the five questions and as I said, I’ll include those questions in today’s show notes. I know you’re busy right this second and your hands aren’t free to write this down. I also promise you this. If you make the time to think through these questions before each one on one, you’re going to find that time is very well spent. In fact, I’m guessing that you’ll have so much to talk about that it’s going to be tough fitting it into 30 minutes which is fine because you’re going to have another one on one in a couple of weeks so if you can’t get to everything on the agenda today, you can roll it into the next one on one. It’s not a problem.

[00:25:02] 
Now, how do you get your team members to engage in the one on ones so that their time is used well? Well, I recommend you position your one on ones with your team members like this. You could say something like this “This one on one session is your time. My goal is to be accessible to you, to help you and for you to use this time for your benefit. I expect that you’ll come to this meeting prepared to talk to me about what you need. In fact, the first 10 minutes are dedicated entirely to you. The meeting starts with your agenda. Come prepared to talk about one, what do you need from me, where can I clear a roadblock for you, what information or contacts can I give you? What do you need from me? Two, what do you need me to know? Is there a status update, is there a place that things are working or not working that you need me to know about? Three, what is next for you? How can I help you with your goals, with your professional development or your work planning, prioritization? My goal is to help you and I need to know from you these three questions. What do you need from me, what do you need me to know and what’s next for you?”

[00:26:15] 
And again, these questions are going to be in the show notes so you can grab them from the show notes and use them. The other thing I would say in that, as I’m introducing this concept to my team is “The first 10 minutes are for you as my team member. The next 10 minutes are for me as your boss and the final 10 minutes are for us to recap action items and ownership from our conversation. If we end up not using the time, that’s fine. I will let you go as soon as we’re done. Deal?”

[00:26:45] 
Again, all this information is going to be in the show notes and I encourage you to go back and look at that to help you as you’re planning your one on ones. Here’s the thing. If you take the time to answer these questions and create your agenda, you’re going to find that there’s so much to talk about and you should have a clear and tangible list of action items that are going to help you and your team member prepare for the meeting and also have a clear path forward after the meeting. You’ll feel like you are actually doing stuff and not just making a list of things or even worse, just having a conversation about nothing. That would be a supreme waste.

[00:27:21] 
One final note on this concept of one on ones. Remember I touched on the idea of process? What I want you to do as the boss is go ahead and schedule two recurring reminders. Each of them once a quarter, four times a year. Reminder one is “Check on progress toward annual goals.” And when that comes up, you’ll set up your agenda for that next one on one right after that happens and you’re going to bring up our progress toward annual goals as part of your agenda. This is a simple system that’s going to help you.

[00:27:51] 
Reminder number two “Review progress toward professional development goals.” And when that reminder comes up, you want to add that to your agenda. Oh, and to make it simple for you, go ahead and create a recurring reminder for your goals now and then when you create that second reminder for professional development, set that to happen two weeks after the one about annual goals and that way they’re not going to hit during the same one on one because you don’t want to cram too much into each one on one and remember, there’s another one on one coming.

[00:28:25] 
So Samuel, I hope that answers your question and I hope that you find that one on ones you set up are going to be effective and efficient too and that’s today’s coach’s mailbox.

Mentoring segment.

[00:28:52]
Tom: Okay. So I promised that even if you aren’t the boss, you’d be able to get value from today’s episode and I just want to thank you for having in there. This segment is going to help you if you’re at level two of the four levels of thinking as a geek leader.

[00:29:07]
Man: Level two, team member.

[00:29:10]
Man: Level two is where you work well with others and together you all succeed.

[00:29:17]
Tom: One of the things I like to say is that the boss factory has a quality control issue. Sometimes it produces a great boss and other times, well, not so much. So what do you do if your boss isn’t one of those great ones? Well, here’s how to use these ideas even if your boss won’t. First, let’s talk about a boss that doesn’t give you feedback. This one’s easy. If your boss doesn’t give you enough information, try this. First, listen carefully to what the boss is asking you to do. When he’s giving you the work assignment, ask enough questions to make sure that you know at least generally what your boss wants from you but don’t wear your out with a ton of details at this point. After your boss has given you the assignment, go back to your desk and answer these questions. First, do you know exactly what the boss asked you to do? Do you need any examples, instruction or training to do it properly? Do you know why it matters? Do you know how your boss is going to measure your progress? How will your boss know when it’s done? And do you know when it needs to be done?

[00:30:25] 
So let’s say, for example, the boss says “Joe, I need you take care of the status report.” But doesn’t tell you anything else. Now, you know it goes out monthly and you’ve seen or you can easily see previous copies of these status reports so you’ll have some example of what it looks like and what it contains but even with all that, you might realize you’re not clear on when the boss wants it or what exactly the process is to get it ready to go out. So you can go to your boss after you’ve thought about this a little bit and you can say “Boss, I have a couple of questions about the status report. I want to do it well and I just want to make sure that you and I are on the same page. Do you have a second?” And then you say “I know it has to be done monthly, but when do you need to see a copy of it to make sure that it gets done on time? Also, I want to make sure I use your time well and I haven’t done this before and I want to make sure that I do it right so my question is, is there somebody else on the team who does a great job with it because I can collaborate with them and make sure that the draft that I send you is done properly.”

[00:31:31] 
In this example, what you’re doing is you’re taking ownership of the process and then you’re going to your boss with a list of specific questions and helping your boss to efficiently clear up any confusion that you have and I hope that answers the question about how to get clear assignments from your boss. Once the assignment is clear, then the follow throughout to be pretty clear as well and if you’ve been able to set up a pattern with your boss of getting good assignments where you’re clear on exactly what’s wanted and how it’s going to be measured and when it’s needed, then it ought to be pretty easy for you even if your boss doesn’t give you a lot of pats on the back. You should be able to know clearly that you’re delivering what your boss wants. When you’re specific about what you’re going to do and when you’re going to do it, that builds trust with your boss and that’s going to put you in a better position for your boss to give you positive feedback.

[00:32:26] 
So now let’s talk about the challenge of your boss is too busy to do one on one meetings and just won’t even plan them. You want more time with your boss but your boss is just too busy. This one’s pretty easy too. What I want you to do is go back to the show notes and look over the questions for the one on one and then schedule a one on one with your boss. You tell your boss you’re just asking for 30 minutes and that you promise that if you get through your list of questions faster than 30 minutes, you’ll get out of there and give him time back on his calendar. Now, you take the time answering those questions to prepare your agenda. You want to be really clear and specific about the goals you have for the time you’re going to be with your boss. Take whatever time you need to make sure that process goes really, really efficiently. You want your boss to buy in on this, and the only way your boss is going to do it again is if it goes well the first time.

[00:33:21] 
Also, make sure that you stick to your agenda. Stick to the time allotted in the agenda. If you’re running out of time say “Hey boss, I’m running out of time. I’ll put that on the list to talk to you about next time.” Or you might say “Can I set up a separate meeting just to resolve this one particular thing?” Here’s what you’re going to find. It’s going to go well and as long as you’re intentional about spending the time at the end of the time together to wrap up with your specific action points from the conversation, I’m betting your boss is going to feel it was time well spent.

[00:33:56] 
Now, I want to be very, very clear about this. If you’re not willing to create the agenda thoughtfully and thoroughly before you sit down with your boss, do not bother to ask for a one on one. Seriously. Having no agenda is a recipe for your boss refusing to attend future one on one discussions.

[00:34:18] 
So what I’m telling you is if your boss is not willing to do the right stuff, you can take the initiative to get clarity about what your boss wants and to schedule you own one on one meetings. I’m telling you this process is effective. It helps. It really, really works and that’s today’s mentoring segment. Well, the second mentoring segment that is.

Behind the scenes segment.

[00:34:51] 
Tom: As those who podcast, there are a number of ways to let people know that a podcast exists. For example, I might send you an email letting you know a podcast episode has been released and letting you know exactly what you’re going to miss out on if you don’t listen. If you’re not already getting those emails from me every week, let me ask you to jump over to brighthillgroup.com/join and sign up. That’s brighthillgroup.com/join. Another way to find out about a new episode is to pick it up from one of the podcast directories. The biggest directory is iTunes but Stitcher in Google Play have both been gaining in popularity. I wasn’t able to find specific stats to show the size or the ranking of either one of these but most users pick their podcast from one of these three.

[00:35:35] 
Now, there are others and people do use them but there are people who still use Word Perfect too. Now, if you’re a passionate Word Perfect user, please email me at HYPERLINK “mailto:coach@brighthillgroup.com” coach@brighthillgroup.com . I’d love to catch up. I used to be one of the first Word Perfect certified systems engineers in the US. I had demonstrated skills in all the Word Perfect tools including their amazing and now dead email technology but I digress.

[00:36:01] 
Getting back to podcast directories. If you’re a podcast host and you want to be found, you have to be in the directory. Now, most of you know about the directories but I want to talk for a second about how podcasts work. As a creator of podcast, I have to generate two things. One, an .mp3 file that people want to listen to and two, a website with an RSS feed that correctly describes each episode. It’s this RSS feed that lets the podcast directory people know where to find the .mp3 file, what the title is and a lot more information about it as well. The .mp3 file gets hosted on my website so the actual download that your podcast player is doing comes directly from my website. The directory only becomes a pointer to my website.

[00:36:50] 
Now, once the .mp3 file and the RSS feed exist, as the creator, I have to apply to let the directory include my podcast and basically, this is just a filter that allows the directory managers to block people who might abuse the directory. When I launched the podcast, I applied to be included in iTunes and a few months ago, when Google Play announced that they were accepting submissions, I applied for them as well and a few weeks ago I was approved as a content creator for Stitcher. So folks like you search for interesting podcasts in the podcast directories and that’s why you hear me asking for ratings and reviews. Very, very few people who listen actually go to the trouble to create a rating or a review but that rating or a review is one key way the directory managers know who likes which podcast and those ratings and reviews make a big difference in where the podcast shows up in the listings and those listings are how new listeners find me.

[00:37:45] 
So one thing you could do for me that would be helpful is to tell somebody about the podcast. Word of mouth is even more powerful than any search tool and it’s pretty simple. If you’re listening on iOS, all you have to do is in your podcast player which you’re probably using right this second, all you have to do is on the bottom right, there’s a little icon with three little dots. Hit that and then select share episode, select email and then type in your friend’s name and hit send. It’s simple and it’s easy and it’s a great way to help share some information with people who might find it valuable and that’s today’s behind the scenes segment.

Episode hack.

[00:38:39]
Tom: In today’s episode I talked about how to set expectations for team members. Now, most of the time that people fail to perform, it’s because they didn’t know what you wanted, they didn’t know how to do it or they didn’t know why It mattered. Generally speaking, if you can solve those three problems, you’ll directly address any performance problems you’ve got on your team. We also talked about how to give feedback when they’re not delivering what you need and I talked about how to have effective one on ones. I mentioned the process for your one on one is key. If you create a simple and repeatable process for one on one meetings, you’ll find that time well spent.

[00:39:17] 
Now, to prove this, for today’s episode hack, I want to encourage you to schedule a series of at least three recurring one on one meetings with at least one of your team members. Now, to prove this idea is actually useful and beneficial to you, I want you to pick your worst team member, the one you think is the least likely to respond. The one you feel like is a time suck, right. Take that person and I know it seems counterintuitive but bear with me. Schedule your meetings a couple of weeks apart. In the first one, you introduce the concept of a one on one and you introduce them to their part of the agenda. You tell them you’re going to stick to the time rigidly. You’re going to get in and out in 30 minutes or less like a Domino’s pizza order and what you’re going to find is your time is well spent and you’re going to get a lot accomplished in just 30 minutes or less. I want you to schedule those first few one on ones even with your most difficult team member and that is today’s episode hack.

Closeout

[00:40:16] 
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.

[00:41:03] 
Thanks. 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.