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Category: Motivation

“I’m Not Technical”

“I’m Not Technical”

I’ve worked with many men over the years who didn’t have a degree in computer science. Not one of them ever thought they weren’t technical nor did they think they needed to prove themselves.

Unlike the men I’ve known without computer science degrees, “I’m not technical” is something I heard from several women I interviewed who had over 15 years in tech. They not only ended up managing technical teams, they contributed technically too.

One woman, Mary, has over 30 years in tech. She’s worked at large corporations and startups in Silicon Valley. She shared a story of working at a publishing startup in the early 90’s.

“I understood the market we were working with and also I could work with the engineers.” She realized that the team accepted her. “The team really appreciated what I brought to the table.” That’s when Mary stopped thinking she wasn’t technical.

Mary worked her way up to director level in software engineering. She loves mentoring people and has invested time in mentoring programs for women. When asked why women aren’t entering tech, Mary answered “Because of the war stories.” This is why we need to talk about the good experiences!

Another observation made by Mary is that women need to apply for positions even if they don’t have 100% of the skills described. “If a woman reads a job description and she sees 50% of the things she hasn’t done then she’ll say no, I’m not qualified. If a man looks at the same job description, he’ll see 50% things he has done and say he’s qualified.”

Lisa is another woman that tells me she isn’t technical. She started in tech at a small company. The company was a loan servicing company that did a high volume of foreclosures. The company invested in a new IBM Displaywriter, an early word processing system, for document processing. “[They] sent me to IBM for training. IBM showed me how to use it but not how to apply it to our specific needs.” The Displaywriter was a significant investment so Lisa worked at figuring out how to configure the program to meet her company’s needs. “I set up an ordered structure for adding data to a record, I didn’t even know to think about it as a database back then, based on how the data would be used on the forms.”

While this might not seem like a big deal today, it was back then. “Our IBM account manager came around to see how I was doing and he was blown away by what I built, so some other folks from IBM came out for a demo. Then they invited me back to IBM one day to interview me about the process I used to come up with the solution. I never read the case study they wrote but they kept checking in on me for the first year to see if I’d invented anything else.”

Some of the rewards in working in tech for Lisa are “ “building a strong team.” And she gained a lot of technical skills. She also liked the “creative problem solving.”

Lisa went on to become a vice-president in operations. She would recommend a career in tech to young women if that’s where their interest lie.

Even though these women started out their careers thinking they weren’t technical, both of these women are respected for their technical know-how and by their peers and teams. Just like the men, they earned their place at the table.

Building a High Performing Team

Building a High Performing Team

Many of my Vice President’s and Practice Area Leads tell me, “Your team is a high performing team.” Then they ask, “What do you do to make it happen?” They comment, “Your team members are smiling all the time with happy faces,” or “Your Key Performance Metrics are all green with an excellent CPI (Customer Performance Index). 9 on the scale of 1 to 10 with continuous extension of the customer contracts.” “How do you make this happen?”

Having a busy schedule never gave me the chance to articulate my strategies in words, however now that I’ve been given an opportunity to write this blog post, I’ve thought of a few things which I was doing subconsciously.

One of the challenges in managing people is that some team members are not adaptable and acceptable to change and there are others who don’t want to accept any changes. I found that understanding personality styles helps me to better manage my team.

Understanding my team members’ personality styles along with brainer technique is key to understand how the person thinks and executes. Are they a left brainer or right brainer or a well-balanced person using their whole brain for thinking and execution? (See below for more details on brain types.) Having a sense of how the person uses their brain helps me to manage more effectively. Knowing a person’s personality style, I can identify the right fit for teams for different projects. For example, people who are right brain type of people are the perfect fit for innovative projects. Whole brain type of people are often the right fit for team lead positions and so on.

Another example about working with a right brainer. One of my team members came up to me with loads of enthusiasm around an idea for building a new framework for automation even though we had an existing framework to support. His idea was creative and made sense for what we wanted to achieve in the long term – and had a bigger ROI (Return On Investment) than our existing solution. I gave him the opportunity to work on his idea which turned out to be a very successful project.

Left brainers are great for systematic approaches to projects. Based on the nature of responses to questions and the kind of artifacts delivered by one of my team members, I was able to identify her as a left brainer. I found her to be an analytical person with a logical approach to solving issues. I assigned her to our knowledge share SharePoint updates project which she was able to complete with very minimal support. This became a very useful knowledge harvesting platform at an organisational level.

What do I mean by right and whole brain types of people? Personality assessments (see related article) help to identify people who are left, right or whole brains types of thinkers. Knowing the strengths of my team members helps me to motivate, encourage and provide opportunities for them.

What I’ve learned about Left, Right, and Whole Brain Types

It would be amazing to be surrounded with whole brainers all the time. A whole-brained approach connects the right and left brain. Interestingly, these days, some educational systems try to foster a more whole-brained scholastic approach with teaching techniques that connect with both sides of brain.

Left brain and right brain dominated people can be classified with regard to their thinking style.

Left brainers have a more systematic approach and tend to follow the rules. Analysis and logical thinking are their strengths. These folks are often good on projects involving algorithms. For example, software design using data structures and algorithms however complicated it is.

Right brainers are more creative and think intuitively. They are a very good fit for innovative projects. These types of people are new ideas generators. Often, they come up with the right answer but are not sure how they got it. These types of people often do lots of reverse engineering.

The four quadrant model of behavioural types that is often used to understand how people think has these four types: Driver, Analytical, Amiable and Expressive. Here is a map of left and right brainers to this model:

  • Drivers are right brainers who know what they want and how to get there with high energy.
  • Analyticals are left brainers who are highly detailed people with a methodical approach.
  • Amiables are left brainers who try to get along with all personality types blending to all types of situations.
  • Expressives combine right brainers excellent communication skills and great speaking ability but are not very concerned about facts.

 

Picture: http://www.runrunlive.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Personality-types.jpg

Knowing what kinds of thinkers my team members are allows me to provide them with opportunities that challenge and motivate them. It is my secret weapon in building high performance teams.

About Rashi Gaur

Rashi’s leadership and mentorship experience along with people management and high customer satisfaction has resulted in successful project deliveries globally for organizations including Honeywell, IBM, Boeing, General Motors, Shell and ABB Inc.

Rashi has 15 plus years of experience in IT projects and hardcore test management in various domains including automobiles, aerospace, oil & gas in industrial sectors at various management levels.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rashi-gaur-pmp-b6b3b844/

What Gets You Out of Bed in The Morning?

What Gets You Out of Bed in The Morning?

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I’m motivated to do a good job when I have the freedom to manage my team without interference from my manager. Why? Because I enjoy taking on new challenges and like to create clear goals for my teams and for myself. When these needs are met, I enjoy my work. I’m motivated to succeed.

But what motivates me doesn’t necessarily motivate the people that work for me. One of my jobs as a manager is to understand what motivates each of them. I think motivated employees produce better quality work and are more dedicated to the success of the company. If I am successful in motivating them and they are happier in their jobs as a result, that’s a win-win for both of us. So how do I discover what motivates them?

First, I give them a list of job factors and ask them to list their top six in priority order and bring it to our next one-on-one meeting. My list of job factors is at the end of this post– check it out before you continue reading.

One of the things you may notice is that the list doesn’t ask if they love their jobs. Instead, I’m trying to get to what they need out of their job and out of their career. What’s important to them? I do this because I can’t assume that I know what is important to them. Everyone has different needs in their life. I might think I know, but I’ve found I’m usually wrong. I remember meeting with one of my direct reports. I was convinced that she wanted a promotion and that was what was motivating her. After she handed me her prioritized list of job factors, I realized I couldn’t have been further from the mark. She wanted public recognition when she did something outstanding. She was also interested in a promotion but that was further down the road for her.

When they bring in the prioritized list, it enables a discussion around what they want from the job and what motivates them. If they are looking for the next rung on the ladder, a promotion, then I look for opportunities to let them stretch and operate at that level. If they are more interested in benefits, I make sure that they are satisfied with the benefits. If they aren’t, I take it to HR. Sometimes it can’t be resolved to the satisfaction of the employee but at least they know I recognized the importance to them and I took action to attempt to correct it for them. If they leave because of it, I understand.

A question I usually ask new employees is, “What makes you want to get out of bed in the morning? What makes you think: I can’t wait to do this!” I get very different responses. Can’t say that any two are alike. Here are some responses:

  • “I like being challenged. I like taking on new projects.”
  • “Money.”
  • “I want to do my job well, and I’m looking forward to retiring in a few years.”
  • “I need good healthcare benefits.”
  • “Stock options. I hope we IPO!”
  • “Having a manager that allows me to work independently but still is there when I need her.”
  • “Having a manager that I can talk to when I need/want.”
  • “I’d like to continue making progress in my career. I want to be promoted to the next level.”

I reassure people there is no “right” answer to this question but I can tell when they are editing their responses. They think they need to tell me what they think I want to hear. Things like “I love this job so much and I can’t wait to get into work in the morning!” I’d really like it if everyone felt that way but realistically, I know not everyone loves their job or loves what they are doing. If someone gives me this type of reply, I usually chuckle and say something like, “Well, for me, I really need a manager that doesn’t micro manage. I hate being micro managed! What makes you feel valued at work?” (So what do you do when they edit their response? How do you get more out of them? Chuckle and ask again?)

When I ask them this question, I find the conversation goes in interesting directions. For example, in talking with one employee, he listed benefits as the top priority for him and then achievement and success. He explained that his child had health issues and it is important to him to have good health benefits. And having clear goals and measures of success helped him to focus himself most effectively while at work. It helped him to balance work with the home stresses. I doubt that I would have had this conversation if I hadn’t started it with the Top 6 Job Factors list.

Feel free to use my list or to make one of your own. Then schedule a meeting with your employee because its time to find out what motivates them!

Directions: Mark the top 6 job factors listed below that are most motivating to you. Most motivating can be defined as the job factors that, if present in your job, would make you excited about getting up to come to work in the morning.
Job Factors Check Top 6
Benefits – medical benefits, 401k, vacation, etc (does not refer to compensation)
Career Development – having opportunities and strategies for upward promotion, lateral career moves, and/or significant added responsibilities & authority
Achievement & Success – being coached toward “winning,” feeling motivated to succeed, having less job stress due to clear goals
Base Compensation – base salary only; does not include commissions, bonuses, stock options, etc.
Corporate Culture – the values and mission of the organization have personal meaning to you and you feel part of the team (does not define work processes or procedures)
Policy & Administration – rules and procedures that define how you have to get things done, i.e., Finance and HR policies (does not refer to work processes)
Job Fit – having work that you can do with confidence and enthusiasm – your skills and interests match the job tasks
Job Security – a job that is relatively secure (does not mean “a job for life” with the company)
Professional Growth – getting continuous training and development as well as learning on the job via new assignments and feedback
Recognition & Rewards – feeling appreciated and recognized for your work
Support – feeling in on things, supported by peers and management in both work and personal issues
Work Conditions – the physical work environment: too hot or cold, old or new, cramped or open
Commute – short vs long, public transportation available, company transportation available
Something else not specified above? Please add.
Talk Positive Instead of Negative

Talk Positive Instead of Negative

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“You always talk about how great your team is,” my manager said to me, “and it’s not good that you do.”

Talk about confusing. I didn’t know how to reply to that one. I do know my teams’ weaknesses and strengths. I work with them on the weaknesses. So why would I tell my peers and my manager about the weaknesses all the time? Why wouldn’t I instead talk about the strengths, the good stuff, the positive stuff about my teams?

Being very confused about this feedback from my manager, I asked people I’ve worked with at other companies why talking positively about my team to peers and other teams is a problem. They told me it sounded like I thought my teams were better than everyone else’s. “I never said that to anyone,” was my reply. Their reply, “Well, it’s implied since you always talk positively about your teams.”

This is crazy. Or maybe dysfunctional is a better word.

People talk. When I talk about my teams’ strengths to those outside of my team, eventually, those comments get back to them. When I share negative things about my teams to others outside of my team, those negative comments also get back to them. Now what is more inspiring to you; knowing the leader of your organization is saying positive things about your organization – or negative things?

 

I gotta go with positive.

 

If there are issues preventing the team from delivering, yes, I will share that circumstance with my manager AND I’ll also share what I’m doing to fix those issues. I’ve replaced management staff and eliminated positions to fix problems within my teams; I don’t hide from the negative aspects of my team members.

I simply see no reason to only talk about the negatives and not the positives when it comes to my teams especially when I know that what I say will eventually filter down to my team members. I prefer they hear motivating comments than negative, de-motivating comments. I’ll go with positive. In the long run, the team will perform better and problems will be resolved more easily.

Which would you go with? Positive or negative?