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Staff Meetings

Staff Meetings

There is nothing more frustrating than going to a weekly staff meeting that is content free. Or worse, ends up as a weekly status meeting. Please! If it is a project status meeting, call it that. If it is a staff meeting, please, please, please, make it about something other than project status updates.

Maybe for some managers, staff meetings are equivalent to project status meetings. It’s their chance to get an update on the current project. So call it that and come up with an agenda so everyone comes prepared with the information you want.

For me, a staff meeting is more than project updates. It’s my opportunity to review what’s going on in other areas of the company, get updates from HR, talk about upcoming events such as conferences, meetups, or company parties. And if I don’t have enough content for a weekly staff meeting, I don’t have one. I don’t have a meeting just to have a meeting.

Create an agenda for your staff meetings and make them productive. Be clear about what you want the people in the meeting to contribute. And when you don’t have agenda items, give yourself permission to just cancel the meeting. It shows you are respectful of your staff’s time and that you aren’t meeting just to meet.

Here’s a sample staff meeting agenda that I have used:

  1. Update from HR on Hiring
  2. Passdown (from what I have learned from my manager)
  3. Guest speaker on xyz topic
  4. Roundtable: what each person would like the rest of the team to know about his/her team. Limit to 3 minutes or less per person. Focus on interesting tidbits/problems/successes rather then status updates. For example, if I am managing the user experience team and they are working on a new style guide, I would share: The user experience team completed the color selection for icons used in all apps. If people are interested, I can set up a meeting to go over this in more detail.
Getting Personal

Getting Personal

This story begins when I was having lunch with someone who reported to me several years ago. We were reminiscing about those days and I shared that my mother was ill during those years and died during that time.

My friend sat back in his chair obviously surprised and said, “I had no clue. You never said a word to any of us. You never shared anything about yourself with us. It would have been nice if you had, especially something like that which is so difficult to go through.”

His comments made me sit back in my chair. It had never occurred to me the people on my team would want to hear anything about me. So after thinking through my surprise, I started to investigate. I found some people liked to hear more personal things from me as it was their way to connect with me. Others were happy to keep it to work topics.

 

Balance sharing personal information at work.

 

This all, of course, boils down to the fact that different personality styles want different things from their managers. We all should know this, but sometimes we forget. For myself, I am heavily on the let’s keep it to just work side of the spectrum. However, I found that others who didn’t share my style thought I was aloof and distant. This was a problem. When someone thinks you are aloof and distant, they are not going to be comfortable sharing with you. And that means communication is not open and you, as a manager, need to take the responsibility to adjust your communication style to effectively communicate with those with styles different from yours.

So, I began sharing more about me. At first, I found it strange to share personal things with folks. But I found that those folks who build work relationships on more than work really appreciated it. And, one of the huge benefits I didn’t expect, I got to know people more deeply than before. My relationships with my employees were richer as a result.

Now I try to adjust how I communicate with people based on what they need, not just what I want or expect. It’s still a challenge. But it’s definitely had a positive impact not only on my relationships with peers and direct reports, but it’s also had a positive impact on me as well.

Communicating Clearly with Culturally Diverse Teams

Communicating Clearly with Culturally Diverse Teams

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Clearly communicating is challenging. It’s challenging with everyone in the same room. Adding people who grew up in different geographical areas – each bringing a different cultural worldview, different ways of communicating that they take for granted, and you have a much higher potential for confusion and misunderstandings. Then add in geographically remote team members who may only be included via audio and not video and consequently seem even more distant. Opportunities for miscommunication double and triple.

How can such a team effectively communicate to avoid misunderstandings?

Never assume that they will correctly interpret colloquialisms. Once, after talking with someone from Russia, I said, “Great talking with you. Talk to you later.” He looked confused and said, “Are we talking later too?” I was lucky he asked for clarification. How many other colloquialisms have I used and no one asked for clarification? Avoid colloquialisms.

Talk slowly. If the person is not a native English speaker, they might be translating from English to their native language as you are talking to them. If you speak rapidly, they might miss something. And they might feel uncomfortable with asking you to repeat what you said. So speak slowly. Pause where appropriate. Ask if they need clarification.

Remember YOU have an accent. You may notice others have an accent and how it can make it harder for you to understand them at times. The reality is that you have one too. When we get excited, our accents are magnified. Talking slowly and clearly enunciating your words helps. If someone looks confused about the words you are using, try explaining with different words instead of simply repeating yourself.

Write it down. After a meeting, write up the important points. Especially what you expect from that person. This gives them a chance to review things at their own pace instead of while you are talking. Ask for feedback on your write up. Ask if you missed anything or if they have anything to add.

When possible, have remote team members on video as well as audio. Nothing can replace face-to-face conversations but video can help people connect better. Instead of just a disembodied voice on the other end, you see a living person with facial expressions. It’s more personal and making it personal allows communication to work better.

Have a quarterly or yearly face-to-face meeting with everyone. I had a team of managers from four countries. We had a yearly offsite meeting to review our mission, goals, and progress. Instead of having the meeting in the US where I am located, I had it in India. There were several benefits. One was that for once, the US based managers had to travel for the offsite. They were the ones that didn’t go home at night. This might seem trivial, but it’s not. Another benefit was the local team had a chance to meet the managers that they’d heard about but never seen. It also demonstrated that I didn’t think the US was the only important site.

What tips do you have for ensuring clear communication among people from different countries?

The Buy-In Leadership Challenge and the 20-70-10 Rule

The Buy-In Leadership Challenge and the 20-70-10 Rule

As leaders, we are on a never-ending journey of continuous improvement in all areas of our business. Some of us, including myself, derive a great deal of satisfaction from transitioning teams and businesses into a new and improved future state. This journey towards a better future state can become arduous if we do not have genuine support from some of the stakeholders.

One way of managing your stakeholders is what I call the 20-70-10 rule of buy-in. The numbers represent the size of three stakeholder groups:

  • 20% group – Fully Supportive change agents
  • 70% group – Indifferent majority
  • 10% group – Detractors

tarang-stakeholder-revised

In my experience, for any change to be effective, you need at least 20% of the stakeholders to be fully supportive and optimistic about getting to the end state. The second group of individuals, the 70% group, may not be enthusiastic about the change, but won’t be detractors either. The third group is the dangerous detractors; those who may go out of their way to maintain status quo.

Carefully managing all stakeholder groups is vital, as momentum in the wrong direction can be disastrous.

My top five tips for leaders on this topic are to:

  1. Create a stakeholder map to identify the 20-70-10 groups. In the past, I have built this map after having one on one conversations with team members to understand what motivates them and listen to their feedback. By putting yourself in their shoes, asking open-ended questions related to the change, and carefully listening to what they have to say, you will be able to determine if they are a fully supportive change agent or a detractor. If they seem indifferent, then they would be part of the majority i.e. the 70% group.
  2. Build momentum with the agents (20% group). Back in 2013 when I was leading a team that was working on a new product, I found that a handful of developers were highly motivated to transform the industry that we were operating in and would come up with innovative ideas on an almost daily basis. We then set up a think tank group with those change agents and had a weekly brainstorming session to build momentum.
  3. Accept the fact that there will always be detractors (10% group), so acknowledge their concerns and try your best to address them. I inherited a team back in 2007, and during the stakeholder mapping exercise, I realised that a senior team member did not support our new initiative. In that case, it was the development of a new automated testing framework. After carefully listening to this individual’s concerns, I realised that he would see the success of this framework as a personal failure because he was part of the team that had earlier failed to develop a similar framework. During the one on one conversation, I acknowledged his concerns and requested him to play the devil’s advocate role during the technical review sessions. Everyone in the team knew that he would play this role, and he felt that he made a valuable contribution by using his experience in identifying potential issues with the framework design before it got developed.
  4. Ensure that the majority of the stakeholders are heading in the right direction by explicitly setting behavioural expectations, SMART goals, frequently measuring progress using KPIs, and course correcting when necessary. Developing SMART i.e. Specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound goals are an essential building block for results oriented execution. I have seen numerous initiatives fail as the leaders did not design and assign SMART goals. In those cases, individuals thought that they were making progress, but in the absence of clearly defined goals, they were heading in different directions ultimately leading to wasted effort.
  5. Over-communicate, because there is no such thing as too much communication. Don’t stop after an initial announcement. Reiterate your message on every opportunity you get. Use different modes of communication: record videos, organise webinars, send regular newsletters, set up all hands meetings, and have skip level one on one conversations to ensure that you receive feedback and individuals are adequately informed.

What are your top tips? Please share them in the comments below.

Tarang Waghela is a Senior Director of Software Development at ABB, Inc. He has extensive experience in leading global software teams and has successfully led and delivered numerous software products in the areas of mining long–term scheduling, short–term scheduling, geological data management, mining economics, ERP, and simulation.

When You Don’t Agree with Upper Management

When You Don’t Agree with Upper Management

Recently I was watching an episode of the show “Silicon Valley” in which, the CEO of Pied Piper made a decision to create an appliance instead of a platform. The engineering lead and his team thought the decision a bad one, but the sales people liked it. So the CEO and the board decided it was worth producing. But later, the board changed direction to go with the platform concept when Hooli decided to buy Pied Piper’s main competitor who was creating a similar platform. By buying their competitor, Hooli gave a dollar value to the platform. So the board fired the CEO and went with the platform instead of the appliance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlHMJaovr3g


If you are in management, you’ve probably had the experience of not agreeing with your manager or your manager’s manager with regard to big decisions like this. Some people are really good at finessing the situation. I’ve been learning from them. I’m very direct, very blunt. Sometimes, being direct is appropriate and sometimes it really isn’t. What I work on is understanding when the direct approach isn’t going to work. Yes, I’ve blown this in a major way at times. Calling out the CEO in front of all his management staff? Not a good idea.

When I determine a less direct approach is needed, I begin by asking for more information. How was this decision made? Is it ok if I talk to the people that helped you make this decision? My goal is to turn the questions into a conversation. This is a struggle at times, especially when what I really want to do is just explain why it’s a bad decision.

Sometimes, a decision can be changed. Other times, I have to get behind the decision even if I disagree with it. The bottom line is, either you decide to get behind the decision or you leave the company. Why leave the company if you can’t get behind the decision?  Remember, you are part of a management team. If you can’t support that team, you need to get out. Otherwise,you might end up being a negative influence and that can reflect badly on you and the company.

What do you do when you don’t agree with a decision made by management?