Speaker 1: 0:00

All right. Today I'm here with James Tyak and he lives in Silicon Valley, new dad to an adorable baby boy. James is an engineering manager at Coursera and I think you told me, James, you have a team of is it 17 people you have?

Speaker 2: 0:16

a team of yeah, a couple of teams at Coursera yeah, we're also working on an in-course coach experience using AI as well.

Speaker 1: 0:22

Oh, very nice. Thank you for being here with me today. Again, you're another person I met on TikTok. I find it so fascinating. I'm new to doing the social media stuff, so it's been really fun. I've just trusted my instinct and only reached out to people that I feel good about, so I'm really happy that you're here today.

Speaker 2: 0:40

Yeah, and it's great to meet you too, karen. I've seen your videos about leadership and I really enjoy watching them. Now I'm fascinated by the short form content as well. I watch a lot of longer form content but especially to understand how people are now learning, also the digesting information using very short form content that then leads into longer content. I think it's a really exciting area and when I had the baby, I decided to just explore it a bit and share some of my own experiences. It's just been very, very interesting.

Speaker 1: 1:09

So what I enjoy about your videos, what comes through with you and I hope this is going to be true in anybody that I sit down and spend time with you genuinely care for people. It comes through in your videos. You genuinely care about your people that you work with and you care about giving these messages to people that you don't even know, and that means a lot. It means a lot to someone like me in this industry because it can feel lonely sometimes doing this kind of work.

Speaker 2: 1:35

Yeah, I mean, I think, what I've learned through my own experience of having managers that perhaps couldn't remember what they'd said the prior week and or would, because they're talking down to me, or right at the beginning of my career I had an experience where I was actually working in a supermarket and very quickly I was told you could lead the checkout. So I started acting as a supervisor and I remember one of the people who was working on as a cashier complained about me and they complained to the boss and the boss came to me and talked to me about it and I said, well, actually, let me go and talk to them and I'll apologize. He said, no, don't do that. Never show weakness, Don't apologize. That early in my career I saw a lot of that kind of behavior Right.

Speaker 2: 2:19

And then I think, when I moved to becoming a manager, I remember, you know, I was struggling at the beginning a lot as a new engineering manager with a team. I didn't really understand what it meant to be a manager. And then I saw this talk and it was with the engineering leadership group in San Francisco, and the guy who was doing the talk, his name is Wade Chambers and he said 70% of managers fail because they fail to embrace where they suck, where they can improve. And that just hit me so hard. Right, the idea that as a manager, you can show vulnerability and actually say well, I'm learning here as well, you know, I need your help. It goes a long way to building trust.

Speaker 2: 2:57

And also the other thing, obviously, I think it's very important to psychological safety on a team. And also I liked everyone to understand that they're a leader as well. You know, it's not just me that's leader and there to help other people take ownership of things, to lead, to feel as though they've got permission to be able to make mistakes as well and learn from them. And those are all the values I think that I have as a manager. So, and it's tough, it's tough to combine all of these things. I think it takes experience. If I can help one person through talking about it, then I feel like I've done something useful.

Speaker 1: 3:29

There's so many points you just made. It was so good Going back all the way to the beginning of that story with the supervisor who told you, don't show weakness, don't admit you're wrong. I was dying inside because that's such a misconception and it is the worst advice you could be given. You're not showing weakness when you admit you're wrong. You're showing strength. Soon as you admit you've done something wrong, especially to your team. You've just humanized yourself to them. They see you now as an equal person, not somebody with all the answers, and that brings you in a place of equality with them. So I'm sorry you were taught that early in a career, but I'm really grateful that you re-corrected that. From hearing somebody speak and that man's impact on you, it just validates that what you're doing out there you're going to make an impact as well. You have no idea what one line you've said that somebody's taken away from one of your videos and is making life changing changes.

Speaker 2: 4:33

I was going to say. I think it's hard to know what lands and what doesn't. I guess for this, this is where the feedback is so important for manager. A lot of managers fail because they fail to embrace where they need to improve right, and the only way you can do that is by showing vulnerability and making it safe for people to actually tell you. I found that because I do lead with this, usually people are fairly quick to share things with me, right. That helped me understand where I can get better as well and working with people. Everyone's different and I think the more that you can build that trust people open up, I think it's the only way ready to work. I think even the word manager can sometimes rile people up, so I think that's something else that we need to overcome and understand. They're not very popular.

Speaker 1: 5:15

That term has a negative connotation to it because the majority, unfortunately, of managers are coming from this place of power and ego instead of trying to build relationships, and sometimes that's out of fear, sometimes it's from not having the right training. Regardless of the reason, the energy they're giving their people is that they are right. They're going to dictate what's going to happen and your job is to listen to them. So it has this negative connotation because that is how a lot of people run things and that's not relationship building. It does not feel human.

Speaker 2: 5:54

Yeah, it's interesting. I made one video actually about what to do if you've got that kind of manager. I think being confident and actually standing up and being very clear about things is something that's very important, I think, looking after yourself and I think when I've been in that situation, I've brought something to the table as well. So I think there's always a need to look into yourself and just say, well, how am I behaving here? You know, sometimes just changing I change my body language into more open, change the dynamic completely. You can learn from people. You can learn how not to be.

Speaker 2: 6:25

I saw a talk it was actually a women in engineering techy talk where one of the women says you often learn the most from people that you don't actually like or that you don't get on with, and that's really stuck with me because I think you know, for anyone listening, if you think about the people that have had a big impact in your life I'm sure there's some, you know this can be someone incredible, and there's also going to be some people who maybe you didn't quite see eye to eye with at the time. On one occasion it was when I was very, really out of my depth in a particular job and, looking back, I was like, well, actually I learned a lot from that person, but it's not how I would have been with someone who's new to their job Right Like I was first time managing. So I think there's a few things that you can always reflect on, based on your situation, and make a change and I know it's really hard, but having the courage to say, well, actually, this isn't working is really important. And that was another lesson that I had.

Speaker 2: 7:18

Did you do a yoga practice? I love meditation, yoga, and I went to this meal with this yogi and I think it was the second time I started complaining about a job that I was in and he said why did you choose to be there, james? You know another one of those sort of like incredible moments where I'm like I can't answer that question.

Speaker 1: 7:35

Such an obvious, simple question and it stumps you because you hadn't thought about that. Yeah, I love that you understand this vulnerability piece.

Speaker 1: 7:45

I was just saying to another lady, like I do so much corporate training and coaching and I remember once, with a woman talking about getting frustrated and meeting, I said, oh yeah, it's happened to me too. She goes wait a second, you've had that, yeah yeah, because when we're in a teaching position, if we're not careful, we can put out this message that we're flawless, we haven't made mistakes. Oh no, I've made a ton of mistakes. That's why I can teach you what not to do as much as I can teach you what to do, and I love your ability to put yourself in a position A where you will reflect on yourself, and we cannot lead other people if we're not leading ourselves. We need to do that. Self reflection and your ability to ask for feedback from your people, asking them what you can do better or how you're doing, that's huge. That is everything.

Speaker 2: 8:35

Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of really good writing out there as well. Kim Scott and her writing. The way you ask for feedback is not kind of have some feedback, please. You know, what I say to people is well, if you did a presentation, if you wrote a document, if you wrote some code, just ask what do you think of this? I'd like your help to help me improve. Can you tell me that I can do better?

Speaker 2: 8:56

And I think if you frame it like that, it gives someone something much more tangible to work with than a very general question, and I think that's the thing that we're not often taught is how to seek feedback from people in a way that is very easy for people to give it and actually, where they feel like they're helping you. I think there's a lot of fear around it. Right, it's like well, are they going to be upset with me if I'm honest with them? Well, the more honest move we are with each other and I think this is what Kim says you know that if you walk around with something on your face all day no one tells you, then you're going to be mad with those people for not telling you that things on your face, and I think these books from so many people have helped me along the way and talks and podcasts and everything, so yeah, you sound like me that you're always feeding yourself that stuff, because it's daily for me either audiobooks, podcasts I spend time in the morning doing that.

Speaker 1: 9:47

I love to learn and I also love sometimes that it just re-sets me. It puts me in that right energy, right space. So I love that you do that as well.

Speaker 2: 9:57

Yeah, I think that the other thing that's interesting about leadership and thinking about training in it and what you provide is that it doesn't just help with work. It helps with all aspects of people's lives and relationships, everything you know. If you're running some group at school or at church or whatever, it is right it can provide so much help for people.

Speaker 1: 10:18

Yeah, Our daughter listens to my leadership videos and she's not in a managerial position and I say you're always so sweet. I think she's just doing that to be nice to listen because they're mine. She said, no, do you know how much those helped me with parenting? I'm like what? No, those videos. There's so many of them that I can relate directly to parenting. I'm like, oh, that is fascinating. I've never said that, but that makes perfect sense. So, yeah, anything that we do in the self-development work, it improves us in all areas of our life, for sure. So, yeah, I'm glad you brought that up when you and I were chatting the other day. It was so encouraging and it made me so happy that you have this policy. I'm just going to call it a policy, but it's something you've put out with your team that if they see something, they say something, and that could be about you or about anything. Do you want to just touch on that a little bit, because I really like that you have that.

Speaker 2: 11:12

I mean whoever I work with. Whenever I start working with them whether it's here, someone who is reporting to me I try to be very intentional about the first thing I talk about with them. I usually have a few iceberg of questions and I'll say look, if you ever see anything or you feel anything where you feel excluded or someone's talking for you in a meeting, then say something, especially if it's me doing it, because I know that personally I can do that. I'm quite an extravert when it comes to being in groups and settings and with other people. I need other people's help as well sometimes to remind me of these things.

Speaker 2: 11:52

And I don't just say it once, I keep saying it. I try to do that and I try to model that. And also, when I set meetings up, I always try and create the agenda and share it with everyone and say what would you like to add? Because I just hate, if anything is the James show. It's just not what it's about. People learn from many other people, but the inclusion part of it is really important, and I know from experience in the past that sometimes people haven't shared something early enough and it happened with someone who was at another location, with someone they worked with, and I found out about it later and I thought OK, in the future I'm going to be very intentional about this. Just make sure that we do everything we can to make sure that people are feeling included right from the back.

Speaker 1: 12:39

And letting them know you've made space for them to come to you with that. So maybe before you had really learned that and thought about that, it's really good now that it's in your forefront and you're intentional about letting people know they have a space to say whatever it is they need to say.

Speaker 2: 12:57

Yeah, I think the other thing is I've done courses about inclusion and I think it's important to include everyone in this, whatever the identity is right, because it is easy to make assumptions by looking at someone, but you do not know what someone is going through, and I've been on the receiving end of discrimination myself early in my career and had to stand up to people. I think the main thing is that, yeah, you've got someone that you can go and speak to, and when I haven't had anyone to talk to in the past, that's been the most difficult thing when you feel alone. Letting people know that you are there to help and support and that you see them. I hear you again. I'm not perfect, right, so I'm going to miss things. I try and I have methods in place, and I think that's the other thing with anything that goes wrong.

Speaker 2: 13:40

What we're very good at in engineering usually is doing retrospectives. So you talked about self reflection. Every two weeks, we do a retrospective as a team and we look at what should we start, what should we start? What should you continue doing? People add cards to this anonymously and then we group them, vote on them and talk about them, and people can bring anything up at all, and that's supposed to be safe.

Speaker 2: 14:02

I try my best to facilitate that, but in the same way as we do it individually, we do it with one on one. You can do it in a group, in a team as well, and that is the hardest thing, right, I think going one on one and then creating a safe space in a team where everyone can do this. In the long run, I've found that if you can empower a team to do a retrospective and then come out with actions at the end of it that help team improve without having to escalate to someone else, they've been empowered. Whereas with a form or enter, this survey goes into another system. If you can, as a team, come up with a retrospective that allows you to learn together, that's a really powerful thing I've found.

Speaker 1: 14:38

It's so, so good. I call it ongoing dialogue. That's what I teach. It's the same concept. It is that ongoing. What are we doing well? What do we need to work on? Anybody come up to a situation that was tough last week that communication on an ongoing basis like that. I don't even know if you know the amount of impact that's going to have on your team for the long game. Like it's all building trust. You're doing that together and you're creating this trust between each other and you're becoming a stronger team and there's no big surprises when you're doing that ongoing. I love the retrospective word. I think that's a cool. It's a cool way to look at it.

Speaker 2: 15:20

I think the ongoing thing is the key there, right? You said, as with everything you know, people, I think, need continual habits forming, and is it more of a habit than a goal? Right, and I think these are the kind of habits to build in, and then it makes it safe. Let's try this new thing and then we'll go to retrospective and then we can talk about it and if it's not working and we can change it. That continuous reflect. I think that Working on agile teams this is where this comes from. I've noticed across the organization that these things don't happen quite as much in many organizations, and so I really encourage people to look at that.

Speaker 1: 15:53

It's so, so important. I remember one time and this was a great company. It just shows you how things are missed. They're a wonderful company. They really care about their people. One of the things at the end of the years, everybody had to have a goal for the following year. Each person would set these goals and I came into the picture and I said oh so how often are you revisiting how it's going? Like we don't revisit it, we just set a new one again for next year. There's no follow up.

Speaker 2: 16:21

I think there's a cadence that's needed for this, right. So every week is too much. So I think you have to figure out what's the cadence gonna do and commit to it. People come to me. We have one and one's every week. I say to them I say look, fifteen minutes before the meeting, just have a think, have a step back. I don't want it to be a states meeting.

Speaker 2: 16:37

This is where we talk about your development, career and think anything you want to bring this is your meeting, and that is hard because people are really busy, things that are being escalated. There's this new problem over here. Someone's asking for something and I think this is the other thing that is really important and that is saying no. I think that you know what we call triaging is very, very important of anything comes in presenting us urgent, when actually these are all the things we decided we can do the beginning. Should we just come back to those and we change them? So we revisit what we agreed is values and see if that is still relevant when this new thing comes in.

Speaker 2: 17:14

It's really hard and that's where I think I says managers come in. More than anything is to help manage these kind of situations, where the thing that's the most value is pushed out for something that someone wants, and it's the same with managing our time right in the morning. What's the best thing to do is spend your time reflecting what you want to do, what is coming. This extends, manager, to everyone else, because everything I say yes to is actually saying yes to my team.

Speaker 1: 17:45

How to manage that urgency from everybody else, because everybody wants something right now and so it takes a lot. Because we have this all need to people. Please Make everybody happy and we don't want to let people down and we're in these positions. We want to be the I got it, I can get it done. We have to be able to manage it and know when we can't and how to move things around and it's it's super challenging. So if you're not in a trusting team, you're either going to stress yourself out trying to do everything for everybody or you're going to feel like you're not being honest with yourself, you're not say what you really need.

Speaker 2: 18:22

Imagine, I mean, your self employed. You think it must be even harder, I imagine, to have that structure around things, but so you must have developed quite a lot of discipline.

Speaker 1: 18:33

And I said a lot of boundaries, but they're healthy boundaries. People know how much I care about them. They also know my my limits, that I put in and they respect them Because we have a good relationship. If it really is a crisis or an emergency situation, they know I'm the person I'll show up. I will be there for you. I will move things around, but not everything is a crisis or a need to move, so I know how to do that and I set very clear timelines on when I'm checking emails, when I'm checking my text, what evenings I will do things, which evenings I won't, but I communicate that so nobody's upset. I communicate all of my boundaries to all of my clients, so there's no surprises. I teach wellness and balance is part of my training, so I need to live that or I would be a hypocrite.

Speaker 2: 19:24

That takes a lot of practice and, again, continuous reinforcement of it. I know personally. I mean, I can easily find myself, I get pulled into things and I just have to be on my whiteboard. Okay, these are the groups of things that I decided and just trying to keep coming back to this again, it's one of these lifelong practices. We have to keep it. You know, when you say boundary what was pretty big question, but what do you see as a boundary? I'm very curious about.

Speaker 1: 19:50

So boundary for I could. Just one that pops up top of my head is like evening appointments. I don't. I don't do a Friday night appointment. That is a night that I am done by 430 and my husband and I go out for dinner. This man watches me run around, you know, all week I'm just busy, busy, busy. So Friday night I don't do appointments. I get asked for those. I don't do them because that is our time. It has not affected how many clients I have. It has not affected how busy I am. Nobody's out mad at me, and if they were, it's okay. They're not meant to be my client. So that's just one boundary I put in. I don't change that. That is sacred time. When you're first starting out or if you're new to a company, it's tough. You don't feel comfortable putting those yeah because you want to be the yes person.

Speaker 2: 20:40

I think what you touch you on here is the other thing that I think is for me is really important. My first job, believe it or not, I used to be a flight attendant.

Speaker 1: 20:48

This was way back.

Speaker 2: 20:50

But the thing that you know I'm sure you probably say this to people a lot you know it's quite common now that this term is used, but please attach your own oxygen mask picking others. And I think that, as a manager or a leader, you have to spend time looking after yourself and how. That is these boundaries that you're talking about, and it's spending time on a Friday evening with your husband. I think that, as a manager or anyone on the team, the more you can set those boundaries and understand the interface between you and the other person, how to work with them, how to make a request. The problem on many teams, I see, is where that doesn't exist and I'm like okay, we have a channel, we have a method, we have a way to request some work and this is how you do it, there's a link to it. Do this and then we'll make sure that we take this seriously, based on our capacity and what we can get done. That is all part of looking after the human health of the team. We think about a system and engineering. We have to make sure that we're looking after all of the infrastructure, the hardware, the systems, all of these kind of things. But then there's the people to operate it and that's the human, human ops part of it. We call it so these interfaces for the people as well as the system, how I think about it as an engineer manager, and then it's very easy to see what's going on as well.

Speaker 2: 22:11

Right, that's the other thing. You know, not in a way that's buying on the team. It's more I can support, if I know this 10 requests of coming out, of course, or if someone's woken up at night. You shouldn't come in this morning or today. You need to take a rest now, and I think that's the other thing. Often managers don't have the visibility or observability of what is actually happening for the people, and then they're not making good decisions. And the metrics there can be really helpful to see how much extra work and load is being put on top of people, on top of what we've agreed to. So, but it starts with yourself in the old days of sitting in the office and what times the manager leaving. I can't leave before the manager. Right, that's gone in my books. I hope so.

Speaker 1: 22:55

In certain industries people still celebrate the one that's killing themselves there for 80 hours for the week. Right, that's celebrated. We need to take care of our people. I was just working with an organization and I commended them so much because one of the ladies had been on vacation. She's a really hard worker. She had just gotten back and in the meeting they said oh, we just want to applaud so and so, because she actually didn't check her email for the first time ever While she was on vacation. They actually meant that sincerely to go on vacation and just be on vacation. I was so proud of them I thought what a message. I think it's great when a company says we give you four weeks off for vacations and we expect you to take four weeks off for vacation. However, you want to do that four different times all at once, but you need to take your vacation. That vacation is for you to reset, refuel, spend time with your family.

Speaker 1: 23:52

We need to encourage that, instead of celebrating people who burn out, I think this also comes back to something else.

Speaker 2: 24:00

A very poor sign of how things are working is when someone goes out and you need them to operate something. Right, because there hasn't been enough work done to make sure that enough people understand this part of the system. And this can happen in any department, right, it's not just engineering, but that's something that we take very seriously is that holistic kind of ownership of everything where you make sure that the whole team kind of understands something, that things are well written up and documented. And again, this is not the kind of thing that you're thinking about when you're just fighting all of those interrupts that are coming in, especially as a manager. Right, I like the idea that I can be out of the office and everyone else can help. Either you prevent the problem happening with people not being able to go out on vacation feel like they can't go, with some coaching needed there for the individual.

Speaker 2: 24:47

Some individuals don't do that. Some people are very good at saying, well, actually I worked on this last month, I don't want to work on it, someone else needs to do that, and I've seen very union people say that. I'm like, yeah, exactly, you say more of that, let other people know, and the same with what I talked about with on call. You know I've had people join the team and they've come to the team meeting and said I'm livid, I got working up in the night, I did and I'm just having enough of this. I'm like listen to this person. The more we actually challenge these things that are not healthy for the team, at the end of the day, we're not going to get such good results if, working 80 hours a week, those are not the people usually going to be the most creative and helpful and collaborative with other people. I think generally, when I look at things from a team perspective, there needs to be fairness in terms of workload as well.

Speaker 1: 25:35

And that's back to the empowerment piece, and I see this time and time again. There's so much fear. I remember in one company out here we have a lot of greenhouses and this was a greenhouse company and one of the people that runs the machine was the only one that knew how to run that particular machine. So immediately for me that was a scary red flag, Like we need somebody else to know how to run this machine. What are you doing to teach anybody else to run this machine? And I kept getting pushback no, no, I got this. I just need them to get good at all the other stuff. This is my baby.

Speaker 1: 26:05

But if this is your baby and you're the only one that can do it, this does not set the company up for success or growth. So I started digging and I realized that is where this person believed their value was. So if I teach anybody else and somebody else can do it, I'm not going to be valuable anymore. So I had to really help coach that person understand the value in teaching somebody else to be able to do that as well. And then you're setting your organization up. You're still going to be needed because you're going to keep training people and you're going to create a team of people that know how to do these jobs, and then I don't know what else you might be doing if you're not the only one trapped on this machine. 24 seven.

Speaker 2: 26:44

So much fear? Yeah, I agree, and I think you've touched on fear of change as well. I've realized as I've got older is that having energy for new ideas and encouraging younger people and realizing that I can learn from anyone on the team, that is very powerful. I've had so many interns that I've managed or coached. I think that that's another thing for anyone who's getting older to think about very hard is how can you keep learning and growing and trying new things? It is scary for many people, even you know it doesn't matter what age you are, but I think being a bit comfortable with being uncomfortable is very, very important.

Speaker 1: 27:23

I just had this happen. I was doing an online coaching session. I assumed like 20 people were coming on from this company. It's lunchtime, 70 showed up. What I planned was not suited for 70 for it to be interactive because, like we talked about earlier, it's not going to be the Karen show for an hour. That is boring, I'm not doing it. It was Zoom and that ding dong is going, ding dong, ding dong, ding dong, ding dong. I'm like, oh my gosh, this is way more than 20. Now it's 30, it's 40, it's 50. And it's happening in real time. I had to be able to know how to regulate my emotions, get myself calm and then change on a dime and say don't do it the way you're going to do it, you need to do something different. And I did a lot of breakout room stuff and it was so interactive.

Speaker 1: 28:06

The hour went by like in five minutes it felt like. But that was a new scenario. Not that I haven't talked to that many people before, but in that kind of setting it was new to have that many. But thank God I did it, because now I'll never be scared of that happening again.

Speaker 2: 28:24

You learn a new way of doing something through that pressure. It sounds like the emergency response that you do if you're trained in, if you work for an airline. I've been in the role of instant commander and you see people joining the call and you have to do that. You have to calm the situation, focus as a team on resolving something and stabilizing. Panic never helps right, and it's interesting how transferable everything is right.

Speaker 1: 28:46

It is Like people say what industries do you work in? I can tell you, I've worked in greenhouse industry, I've worked in healthcare, I've worked in offices, medical buildings, dentist's office, it doesn't really matter, it's all communication issues, because it's all humans that work at all of those places.

Speaker 2: 29:03

What's something that you work at all these organizations? You've got all this experience and it's amazing. It's something that you see in common all these different companies when it's working well.

Speaker 1: 29:13

This is so easy for me. They have managed to build trust with their team. They have relationships with the people they work with.

Speaker 1: 29:21

The managers have that the team members have it. Without relationships, without trust, there's conflict, there's bullying, there's negativity, there's stealing people's ideas all that negative stuff when they're not in real relationships with each other. And the twofold part of this are companies that are about personal development, professional development, the ones that are focused on those areas. I see such a difference in how their teams work because they are talking about things that are growth issues and self-reflection, and listening better and being in relationships better. So to me it's an easy answer it's care for people and being in relationships it's trust.

Speaker 2: 30:06

And is that something? I guess the leadership of the team at the top a big part of that.

Speaker 1: 30:10

Mm-hmm, because when I see leaders with ego at the center of what they're doing, so their own ego is getting in the way, so much those relationships aren't there. The gap is huge between them and their people Because their ego is in the way, saying you need them to do this so you look good, or you can't teach them that, because if you teach them that you're not going to be needed anymore. You need to look important. So as soon as they're having these ego thoughts, there's a separation between them and their people. Where I'm trying to help people bridge those gaps by saying you're in with your people. It's a partnership. You said that earlier and I was so happy to hear you say that it's a partnership. I'm never going to throw one of my people under the bus. I'm going to work with them. They're going to work with me. We're going to hold on to each other and have each other's back and help each other improve.

Speaker 2: 31:01

You know, I feel really fortunate where I am because I feel like we do have, you know, we have got a really good leadership team supportive. And the other thing that I really always gravitate towards is kind of rolling up my sleeves. Working the airline, I worked in different roles but I always stayed in check so that I could go and work on board, be in front of passengers with other crew, because I just thought, well then I knew what's going on and things in the same way as the supermarket, whether if you're working in retail, if you're working for any organization, I think, just spending time working with everyone. I remember I worked for this big company years ago and I was in a meeting and everyone was kind of.

Speaker 2: 31:37

You know, there was an executive suite at the top of the building, never saw anyone, and we invited this meeting and, as anyone in question this was years ago I just said, well, just tell me why we don't see you on the floor here, having one foot on the shop floor mentality. It goes a long way to build what you just described, that trust, because if every time you talk to someone it's through a message on Slack or Microsoft Teams, whatever you use, you don't just call, pick up the Zoom or have a phone call. If anyone still does that, you don't build this kind of relationship. And that was why I gave that little story, because I just kind of got to a point where I thought, well, there's so many opportunities in this building to ask people how they're feeling and look around.

Speaker 1: 32:19

They'll send a survey that nobody's going to answer honestly because they don't know you. That's not going to work. You need conversations and it is the being equal. I remember I was young. I was a young manager at a retail store in Eaton Center in Toronto and I was only like 27.

Speaker 1: 32:37

And my boss showed up and I said well, just come with me for a minute, I'm going to take the garbage down to that. We had to carry the garbage down to this big main thing and then go back to the store. He was you don't take the garbage down. You got people to do that. I said oh hell, no, I'm taking the garbage down because right now it needs to go out. It's my turn. He was so adamant that I don't do that and I said how do I expect them to do it? What? I'm above taking the garbage down. We're all a team. I didn't think about that story till years later that something was wired right in me. Then Something thank God told me you're in a power position. Don't get like that. Don't think you're above anybody. I am so grateful for that.

Speaker 2: 33:19

Yeah, I think one of the things that you know like every week something new kind of dawns on me, but I think with some things like that, you know, like whatever level you're at, you can still take the garbage down, but then, quite you know, I'm managing very smart people who know a lot more than me about a lot of things.

Speaker 2: 33:36

So then the question is well, how can I best support my team Having those kind of conversations where I asked them, we've done the retrospective. These are some areas of challenge. How can I best help with this right and do that in a genuine way and actually show that you're committed to helping, because that's the other thing you sometimes hear from a leader oh, what can I do to help you? And you feel like, well, I'm best not asking, I think you're far too busy and I'm maybe coming up with a couple of suggestions as well and saying, well, I think these are a couple of things that I could do. What do you think the whole thing you know we talked about empowerment a lot is not jumping in and solving a problem without first talking to the team about it.

Speaker 1: 34:15

I just did this with a lady. She's a manager in a big office and she has one worker she's just procrastinating. So she's leaving like job she's responsible for to the last minute. She's getting them done, but last minute. But then she's contacting this lady that I'm working with last minute and that could be a Sunday night. So now this woman doesn't want her to fail. So she's looking at it at nine or 10 night on Sunday night.

Speaker 1: 34:40

And here's my thoughts. I would not look at that on Sunday night. This is not a life or death situation where a patient or a client is going to have harm come to them. Maybe she needs to have a lesson where not being prepared early has some consequences that aren't great. So have the conversation. Don't set her up for failure, but have the conversation with her. Say going forward, I will not be checking anything on a Sunday. So if you don't get that to me Friday before I go home, you're going to be on your own. But I know you can do it. If you need me to look it over, it has to be Friday before I leave at four. Give a boundary, put a thing in place and let her make the decision how she's going to do it.

Speaker 2: 35:25

That's pretty interesting, right, because I think the other thing that's happening here is that if you're managing someone, if you're leading someone, then you feel responsible, if you're a good leader, for everything that your team does and that's why it's so important that you do let them safely fail and learn from it. They have to, and the more you do that, the more that will set an example to other leaders of the organization of doing that. Then it's like how do you kind of set that expectation of learning from that and everything?

Speaker 1: 35:55

It is the conversation you have ahead of time, so I don't do this. It's not a sneaky way or oh, they're going to fail, I'm going to let them fail. It's not that it is what you say ahead of time. It's your proactive way. You lead ahead of time and say I'm letting you guys know I will always take the time to look over your presentation if you want me to here's when I need it by. If you don't choose to give it to me in that time, you're choosing to go for it on your own, and I wish you all the best. I believe in you If you want the support.

Speaker 1: 36:27

It's here, but I need it by Friday at two because I have things I have to do. But now you're teaching them to look after themselves. You're teaching them to do things in a more organized, methodical way so they don't get themselves in trouble, because what if they go work somewhere else and that manager will not look at their stuff? I've learned from leaving things to the last minute. I've felt that I have done that.

Speaker 1: 36:53

It's scary, it's not fun, but I imagine, wow, if I would have had somebody say to me, karen, I'll help you if you just get that to me by Friday at two, I'd have probably taken them up on it, because I've done so much alone and learned the hard way. So to me it's not setting them up, it's the conversations we have ahead of time so that they know what's going to happen. They've got all of the information in front of them. Now they're choosing what to do with it. If I want the help, I get it to her by Friday at two. If I choose to leave it to the last minute, I'm on my own, but it's an actual decision I made myself.

Speaker 2: 37:27

It takes a lot of practice and intention to communicate things, and you described it expertly at the end how you would say this is the deadline, two o'clock. I understand your boundaries now because you've explained them. I think that was great advice there. Thank you, Karen.

Speaker 1: 37:42

You're welcome, would you? Come back again sometime, James. Oh yeah, that's good.

Speaker 2: 37:46

Well, I always listen to these podcasts. I often know oh, how long is it? It's one hour 20 minutes. How can people talk for that long? Here we are after an hour.

Speaker 1: 37:54

Look how fast.

Speaker 2: 37:55

So yeah, let's keep talking.

Speaker 1: 37:58

Good Well, enjoy your time in Hawaii and enjoy time with your son. I'm excited that we got to do this today and I'm very thankful because I know you have a lot in your plate right now, so I really do appreciate your time.

Speaker 2: 38:10

Yeah, great to see you. Thanks, Karen.

Speaker 1: 38:12

All right bye.