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hi all right welcome everyone to the end
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of this track so closing out our leading at all levels track is going to be this
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amazing panel on becoming an engineering leader I also wanted to remind everyone
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that we are doing a leadership birds of a feather our boss tomorrow at 1:50 it's
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on the board so if you want to continue talking about leadership and being a
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leader regardless of your titled and definitely come and chat with us tomorrow at the boss so Rebecca Rebecca
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Miller Webster is a software engineer conference organizer and educator she is
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the founder of writes decode and practice lead at desmond becca has been
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developing software professionally for over a dozen years and previously organized go ruko records have EES
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include drinking diet coke wearing trousers telling computers what to do
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hugs and swearing
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hi welcome so I'd like to start with a little audience participation how many
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people in the audience like actually are officially managers a good number how
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many of you have a manager cool so anyone not have a manager a couple
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people one company you have a manager sort of so when I was thinking about
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this panel it was I I use the term leader and not manager really intentionally because I think that
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there's opportunities for all of us to lead at every level that we are and I
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also as someone who is a manager has been a manager thinks that you know as
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we're always better at giving advice to the person who's just below us so I really wanted to have a range I'm going
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to let everyone introduce ourselves selves but it but you'll see that
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there's a big range in terms of people's experience and official titles so I've asked them to tell you their name and a
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little background about where their current leadership and history with
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leadership and who are a few influences you want to start Jenny I can yes I'm
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sure how I'm the VP of product for a company called yellow I'm Chicago I've been in design and
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engineering and product management leadership for over five years now
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where have I gotten my leadership guidance from right is that the question sorry influence it's from from both good
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and bad managers I've had really bad managers I've had really good managers I
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think that probably rings true for most people I know a few of which one specifically a gentleman named Fred Lee
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was a really great manager and mentor to myself I think really shaped the way I kind of think about it and look at it
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and then there's certainly other people in terms of books and things like that I read but I'd say certainly fred has been
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one of the primary ones hi I'm Neha I'm a software engineer at
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pivotal and I am an individual contributor I'm not a manager yet but
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I'm interested I'm a leader at pivotal and I head up a few initiatives I'm also a board member at Wright speak code and
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going into my key influences that is actually one of my key influences is working with write to be code and
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eventually being so influenced that I wanted to become a board member and a lot of blog posts that I read and about
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people that I actually really look up to that's influenced a lot of the decisions that I've made and how I approach him
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cool I guess go next my name is Abel Martin I am a lead software engineer at
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up Toro we're hiring like everybody else and this is actually my third lead
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developer position I've had clearly two other ones before this influences
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influences at a high level much like che my influences have also been like you know very good managers and
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so very bad manager it's like auntie patterns and patterns exist then you fold the parts that matter the most to you in addition I would easily say just
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like my mom's also been an influence on me to the single mother raising a child you know throughout all the years and
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then also my wife is a really big influence I mean because we have a two year old and seeing leadership like
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happening in action and having someone that I'm bouncing like leadership off of as well and like better understandings
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in like kind of collaborations on what we should do about this Broxson situation is something that like you
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know requires actual thought and you know leadership and development design you know in its own way Thanks so what
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is something that you wish someone had taught you or told you or given you the heads up about when it comes to
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leadership I'll start so it's surprising that it
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took me so long to figure this out but I wish someone had told me sooner that I don't have to be a manager to lead which
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is ironic because I'm on this panel right now but it when people told me
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that over and over but I didn't actually understand what that meant and it didn't occur to me until I applied to be a
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manager for the first time that I realized that I was waiting for approval to do the things that I wanted to do and
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so I had wish that I don't know what it would have taken for me to understand that but I wish it would have I would
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have realized that sooner I think
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someone it was been really beneficial some to me it's okay to fail I think when I got into leadership and
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management I set really high expectations for myself and I tried to live up to those and I think I avoided
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making mistakes but that then in return led to essentially making mistakes and
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not making the right decisions I think what defines us as leaders is our ability to kind of respond to that
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failure not in the ability to completely avoid it so if someone just came out and like you're going to fail and that's
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completely alright go for it you'll be defined by how you respond to that failure more so than your ability to
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avoid it altogether would've went a long way early on yeah I would say the things
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that I wish someone had mentioned to me earlier in my career would be to explicitly figure out how the things
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that you are individually contributing to actually tied to an explicit bottom
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line as an Icee I feel like I was very good about executing code and making
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sure things got done usually within the estimations that I have given out about
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when will things will get done but not always tying it back bringing it back to the literal value that I'm bringing to
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the business as I'm accomplishing things now as a leader like I actually need to
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kind of focus more on that and I feel in my current role I've had the opportunity to really like dig into that and I now
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think about other opportunities of leadership that I've had where I could have been that much more effective as a
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leader if I had like a tighter link between the work that my team was doing
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an explicit like bottom line dollar financials oftentimes that comes out like as an afterthought and then I was
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able to help my team move forward but still I feel like driving that out much earlier than really great to know so how
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do you think this is so we've been talking a little bit about like leadership versus management and there's also coaching mentorship teaching all of
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these things are sort of related how do you how do you see them as related and also separate yeah sure it's an
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interesting thing right I think like um I think of answer shift more as an
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explicit kind of observe as I am doing a
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thing and you can learn via osmosis which is like cool in its own way but
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not always the thing that kind of helps you to make the next step I feel like
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teaching is literally like more of like a back and forth kind of interaction
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where the teacher is actively trying to instill certain principles and ideas and then
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student you kind of see those ideas come to life within their actions and beads
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I see management as kind of having high level visibility on all the things that
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are going on almost like a like New Relic - esque where it's like you know you literally
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have new relative like instruments all the things are happening in your application so you can at a high level you see like all the things that are
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moving correctly and moving correctly and trying to apply any influence and help where you can the leadership when I
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think of it in my favorite example is you know more of a Leonardo and less of
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a splinter where you're like you know you're literally like in the fray with the squad fighting the foot getting
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things done and it's how I personally have been a lead in my previous
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endeavors and it's my favorite way to be a leader Wow okay I'm going to take some
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small pieces then since you did such a good job laying the land I think that
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especially like for coaching and mentorship coaching is something that can happen like day by day like as
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you're working side by side and mentorship is kind of like this formalization of that coaching that you
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might do and so you might meet with someone on a regular basis or not and
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reach out to them and I see that as complimentary so like related but not management so you can have a mentor
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that's separate from your manager who can actually help you progress and sponsor you and you can also have your
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man your your manager and your manager can be a leader a coach and a teacher
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and a mentor did I think for anyway it can be all the things um and that it
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really depends on like your situation if you need those different pieces and to get them as you need to go I think done
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well all of them are basically positions of service not power I think there's definitely like granularity there within
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it leaders to me is it's not a position it's not a job title it's not a promotion you get I
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think anyone could pick that up and go with it I believe that begins it's like taking ownership of a problem and seeking
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everything you can to get to a favorable solution there within management is a
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little bit different that's at a point where you begin to have direct reports and your role slightly changes I think
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it I hate to hesitate to say like what that is I think that very very wildly based off the organization size have
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emphasized your team and you're like yeah thanks so how do you manage up and
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by manage up I mean how do you manage your own manager or others above them oh
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I'll kick it off um I think the biggest
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thing not just with your managers above you with your you know engineers that
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report to you in in life as a whole is really communication in setting
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expectations and if necessary resetting expectations I think the the
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biggest thing that everyone wants is like visibility and clarity into the
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ongoing of things that may be out of you know their day to day concern but
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ultimately will affect the bottom line at some point and effectively if you're
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able to communicate like correctly and clearly to you know your manager or any
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other stakeholder like above your project or any PM etc you're able to kind of ensure that they are clear about
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when things will be delivered if there are delays if there are roadblocks if there are dependencies of other teams as
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long as you are really clear and explicit about these things you give them the tools that they need because
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these this was my first talk I'm trying not to curse fecal matter rolls downhill
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so a lot of times did you find yourself like in this state where it's like you feel the pressure from like you know
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you're your lead arm really lead or whatever you
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it's because they are also feeling the pressure coming down on them and they have pressure coming on and em and ultimately there's a border director
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somewhere in this equation and they're pushing all the pressure down and all the things so if there's clarity all the
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way up through the stack then no one has a question about what's going on and why it is a problem so there is no problem
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because everyone's clear about what's going on so I'm really excited about this question because as an individual
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contributor who has a manager like at the bottom of the rung this is like my forte so I I manage up pretty strongly
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and the way I do it is I come to everyone about so I have one-on-ones
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with my manager every other week it's a cadence that I chose and I come to every
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manager meeting with an agenda so sometimes it's in the form of a post-it or a notebook or something more formal
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and I have a list of listings that I've done in the last few weeks that I want
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to inform them on so progress that I've had on my own goals where I think that's going so what future initiatives I have
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things I'm curious about opportunities that I want and questions so questions
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and concerns and the questions are kind of like how does this fit into the big picture do I fit into the big picture um
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sometimes that's in the form of like I need reassurance please tell me I'm amazing and I've become more and more
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explicit with my manager about needing that and also concerns so I used to only
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talk about myself so this is me this is what I'm doing this is what I want but now kind of transitioned over to
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these are the things that I'm hearing on the floor and I think this is important for you to know these are the things
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that I potentially want you to bring up at a manager meeting when you see it's fit because I care about our culture and
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I want us to keep our culture intact so um like I want this to be a two-way
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cycle so managing up for me is being able to be part of this partnership
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where I'm listening to the ground floor and helping them become better managers and help other managers so because they
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can't as they're busy managing they can sometimes keep their ear to the ground but I'm much closer to the ground
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being on the bottom rung okay well you sound like a dream employee to begin with if every employee came into like
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one on one that was like sort of the business let's do it would be amazing I think that's why your leader I think
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that's why you'll be a manager in short order to answer the question though it's kind of interesting cause I think we
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think about managing up when things are not particularly going well and that's almost too late it's like the wrong time
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to actually think about that when I manage up I have to manage up directly to a CEO into a board and I can't like
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walk in and just try and like control a situation as it's like unfolding those are things I have to be ahead of well in
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advance and for me that's basically building a relationship with those people day in and day out that's getting
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to understand how they think how they want to communicate how they move about the business and do things and in doing
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that I really try and understand exactly what their problems are and where they're going and I do everything I can
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to actually make those problems my own and then seek to say how can I help you solve those and the entire thought there
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is whatever work I can begin to take off their plate and kind of put on my back the moment I have to turn that table
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around it becomes a lot easier the moments something I need to push back right to kind of manage up and I have to
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ask them to do that or we're kind of slide in on to their camp a little bit answer for more willing to to lean into
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my side of the table and say that's okay like I I can take that I'll accept like the pushback based off the fact that
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I've taken things from them historically and that is something you have to be proactive about you have to get ahead of
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that so that when it comes time actually manage up it's one of you've already earned their good grace to say okay like fair enough
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we'll go in another direction or we'll do something slightly different I would also add on to that like part of
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managing up I think also changes your vocabulary we're suddenly there's this like personifications object called the
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business where it's like yes the business for the business we actually need to focus on blah blah blah or like
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well the business prioritizes this and we can change our focus and like deal that correctly and I remember being an Icee feeling like I hate when people say
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the business you mean Jo right like you mean Sara right like who's the business but the
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reality is like being able to kind of abstract it out a little bit a like
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doesn't like put it directly on someone's face even though you know who it is you still have to like pull this back a bit so people can kind of think
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of it like more objectively and have that conversation but that does help when you are managing up because
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like you have to start speaking in that way with like people who are like kind of further up like the branch of the orc
00:18:03.639
tree that you're a part of I also wanted to add that especially like with a brand
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new manager that you have some part of managing up is trying to figure out a way to build trust with them so for me
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that's a little bit hard because I just take awhile to build trust and so I've as an engineer I've built a process and
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that process is to find things like small tasks right so it's like I need
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help with this and see how they react and kind of increase that scope and increase that trust over time so
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managing up means I'm willing to put in this work and I have an idea let's work
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on that idea together specifically on building trust so that when something bigger comes down the line that we're
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going to be okay and I'm going to understand how you're communicating and why you're communicating and those know
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that it comes from a good place because I know inherently that it always does but I need to understand how that fits into their actions and their
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reactions great building relationships trust I like it I want to open it up to
00:19:07.269
some questions if there are any if not I can keep asking questions I have a whole list of them okay so - seems like two
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questions one as a manager how do you recognize talent particularly if people are coming from non-traditional
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backgrounds and two how do you advocate for yourself if you're in that position I have a clarifying question sorry
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when you say recognize talent like as in how do you recognize that in someone else or how do you basically give them
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praise for that first one okay
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I don't know that I have a great answer i it's it's a bad answer I think I
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recognize it but just getting close to that person right and working alongside them and having one-on-ones you know at
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some regular cadence and really beginning to understand how they think what they're feeling and get a real
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pulse of the work they're doing and I think whether or not they're doing good or bad is relative to that person too
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right so their output might not be that of another engineers on the team but
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that doesn't mean that they're not actually doing a good job either right so I think it's building up that that
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actual level of compassion understand that was the second question how do you
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Anna Kate do you advocate for yourself
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okay so for me personally so I came from a
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world that was not in software and I came from the consulting world I was an energy consulting and I switched over to
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software and so for me personally I feel that strongly because I went through
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consulting and I you know I built this interest in thought leadership I built this interest in like how to
00:20:59.670
develop a relationship with a client and dealing with suffered conversations and
00:21:04.920
like communication issues so the question is like how do i as an
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individual contributor start to talk about to my manager about like where I am where they see I am and where I'm got
00:21:17.610
like and how close am I to the next level so a few weeks ago I sat down with
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my manager and I was like I want to talk about our skills matrix and so we sat down in front of my skills matrix and I
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made I made that my manager do homework and I made them put a number for each of
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our categories so we have categories you the matrix you raise yourself from two to five for like different areas and sub
00:21:40.230
pieces and so I said I want you to figure out like what you where you think I am and then we're going to go side by
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side and we're going to place me in each of these little boxes and the reason I'm
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bringing this up is because now we're talking about the same thing again we're having the same vernacular and I
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can start to point out and say I see this future piece and I think a either I'd be really good at that where be I'm already doing it and I can explain to
00:22:04.200
you why because we're pointing on the skills matrix and that's the thing that's going to get me promoted so kind
00:22:09.809
of talking about something much more granular and like personally I've had a lot of anxiety around like does my
00:22:15.210
managers think I'm amazing like I don't know do they actually recognize the things that I'm doing are my one-on-ones
00:22:20.220
where I'm strongly managing upward actually like getting through to them and it's are they writing those stuff down I can find out from the skills
00:22:26.940
matrix so being recognized is a lot easier when you're talking about
00:22:32.879
something that the business of the business actually values and building
00:22:38.519
the conversation from there so sometimes I'll see you a skill that I have that's not there and I'll ask why or ask if it
00:22:44.399
can be on there and if not like how is that skill ever going to be captured or is this something that I may have but
00:22:52.379
may not necessarily like fit into the business so fundamentally as a manager
00:22:59.190
one of the things that I try to do is think about what skills are important to the team and that has to include things
00:23:05.220
that aren't coding and if you can start that conversation and sometimes you can start that conversation with your
00:23:10.860
manager but sometimes you can start it with your team about what's important to the team it can come up in retros and
00:23:18.149
things like that you can like guerilla style it which is my preferred way of creating change in organizations but
00:23:25.850
being clear that communication are you in front of clients do you deal with other departments what are the ways that
00:23:31.740
your skills and what you're contributing are valuable and make things more successful and then tying it back to the
00:23:38.190
business whether that's quantifying it in terms of money or quantifying it in terms of like the successful number of
00:23:43.980
projects that have gotten done etc is one of the best ways the other thing is to like ask for feedback from your
00:23:52.110
manager and one of the things that because most people don't aren't very good at giving positive feedback ask
00:23:59.490
them what they think you're doing well if they're not if they don't tell you usually like like do you have any
00:24:05.940
feedback for me and it's like oh well you're not doing anything badly so I'm not going to say anything but you're probably doing while and so sometimes it's just pushing
00:24:12.300
them to do that and you're sort of training them in some ways Neha is training her managers to have certain
00:24:18.570
kinds of conversations and in general that's a really positive thing yeah I
00:24:24.900
just add on to all the things I feel like we're all kind of subscribed in
00:24:30.990
some varying degrees and levels to agile and a framework and agile kind of
00:24:36.390
development practices and one of the really important things about that is like at the end of the Sprint or end of
00:24:43.230
a tract of work having the ability of demoing and sometimes that demo is valuable because you demo it to the external stakeholders they can literally
00:24:49.710
see that oh you know so-and-so did this portion of you know our demo today and
00:24:54.960
like that so the following you know bits of complexity to understand and implement correctly and what have you
00:25:01.260
but it doesn't need to be the finished product on demo day it can still be like the wad of cookie dough that's still in
00:25:08.550
the oven it's not completed yet but like a lot of work still went into it like by the time the Sprint is over it's not
00:25:15.210
like there was one person who is just chilling all day playing Gameboy right like there are people who are working constantly throughout it sprint so
00:25:22.200
there's always something that can be shown even if the thing to be shown was the result of research that a person did
00:25:28.860
that's still insanely valuable because it's still adding on to the value of your team and adding on to the overall
00:25:35.640
value of the company aka the business yes we're going to get to that at the
00:25:41.400
very end thank you for asking about resources I promise
00:25:48.950
orange shirt so I don't want to miss that sighs sure I'm pretty sure
00:25:54.030
everybody manages us whether they realize it or not sometimes it goes
00:26:01.020
better than others I think that one of the hardest things about being a manager
00:26:06.300
for me was realizing that like how I liked to manage or be managed was
00:26:12.270
irrelevant and so learning to adjust and recognize
00:26:17.309
the way other people want to be managed is like probably the hardest part because you're basically adapting your
00:26:22.410
style to them and that's what's most effect but it's also the most difficult and so
00:26:27.970
sometimes when people manage up may have for example we work together with write C code and she started like sending me
00:26:34.990
these messages that were like number one here is this question number two here is this question and I was like this is
00:26:41.140
amazing please can keep continuing doing this and here is my answers with numbers but
00:26:46.960
so that was also like very clear that like that's how she wanted to be worked with and and communicated with I think
00:26:55.270
the harder part is when people aren't proactive and don't manage up and you have to suss out their sort of style
00:27:01.030
yourself I would say if someone's managing about I'm probably pretty happy
00:27:07.270
about that ideally they're taking work off my plate but at the same time too
00:27:13.180
I'm a pretty like core fundamental believer that I will change my like process any given day of the week so
00:27:19.750
long as it works with the actual team or the people involved I think process is far easier to change
00:27:25.120
than people so 100% of the time however someone wants to work is the way I'm going to work with them I'm not going to
00:27:30.520
try and get them to conform in to my way of working and if someone's trying to actually manage up or manage me in that
00:27:35.980
scenario I am happy to do that and like work with them in their own process and how they want to do that I like that
00:27:43.090
honestly is probably preferred it's a great question a lot of emotional work
00:27:49.540
management is a lot of emotional work so
00:27:55.000
I think that the hardest part of someone dealing with someone who's struggling is that you feel bad for them and that like
00:28:03.480
often what happens is you're feeling bad
00:28:08.640
gets in the way of you trying to deal with the situation and you have to balance being this like somewhat
00:28:17.620
objective person who has a job to do and has a box while also being compassionate and so it's always a struggle and I
00:28:28.330
think one of the things that's been really effective when it goes back to resources that does mine we have a leadership coach and he kind of like
00:28:36.250
gave us a framework for when people are struggling like our job as the company and leaders is to set clear expectations defined
00:28:43.760
success criteria give people a timeframe and give people the resources to be successful and that was really helpful
00:28:52.040
for me because I like lists obviously and so being able to like step back and
00:28:58.310
think about the things in that way and like what I expected from someone and I think the key part that we often forget
00:29:04.940
in in that is giving people a timeframe that's reasonable and sort of close
00:29:11.060
enough to assess and then the resources
00:29:18.080
as in like checking in and making sure things are happening on like a regular basis so that's how I've handled it is
00:29:26.870
to give myself systems for when these things happen but it's always a struggle
00:29:32.230
yeah I mean you know definitely loudly inin company-wide emails it's how I know I think one of
00:29:41.300
the big things when someone is struggling is to try and help them out
00:29:47.150
by giving them kind of explicit things that can help pull them out of whatever
00:29:53.930
they're in because sometimes what they're in is like a legitimate problem where they're just not coming forward
00:30:00.740
with some of the complexities are finding and some of the times the things they're in is that the task at hand is
00:30:06.860
perhaps like a little bit like heavier than the anticipated lifting which is
00:30:12.260
totally fine it happens to all of us you know the steak looks delicious you're trying to take a big bite and you choke
00:30:17.420
but you have to be able to like kind of as a as a leader kind of see in the
00:30:25.520
various touch points that you have with this person like if you're noticing like you know these like really terse
00:30:31.580
stand up messages that are happening every day and you're not really seeing like the other end of that which would
00:30:36.830
be like kind of you know completion of stories or at least like some detail on the work that's something forward these
00:30:43.160
are kind of like the the small signs that things aren't really flowing the way that not only you as a leader want
00:30:50.210
them to flow but also as the individual wants them because certainly like everyone wants to get a story on Monday banging out on
00:30:57.050
Monday night and then by Tuesday stand up it's like oh yeah that's done it's in PR requests you know but like you don't
00:31:02.870
always have that opportunity to do that so just trying to like really listen and pay attention to the cues is like the
00:31:10.580
biggest thing for me to do and it's also something that doesn't just happen with one engineer but it's like everyone's cues that are giving out yeah I got two
00:31:19.429
things I would say and it not specific to people that are emotional either any
00:31:25.520
of like your employees should know like how much you actually care about them right into the degree to which they're
00:31:30.559
far more important than the actual organization because the organization doesn't exist without them in ensuring
00:31:36.140
that they know it's not like this apathetic like I like you because I need you to do your job and that looks well for me like the to the point of like you
00:31:43.580
care so much about them that like if it meant like referring them to go work elsewhere you would do that because you
00:31:49.130
knew that was more aligned to their goals and what they wanted to do long-term right like sincerely making sure that they feel valued and that like
00:31:55.309
their best interest is what you want for them right and you can't do that on the spot when when it's emotional that's
00:32:01.670
something you do every day day in and day out you build that when it gets to a point to where something is emotional or
00:32:07.640
you know you're gonna have to have a hard conversation you have to prepare you have to have that written down and
00:32:13.280
in a very well documented outline and when you walk into those conversations you have to be incredibly clear right
00:32:19.490
leave no room for ambiguity if they start asking you questions and you don't have answers and they you know your
00:32:25.670
answers I'm like yeah okay like it kind of they're basically trying to like fill
00:32:30.890
voids in their head and interpret what you're saying and that is like a dangerous place for them to go so it's
00:32:36.500
one of which you have to be incredibly clear was certainly like you know what what you're kind of trying to communicate be it an issue or thing you
00:32:42.950
need done or what have you but the clarity around that communication is really important okay we don't have a
00:32:51.110
lot of time left does someone have a shortish question at
00:32:56.690
what point should bleeders who are managers or mentors stop coding you're
00:33:03.740
just trying to plug your own blog post I
00:33:09.790
I think that this is really difficult because I think that it's really hard to code and be on a project when you're
00:33:16.340
also managing people but I also think there's like that line where you're
00:33:23.000
managing like the dev leads so you're managing
00:33:28.130
but you're like on the project and even that is like a difficult balance but I think as soon as you get out of like not
00:33:34.610
specifically being on a project and only managing a project and those people like you can't code basically I mean you know
00:33:42.980
you can on the side and keep yourself fresh comparing and stuff but basically it can't be an expectation that is part
00:33:49.340
of your job yeah a certain level like the complexity of being a lead is so
00:33:58.250
high that there isn't enough time for you all sitting to visually contribute and move
00:34:05.450
blue projects forward at like a reasonable clip right reasonably as a lead I found myself in find myself today
00:34:13.159
and probably for a while in more meetings than I have contiguous blocks
00:34:19.070
of time to just relax sit down focus and write code like as efficiently as I like to annual just over time you just start
00:34:27.409
to see that more and more as more and more members of again the humans and the
00:34:34.159
Oratory that are above you or various other stakeholders require more of your input and thoughts on to the best ways
00:34:41.030
of executing in the project it's something that kind of will start to happen to you as a lead and I guess it
00:34:50.240
kind of happens kind of when you really recognize the fact that you trying to be an individual contributor is actually
00:34:55.580
slowing your team down it's like an obvious point but ideally you're starting to kind of pull yourself back as much as you possibly can before you
00:35:02.510
get to that point but yeah it's a hard thing like honestly like I explicitly
00:35:07.609
struggle with that in like in that job interview questions like what's your weakness that's what you're right now
00:35:13.130
like I want to be a Leonardo like I want to fight the foot like I I do it my true but it's not always the
00:35:20.519
best thing and yeah yeah so you just kind of get yourself into that space to
00:35:25.589
recognize that and employees a fact so I
00:35:30.869
work at pivotal labs and we do agile XP so it's like a very different model the
00:35:37.829
way it works right now so I'm going to I'm going to explain the way it works really quickly and then I say how I feel
00:35:43.680
about it so the way it works is that managers who are at pivotal labs they are they have
00:35:52.200
like a certain number of hours where they do spend time managing and there is a certain number of hours where they do
00:35:57.660
spend time coding and we work with clients we work side-by-side sometimes just exclusively with pivots sometimes
00:36:04.410
with clients and the expectation is that
00:36:09.630
with a manager on the team that you will have less velocity or like less
00:36:15.690
productivity in theory because they're not as available as before I think that
00:36:22.910
there's like probably some potential for some like granularity in this model where it's like not necessarily like
00:36:29.279
coding 30 hours a week or 35 hours a week and managing five hours but that's something that like I know we're
00:36:34.980
actively trying to iterate on it's difficult when like you have a manager who's like in and out of different
00:36:40.799
things but one of the nice things about being an agile XP is that there's like
00:36:46.680
no bus like the anyone can pick up the next story and they have no context so or like and thence at least one other
00:36:54.089
person has context and there's an intention behind sharing that context knowing that the manager won't be around
00:36:59.130
so it's a very much of a different model that's like kind of working and like I
00:37:05.220
see some gaps in it and I we definitely are in active conversations on iterating on that because at some point it just
00:37:12.839
gets harder and harder and then if you go beyond that level then you stop cutting all together I'm just saying a
00:37:20.160
short sooner rather than later honestly and that's a hard thing to do because you're like that's what you're good at that's what you're going to want to
00:37:25.230
default back to but the danger involved in that and just the ripple effects that could have across the team and that
00:37:30.560
you start doing something you get pulled away from it and then they're left hanging with it it's a dangerous place to be so I think it takes a great amount of
00:37:36.560
self-awareness and kind of emotional intelligence to know that but in short the answer is sooner rather than later
00:37:41.950
great so we only have a few minutes left so I want to get back to the resources question so what are some of your
00:37:48.380
favorite resources or the best resources training books blogs people other than
00:37:54.800
the ones you've already mentioned for leadership all right I'll go first
00:38:00.770
because I'm holding this sorry I like to read a ton abnormal amount but I'll
00:38:06.860
preface my answer I'll tell you some of my favorite books but I'll preface my answer was also saying that I was like if I read a bunch of cookbooks I
00:38:12.500
wouldn't be able to cook were so it's more so that like the practice of it makes a ton of difference so I would
00:38:19.610
say like favorite books it's weird I loved most of Patrick when Tony's books five dysfunctions of a team is
00:38:26.510
like probably my all-time favorite I buy it for every single person on my team there is a leadership and
00:38:32.450
self-deceptions a great book the hard thing about hard things I've been Horowitz is a great book and you grow
00:38:38.000
great book Who am I missing Peter Drucker is great Dale Carnegie's great
00:38:44.080
these yeah I don't know there's a lot I build an app to that's like one of my favorite resources a shameless plug
00:38:50.060
called bleed honestly that really helps me a lot like selfishly but it sincerely does for me personally um I do a lot of
00:38:59.090
my learning by talking other people so I look I actively look for mentors in the
00:39:04.550
company people who are not necessarily in my line of work so people who could potentially influence me sponsor me from the outside
00:39:10.720
and I read a lot of like smaller snippets so like blog post and I find
00:39:15.830
ways at lunch and like during my breaks to talk to other people about it so I personally just happened to learn a lot
00:39:22.040
by talking out loud and sharing that information and like processing it that way so I know that I just take advantage
00:39:27.560
of that and that means talking to people like my managers and talking to other managers talking to their managers it
00:39:34.160
says skip levels and like I'm currently
00:39:39.170
reading uh first break all the rules so that was actually ironically
00:39:44.240
gifted to me so one great thing as a manager is like if you see potential in someone you know you don't have to
00:39:50.750
sponsor them and like be by their side for the rest of like the entire entire career right you can do small things
00:39:56.060
like giving them a book and when that happened to me I was like Oh someone believes in me so that's why I'm reading
00:40:01.160
a book pardon definitely good road work yeah in a similar way I also have
00:40:09.430
unfortunate enough to have a lot of friends who are also in lead positions
00:40:15.080
and that definitely helps to have that network around but I feel that at a high level just being able to be plugged into
00:40:22.130
a general community if you're in part of like your local like meetup groups around rails around Ruby around polyglot
00:40:28.610
programming being able to pull kind of thoughts and ideas from other people in
00:40:34.490
your general community it really helps because you can kind of be a little like pull like in a more abstract version of
00:40:40.880
a real scenario you're dealing with and if you have a great relationship with someone that you can be a little more
00:40:46.460
specific about it if necessary I definitely like the personal touch like the Mayo thing I'm going to add one
00:40:53.030
thing like 30 seconds it's like 10 seconds I promise as an organizer of a meet-up I often just like create the
00:40:59.690
themes around the things that I want to talk or learn about so I'll like host speakers or like I'm doing a one of them
00:41:06.860
on microaggressions so that can learn more about that and understand everyone's perspective and how to deal with my own so sometimes you can create
00:41:13.190
the solution or like create the conversations that you want to have I'm going to throw three books out there one
00:41:19.640
is behind closed doors which is a pragmatic programmatic programmers book on engineering management and frankly is
00:41:26.540
the best engineering management specific book I've ever read it's very tactical a thin book of trust
00:41:33.740
and anything by brené Brown who I'm totally obsessed with and talks about vulnerability her last book rising
00:41:40.160
strong has some great stuff about building trust so thank you for coming thanks for closing out the leadership