Take care of your people, and they will take care of you. While it sounds simplistic, employees have two basic rights that should always be honored:
If a software engineer believes that writing a new Application Programming Interface (API) every month is excellent performance, and your basic expectation is a new API every two weeks, you have a mismatch. If that engineer is cube-neighbors with a bossy co-worker, the engineer may be taking direction from the neighbor, not their actual manager. These conditions are morale killers, and they occur more often than you think. While Agile is an amazing tool for developing software, it often creates ambiguity in the reporting structure. Who's in charge: my supervisor, the scrum master, or the product owner? If this is not made clear, the most dominant person becomes the de facto boss regardless of the leader's intent. Above anything else, be sure these basic rights are met for your employees.
Taking care of your people does not mean free Mountain Dew and a foosball table. Those things are nice perks, but they're also superficial. There are 10 tactics for taking good care of your people:
Let's explore these 10 tactics a little further.
I realize this is a book on IT leadership, not rocket science; however, here is some advanced advice: just ask people what they want from their career. We're all motivated by different things. Is it money, self-actualization, advancement, responsibility, work/life balance, or making a difference in the world? Ask your team members what they want from their careers, and make a point to help them obtain it.
At one organization where I worked, we had a rock-star IT administrator on our team. He was well-respected and clearly top talent. When I asked his manager how he was doing, the response was, “He's doing great, so I let him do his thing.” The IT administrator's manager believed he valued being left alone, and I didn't second-guess this feedback. After all, he was producing outstanding results. Then, one day, the IT administrator resigned. We were all surprised and disappointed. In his exit interview, he confided that he felt ignored and undervalued. He also didn't enjoy various aspects of his job. If we had spent more time with him, we would have known this information.
Managers will benefit more from spending time nurturing top talent than obsessively coaching poor performers. Tobi Barron, an experienced HR business partner, agrees. Tobi explains, “Spend enough time with poor performers to give feedback and coach up—but know when to cut your losses.”
Career development planning is a valuable leadership tool. This is not performance management; it's the employee documenting and sharing their personal career goals. Make it your job to help your employees meet and exceed their goals. Understand that sometimes this will be accomplished outside of your company. That's okay; the days of working for the same company from your first job through retirement are long past. Career development planning consists of documenting short- and long-term goals and then creating a plan to attain them following the 70-20-10 model. This model was created in the 1980s at the Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro, NC.11 While employees and managers often associate learning and development with formal training, this model demonstrates that only 10 percent of growth comes from formal training; 20 precent is learned from others in various ways; and a whopping 70 percent comes from hands-on experience. If an employee wants to be a project manager, give them the opportunity to manage a project. Institute a career development program for all of your employees, and watch their productivity and morale improve.
When I have a new direct report, my first discussion is establishing ground rules for decision-making using the following model:
As an executive, I don't want to know about every little thing. If you bring minutia to me, I'm going to question why I need you on my team. As a vice president, director, or manager, you have decision rights, and you are paid to use them.
On the other end of the spectrum, if you start making big decisions without my consent or knowledge, we could get sideways quickly. When you make mistakes, it's my job to support you, and I can only do that when I'm in the loop. The mantra I learned from Cary Turner, with whom I worked for many years, was “NO SURPRISES!”
I direct my new subordinates to err on the side of informing. Move forward and let me know. This allows us to move quickly and prevents me from both being a bottleneck and being blindsided. I promise that when I'm properly informed, I will have your back. If I disagree or think something was a mistake, we will discuss it in private. This technique quickly builds trust, and over time the right balance of do/inform/ask becomes optimized.
This model works both ways. Each time you report to a new boss, have this conversation. All leaders have a different level of comfort on this scale. I've reported to a leader who was squarely in the “ask first” bucket. This evolved to “inform” as we developed trust.
We've all heard of diodes, at least the light-emitting kind (LED). What does this have to do with taking care of your employees? A diode is an electronic device that allows electricity to travel freely in one direction while blocking travel in the other direction. Our beloved computers rely on diodes to operate. The leadership analog is to allow praise to flow right through you to your team. When things go well, don't bask in the glory: instead, celebrate the people who did the work. For criticism and blame, do just the opposite: ensure that those stop at you. You're in charge, and you're responsible. When leaders pass the praise and accept the blame, they are taking care of their team, and it won't go unnoticed.
I've never met a leader with an official closed-door policy. Every leader claims to be available to their team. How is this accomplished when you're in back-to-back meetings from early morning through the evening? Here are some tactics for implementing a real open-door policy.
Start with your executive assistant (EA). Be certain your assistant knows that anyone who wants to meet with you from your extended team is a priority. EAs are magicians, but they need to know your priorities. Don't let a fast-talking salesperson take time away from your team. Make yourself available to your team outside of normal work hours; early or late meetings work well for this. Do you still go to work in the office? A phone call during your commute is another opportunity to have a fruitful discussion. Be approachable. Get out of your office. If the behavior changes when you enter an area, that's a sure sign you aren't coming around enough. When people joke, “Watch out, the boss is coming,” you have a problem. If you have a corporate cafeteria, make it a point to eat lunch there frequently. The kitchen is a favorite casual meeting place. Get your own coffee. Hold roundtable breakfasts with random people from your department. Schedule your one-on-one meetings in your subordinates' office. When you get out of your office, team members will see you more often, which improves your approachability.
Be mindful of these efforts. After reading an article about the benefits of management by walking around (MBWA),12 I began making rounds of the IT Department at the end of my day. The problem? Since I was wandering the halls between 5:30 and 6:30 p.m., it appeared as though I was checking on who was still working. Soon people stayed late so I would see them at their desk when I made my rounds. My good intentions backfired. MBWA works much better at 10:00 a.m. than at 6:00 p.m.
In a work-from-home (WFH) model, we have to be more intentional. One of the biggest downsides of our virtual world is the lack of chance encounters. Scott Devlin, vice president of applications at Vitamin Shoppe, championed skip and super-skip meetings. On a quarterly cadence, Scott holds one-on-one meetings with all 45 members of his extended team.
I know I'm biased, but IT Departments are full of smart people. On top of that, IT people are creative. When you combine creativity and intelligence, good idea after good idea emerges. Our job is to create an environment where these ideas can be heard.
After getting feedback on a 360 review, I worked with an executive coach to improve my listening skills. My coach had me keep score in meetings. I counted every time I asked a question and every time I made a statement. After a week, we reviewed the results. I had made three statements for each question I asked. The coach challenged me to flip the ratio—to ask three or more questions for every statement I made. With the help of my coach, I learned to ask questions and listen to the answers.
Agile and Lean13 practitioners have embraced a concept called The Five Whys.14 The Five Whys is a method of asking questions until you get to the root cause of the problem. Parents are experts at using five whys:
When a leader makes a statement, it ends the discourse. A question continues the discussion and deepens understanding. Another helpful technique is to have the lowest-ranking person in the room speak first. For example, have the junior network engineer give their opinion before the VP of infrastructure, the CIO, and the COO.
Paul Demboski, a successful business leader, likes to respond to statements with the phrase “tell me more.” Tell me more is a simple yet powerful comment that encourages more robust discussions.
When you listen to your team, you'll get better ideas and better results, and you'll earn their respect in the process.
You say “toe-may-toe,” I say “toe-mah-toe.” When reviewing your team's work, don't recommend changes simply because it's not how you would have done it. By all means, correct errors and suggest meaningful improvements, but don't nitpick at the work. When you're constantly making small, irrelevant changes, you undermine your subordinates and waste your own time.
The best feedback is given as soon as practical after the occurrence. If your dog goes to the bathroom in your living room, you don't wait until the annual review to give him an unsatisfactory score on house training. It's a similar concept at the office. The best feedback is specific, timely, and personal. For example, “This morning, when you told the customer to buzz off, I was shocked and embarrassed.” Give this feedback in private, as soon as possible. By making the feedback about your personal feelings, you take away any arguments. It's hard to argue about another person's feelings. Your subordinate is not in a place to say that you didn't feel embarrassed. Follow up with constructive advice on possible alternatives to the action in question. Once the feedback is given and received, move on. We're all human, and we're all learning.
As a leader, it's your responsibility to provide feedback. Fair and honest feedback is a gift that all employees deserve.
The worst job responsibility for any manager at any level is letting someone go. When an employee is in the wrong role, and coaching and training are not sufficient, the best thing you can do for that person is to separate them from the company.
Don't believe me? I encourage you to speak with people who have been in that situation. In fact, most end up better off. When the authors of The CEO Next Door tracked more than 2,600 executives over a 10-year period, they discovered something startling: of those who were fired, an incredible 91 percent ended up finding a new position that was as good as or better than their last.15
I know several people who look back on losing their job as the “kick in the pants” that motivated them to pursue a career doing something they loved. Moving a poor performer from team to team is not good for your company, not good for your managers, and certainly not good for the struggling employee. Sometimes, taking care of your people means having the courage to let them go.