How to be an Emotionally Intelligent Remote Leader
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- Show vulnerablility and support in your communication - Align org strucures for decision making - Ensure introverts have a champion for their voice - The best remote leaders default to open, public comms - When communicating priovide clear context, people will always assume the worst"
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How to be an Emotionally Intelligent Remote Leader
- 1. & In This Together Series How to be an Emotionally Intelligent Remote Leader Ryan Scheuermann, former Director of Engineering at InVision - an 800-person fully remote unicorn hello@salesimpactacademy.co.uk Sales and Marketing Leaders Webinar will be live at 4pm UK Time presents the
- 3. Daniel Glazer Mark Roberge What Happens Next With US Expansion and Fundraising? The Science of Scaling May 13th at 4pm BSTMay 7th at 4pm BST Former CRO of Hubspot London Managing Partner at Wilson Sonsini Michael Labriola US Partner at Wilson Sonsini
- 4. Who Am I? ● Director of Engineering @ InVision ● Team of 60 people ● WFH for 15 years ● 100 → 800 people ● 3rd fully-distributed startup
- 5. ● Trust & psychological safety ● Autonomy ● Context ● Connection Agenda
- 6. Trust & psychological safety “A team is not a group of people who work together. A team is a group of people who trust each other.” - Simon Sinek
- 7. Behaviors That Break Down Trust ● Sarcasm ● Public humiliation ● Negative tone of voice ● Inconsistency ● Unfairness ● Rigidity ● Favoritism ● Lecturing ● Put-downs ● Outbursts ● Endless rules & regulations ● Infantilizing treatment ● Blaming ● Shaming
- 8. Teams That Lack Psychological Safety ● Lack of trust in each other’s expertise ● Saying what they think the leader wants to hear ● Avoidance of change or sticking on a course too long ● Avoidance of exposing their own potential mistakes ● Avoidance of sharing information ● Waiting for a meeting to be over, then backchanneling in the halls ● Silence when they don’t get their way
- 9. Behaviors You Want ● Showing interest in each other as people ● Expressing emotions such as enthusiasm, openness, and joy ● Not being rejected for stating what they think ● Openly sharing information ● Believing that others have positive intentions ● Constructive disagreement with leaders ● Leaders promote “outside the box” thinking, without judgement
- 10. Building A Safe Environment
- 11. “Hey Jim, I'm working on analyzing the costs of a few SaaS vendors we have. Can you tell me about how your team is using XYZ app? We haven't made any decisions to cancel subscriptions – this is just a data gathering request for analysis purposes. If and when we reach the stage where we'll decide on which vendors to cancel, we'll loop everyone in.” “Hey Jim, is your team still using XYZ app?”
- 12. Assume the best & Assume the worst
- 14. ● Instead of statements, ask questions, and provide context ● When reading or listening, assume the best intentions ● When communicating, assume the worst and course-correct ● Show vulnerability Recap on Trust & Psych Safety
- 15. Agenda ● Trust & psychological safety ● Autonomy ● Context ● Connection
- 16. Engineering Product Mgmt Design Align Org Structures For Decision Making
- 17. DACIs ● Driver: One person responsible for corralling stakeholders, collating all the necessary information and getting a decision made by the agreed date. ● Approver: One person who makes the decision ● Contributors: Have knowledge or expertise that may influence – i.e., they have a voice, but no vote. ● Informed: Need to be made aware of the final decision
- 18. DACIs
- 19. DACIs
- 20. DACI Review Call ● Silent meeting ○ 🤫 Mute & videos off while reading ● Hand queue system ○ ☝️✌️🤫 ○ 👌 to interrupt
- 23. ● Build your org to minimize the boundaries for decisions ● Set and align goals ● Use DACIs for decision making ● Make decisions in the open ● Make a habit of documenting decisions, big or small Recap on Autonomy
- 24. Agenda ● Trust & psychological safety ● Autonomy ● Context ● Connection
- 25. DACI Review CallEcho Chambers
- 28. Primary Communication Mediums 1. Blog post (+Slack +Email) 2. Public Slack channel 3. Recorded Zoom meeting (+Slack +Email) 4. Private Slack channel 5. Private 1:1 DM or Zoom meeting
- 30. ● Repeat yourself, repeat yourself, repeat yourself ● Use mediums and channels that promote virality, not information silos ● Find the right channel – default to public ● Encourage your managers to be conduits Recap on Context
- 31. Agenda ● Trust & psychological safety ● Autonomy ● Context ● Connection
- 35. Ways To Build Connections ● First 5-10 minutes of a meeting ● Eat together ● Journey lines ● User manuals ● House tours ● Family history ● Personality tests ● Speed-dating questions (work- appropriate) ● Zoom breakout rooms
- 36. Skip-level 1:1’s “As a boss, you’re not human to someone.”
- 37. ● Encourage work-life integration ● Build empathy before conflict occurs ● Use your existing time for connection – don't jump into business ● Use tools like journey lines, user manuals, etc. ● Use skip-levels to build trust and connection to everyone Recap on Connection
- 38. Summary ● Build a safe environment ● Document decisions ● Spread context everywhere ● Make human connections
- 39. Q&A
- 40. Daniel Glazer Mark Roberge What Happens Next With US Expansion and Fundraising? The Science of Scaling May 13th at 4pm BSTMay 7th at 4pm BST Former CRO of Hubspot London Managing Partner at Wilson Sonsini Michael Labriola US Partner at Wilson Sonsini
Editor's Notes
- Paul to intro?
- Director of Engineering at InVision. Leading a 60-person team. I’ve been building web applications for over 20 years, and working remotely from home for over 15 of those years. InVision is the 3rd fully-distributed startup for which he’s led engineering teams. He joined InVision when they were about 100 people and helped scale the organization to 800 people, all working from home since day one. What I'm about to share is what I've learned about building and maintaining teams at fully-distributed startups. These startups made conscious choices to be 100% remote from day one. Companies like InVision, Zapier, Gitlab... they all built playbooks of what has worked for them, and they've built them over years of trial and error. With the lockdowns in effect, unless you already work for a fully-distributed company, you've likely just found yourselves thrust into operating like a fully-distributed company – with everyone working from home. If you take nothing else from this talk, it's to give yourselves time to adjust to this new normal. Start with one or two of the techniques I'll be sharing today, and recognize that it will probably feel uncomfortable and strange at first. You're probably going to fail once or twice. And that's ok! Everyone is dealing with new norms in this pandemic. I know for many of us at InVision, our kids are now at home all day – and we're expected to be full-time employees, full-time caretakers, and now educators. It's a lot of new distractions – and a new psychological burden. It's unfortunate that for many of you, your first experiences of it are coming under duress and in a globally unsafe and scary environment. So please keep that in mind as you navigate remote work, and it's my hope it doesn't sour you to some of the many advantages of this way of working. NEXT SLIDE PLEASE
- So, what are we going to cover today? We'll start with some foundational principles that are necessary for a remote team & culture to thrive. We'll talk about trust & the importance of psychological safety. How autonomy for decision making is necessary for speed-to-market. How your people can't make decisions and do what's best for the company without having all the context they need. We'll discuss the importance of building empathy and connection across all your people. Along the way, I'll share some process & tool tips n' tricks that support these principles when you’re remote. Everything I'm sharing today isn't uniquely suited to remote organizations alone. All organizations face similar challenges and could approach their team & culture in this way as a means of increasing competitive advantage. The difference is that when you're yremote, there are very few ways it could work without keeping these principles in mind. The constraints force an intentional emphasis on these areas. Because of how communication happens (or doesn't happen) remotely. NEXT SLIDE PLEASE
- If you’re unfamiliar with Google’s Project Aristotle, researchers set out to determine the biggest factor that leads to a successful, high-functioning team. Turns out, it’s not seniority, experience, or salary. It’s psychological safety – where the members of the team speak and behave without fear of negative consequences for their jobs and careers. The term is meant to suggest neither a careless sense of permissiveness, nor an unrelentingly positive affect but, rather, a sense of confidence that the team will not embarrass, reject, or punish someone for speaking up. This confidence stems from mutual respect and trust among team members. Leadership expert and author Simon Sinek famously said: “A team is not a group of people who work together. A team is a group of people who trust each other.” And trust is essential when working remotely. NEXT SLIDE PLEASE
- What's it look like when a team lacks psychological safety? Many of us have probably experienced behaviors that ultimately broke down psychological safety within ourselves and our teams. If you’re fortunate enough never to have experienced this, I envy you. I point these out because of course no one believes they do these things, but it’s not just about intent, if it feels like this to others, it’s just as impactful.
- As a result, in a team that lacks psychological safety, you see these characteristics: ... The danger when you're all remote is that you may not see these negative behaviors until it's too late. If you're not intentional about creating this environment and paying attention to your own behaviors (including who you hire or fire), the impacts to your time-to-market will be costly.
- On the other hand, in a team with psychological safety, you see these behaviors and characteristics. And hopefully you see these behaviors already on your teams when you were in the office.
- What are some of the methods you can use as a leader to build and maintain this kind of environment when everyone is remote? When communicating, the best remote leaders create a sense of supportiveness. They approach problems with a genuine inquisitiveness – often asking questions instead of making statements.
- Here’s an example of asking a question of someone on your team. Bad version: "Hey Jim, is your team still using XYZ app?" -- If your Jim, and you see this message in Slack, what might go through your head? Are we canceling it? Are we supposed to stop? Should we be using something else? Why is he asking me this? How should I respond? If you did this in-person, you'd see their facial expression. You might see confusion, and immediately add context. When you're communicating async over text, you need to be proactive. Better version: "Hey Jim, I'm working on analyzing the costs of a few SaaS vendors we have. Can you tell me about how your team is using XYZ app? We haven't made any decisions to cancel subscriptions – this is just a data gathering request for analysis purposes. If and when we reach the stage where we'll decide on which vendors to cancel, we'll loop everyone in." The best remote leaders create a feeling of being in-this-together and a feeling that you're empowered to make suggestions on how to do it better. Or even express disagreement with the direction. And they’re going to provide that upfront. NEXT SLIDE PLEASE
- Not everyone is skilled at making every communication feel supportive. This is why we train and hire folks who "assume the best" when working remotely. When someone says something that comes off wrong or terse or any negative attribution to a behavior, we recommend thinking of three generous interpretations to what they said or their intentions. You assume they have the best intentions for the company and the team at heart. On the flipside, when you're communicating over text, you have the advantage of reading or re-reading what you wrote and thinking of how it could be interpreted poorly. Put yourself in their shoes – especially if there is a power-difference. "Assume the worst" in these cases, and if you can, take a moment to correct yourself or add more context.
- I was in a situation recently where I realized a day later I'd said something to break down trust between myself and a Product Manager in my department. The team had completely changed the way they approached the phases of a project after we'd agreed to a specific approach a few weeks before. I asked, quite aggressively, "I don't understand. Why are we doing it this way now? I thought we'd agreed to do it the other way." They were immediately defensive and put off-guard. When I had a moment to reflect on the day's events, I quickly sent the PM this Slack message apologizing. There is no excuse, but just explaining that I was stressed, and that I asked questions out of frustration instead of trying to get at the root of the disconnect. It was a mistake. She thanked me for it and while I knew I'd eroded trust a lot, my apology rebuilt it just a little. Point is, if you can't show vulnerability as a leader, if you're never wrong or you never make an honest mistake, you're going to create an environment where your team thinks it's not okay to be a fallible human being. And you're not going to realize it because it's happening where you can't see it. They'll spend hours and hours preparing perfect documents and presentations – practicing over and over – or worse, agonizing over details and questions you might ask – just so they don't say or do the wrong thing in front of you. This is going to result in a lot of excess stress and wasted time.
- NEXT SLIDE PLEASE
- Organizationally, I’m always working to build structures that minimize the boundaries of decision making. If I’m the decision maker for everything and there are layers of hierarchy between myself and the boots on the ground doing the work, that bottleneck is only going to slow those teams down. The companies best suited for remote work are where individuals or small teams are making decisions without a lot of back-and-forth between functions or managers in a hierarchy For example, I have 2 peers in my department: a Dir of Product and Dir of Design. I consider them my “first team”. We have our own dedicated Slack channel – where we spend much of our time. We share the same company goals, often in the form of OKRs. We lead multiple squads, where each squad is lead by an EM, a PM, and a Lead Designer. Those squad leaders have shared goals. This allows us & them to move on independent workstreams, making decisions quickly. NEXT SLIDE PLEASE
- To make decisions, we utilize DACIs. Driver, Approver, Contributors, Informed.
- We build these into a document. Affectionately called “a DACI”. Published publicly in our company Confluence Wiki. Putting decisions into a document means anyone and everyone can participate in the process. It's fairly low effort to add a comment on a document. We encourage Driver's of a DACI to spread the word about it to all who might want to provide input.
- Here you can see some options laid out in the document. Finally, they also include a recommendation. An important part of this process because it means the folks closest to the problem are able to help the decision maker move forward. Again, going back to trust & autonomy – the more you see a team or person making solid recommendations that you as a decision maker approve, the less and less you actually need to be the approver.
- When it comes time to review a DACI document, we utilize a method we borrowed from Amazon. It's our own unique twist on a "silent meeting". Here's how it works. The driver schedules a call with the approver + major contributors. We don't assume everyone in the call has read the DACI beforehand. So when the meeting begins, everyone goes on mute, turns their video off, and reads. When they're done reading and ready to discuss, they turn their video on. When you get down to 1-2 people left, the driver typically asks if they're ready to get started. Then we review the feedback. Some folks will add comments on the doc, some will ask questions directly. It's a great way of practicing inclusivity – ensuring everyone has a change to express their ideas in whatever way is comfortable to them. We also utilize a hand queue system during the call... whoever wants to speak puts up a number with their fingers. One finger. If you want to speak next, you put up a two. And then everyone adjusts.
- Documenting decisions means they are now part of our organizational memory. A key element when working remotely. Especially in high growth organizations where new individuals join every day who may not have context for past decisions. The best thing about DACIs, IMO? When your boss wants to understand why you did that, you can tell him to RTF-DACI. Well, probably not that, but you will have a resource you and they can reference.
- Knowing what decision should be documented this way takes some training and experience, but if you find yourself and your teammates arguing in multiple meetings OR having a 30+ message back-and-forth argument in a Slack thread, chances are you should break it into a DACI document. Putting it into words will probably shape your thinking better anyway.
- NEXT SLIDE PLEASE
- Most challenges I've seen when working remote are the result of someone not having the full context or having the wrong context.
- If there is one thing you take away from this talk, it's that in the absence of continuous and authentic communication, your remote team will fill in the gaps in their own head. In my experience, they'll fill in those gaps assuming the worst case scenarios. When we shut down Zoom and we're sitting in our home office, we're all just in these echo chambers of our own heads. Neuroscience tells us negative thoughts will amplify themselves and occupy time in our headspace 5x more than a positive thought. Whether it's about themselves (imposter syndrome is a very real problem in remote work), their manager, their teammates, the company, the product, the customers... if their peers, their manager or someone in the management chain isn't repeatedly giving them context for those things, they'll just make up their own story in their head. This photo, btw, is an actual echo chamber at the Dresden University of Technology
- And because there is more physical distance and separation, there's a half-life for any communications you make. That strategy presentation you gave 3 months ago? If it didn't change, assume some people don't think that's relevant anymore. If it did change, assume some people still think that's what we're aiming at. There’s a term in engineering called DRY (don’t repeat yourself). When you’re remote, you need to repeat yourself often. As managers, we know this lesson already, but when you’re remote, it’s doubly important.
- Next, you need to treat your communications internally a bit like you would on a social network. Find and use mediums that promote viral sharing. I know y'all are staying at home and practicing social distancing to prevent the spread of COVID-19... well, when it comes to remote comms, you need to make sure that shit spreads throughout the organization. Especially north star missions, strategic objectives, examples of folks demonstrating values, and positive wins along the journey.
- Get in the habit of stopping yourself and others when you’re accidentally silo'ing information. Find yourself sharing something in a 1:1 with a direct report and you think to yourself, "everyone should know this"... stop, make a note to write an internal blog post + an email blast about it. And probably also post a Slack message about it. If an engineer on your team direct messages you about the project, you should think “this should really be discussed with the team including design and product”, you should stop and redirect them to an appropriately public channel. The best remote leaders will default to public communications. Anyone can link and reference them later (remember organizational memory?), and anyone in the company can contribute to them. My rule of thumb is that: unless you’re discussing sensitive personnel issues or could be, there is no reason a conversation about an active project should be siloed to a private channel. You will probably create a fire hose of information, and that's OK. It's better to have a fire hose that folks can self-regulate what they pay attention to than letting people make up their own stories.
- As another example, one of my best managers, instead of cascading information during a staff meeting, would write up a "Team Newsletter" as a post in Confluence on a weekly basis. He'd shared this with his team, but it was also a public document. Other managers in my department and across the organization would also share his same newsletter.
- NEXT SLIDE PLEASE
- One of my favorite movies is I Heart Huckabees. A 2004 film starring Jude Law and Naomi Watts as a husband and wife. Naomi Watt's character is going through a personal transformation – discovering herself. Every scene where she's attempting to share with him ... he's got the car window up, or has sunglasses on. And he’s completely self absorbed. In one of my favorite scenes, she's yelling at him through an office window, "Do you understand?!" (bangs on the window) "There's glass between us!" I think of this scene often at work, because there is always glass between myself and everyone else I work with. 75% of our communication happens in written form. Words are always open to interpretation. And the written word even more so because it’s uncoupled from facial expression or body language. The other 25% of communication is happening over video, another lossy format for facial expression and body language. Building and maintaining human connections in this environment requires intention on everyone's part, giver and receiver.
- It's important to build these relationships in order to increase empathy across the team. We do this because it feels good as humans, but also we do it because it actually makes us go faster as a company. I had a conflict with someone at work once. Completely my fault, I assure you. We were trying to get our teams working together on something, and we were just talking past each other it seems. A peer recommended we get together on a call and "just get to know each other". It helped a little but mostly "meh" results. Then a year later, our manager did a session where everyone on the team shared their "user manual". It included our Myers Briggs personality type, our leadership style, what we value, what we don't have patience for. We each presented ours and then discussed. What he and I realized in that moment is that we were actually A LOT alike and that was actually the reason we didn't get along. He's now one of my closest colleagues, and we’ve done some awesome projects together. NEXT SLIDE PLEASE
- In every distributed company I've worked for, we operated on a principle of "work-life integration". The opposite of work-life separation, this principle acknowledges that we're all just staring into each other's homes every day. This Zoom camera extends far beyond just "me at work", you'll see my kids, my kitchen, my backyard, my local coffee shop (when not quarantined). Sometimes you'll see my life when it's at its best. Sometimes you'll see my kids come in crying because one just got punched in the face. I can choose to be embarrassed or I can embrace it. As a manager, you can choose to curb this… “Alright Paul, get it together now… we have work to do”, or you can accept and revel in these moments. Because this is helping build those human connections.
- In nearly every meeting we have, we start the first 5 minutes talking about anything but work. We'll extend that time for some regular meetings, like our weekly staff call. Many teams have even scheduled a regular meeting JUST for this purpose. Best done during work hours. Maybe a shared breakfast/lunch/dinner call (timezone depending). Journey lines, user manuals, house tours, family histories, personality tests, speed dating questions (reworked for work appropriateness)... I've used all these methods to build connections between my staff. As a manager, you need to drive this. Keeping in mind that no one should be obligated to share personal details about themselves if they're not comfortable doing so.
- And don't just stop at your direct reports. I have regular skip-level 1:1s with every person in my department, and I use it as an opportunity for them to get to know me and vice versa. I've seen the effects of not performing skip-levels, and it can be disastrous in a remote org. Everyone needs to understand what makes their bosses' boss tick, or they'll make a lot of wrong assumptions about what your leaders expect. As someone once said, "as a boss, you're not human to someone". Make the time to bridge that gap. And use those opportunities to demonstrate and encourage the cultural behaviors you want to see.
- Thanks everyone! NEXT SLIDE PLEASE
- Paul to pick it up from here….
- ve a lovely weekend everyone….