GitLab Learning & Development, 10 Sep 2020

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From YouTube: Week 1 Manager Challenge - SOCIAL STYLEs and Underperformance

Description

This was the Live Learning Session for Week 1 of our 4 Week Manager Challenge at GitLab in September of 2020.

Manager Challenge Page: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-group/learning-and-development/manager-challenge/

Underperformance Page: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/underperformance/

SOCIAL STYLEs Page: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-group/learning-and-development/emotional-intelligence/social-styles/

A

Cool well I'll, go ahead and uh get started as folks are trickling in here um I wanted to kick off week, one of the manager challenge program. We we're one week down and three to go and uh I think before we get started into the slides. I just wanted to really thank you all, for uh you know volunteering to participate in the challenge. I know it's a bit of a time commitment, but you know as we grow and scale at gitlab.

A

You know our manager, enablement capabilities are only going to increase and this is really a start. So your feedback and your perspective is really really going to be useful as we iterate on future sessions- and I also too, I wanted to caveat real quick before we dive into the content regarding managing underperformance using social styles. Is you know? Social styles is is just a framework. It's just a model to be able to assess other people's behavior.

A

It's not you, don't have to be typecasted into a specific style forever right and because I'm an expressive doesn't mean I display driver or you know, amiable or analytical quality. So I just wanted to get that out there before we go deeper and another thing: the copyright, the trademark.

A

If you see social styles capitalize, that's the reason because of the tradecom corporation, who put it together all right, so some quick ground rules, um I think, like you know I know, multitasking- is the name of the game here at gitlab, but I think for learning it doesn't always necessarily apply. So if I'll try to go through these slides really fast, you know, I think the benefit of a program like this is being able to hear from others. So try to give your full attention.

A

Try to close other backgrounds, be prepared to collaborate and kind of mute slack. um You know we don't want to be like we're back in high school, we're in the back of the classroom on our phones, uh not paying attention so without further ado.

A

In this session, we're just going to explore some strategies to create a workplace culture of accountability. That builds trust, we're going to build on utilizing social styles to practice, difficult conversations with team members and we're going to apply strategies to address under performance with team members as soon as it is identified.

A

I also uh before we dive deeper. I wanted to give a quick shout out to mr sam beckham for creating that awesome app in terms of up leveling, the pdf for the social styles assessment. So thank you sam. It looks really awesome.

A

Okay, so if everybody could go to mendy.com and enter the code, seven seven, two, two six one one! I'm gonna do some fun interactive questions here and if you can answer the question, what is the hardest part about having difficult conversations with team members at get lab, and this is all anonymous.

B

Yeah, oh there we go thanks. Tracy.

A

Remoteness expectations keep them coming, not knowing them yep. That's a big one, unknown reactions.

A

A

Communication gaps hurt feelings, not in person yeah. These are all definitely things that I've struggled with as well trust.

A

Emotional responses, cool- these are awesome. These are really great and I think a lot of these you know follow. You know really a similar theme that we're going to try to hit on in this live learning session with social styles, and that's really around building trust, getting to know folks, on a personal and a professional level to break down those barriers.

A

Awesome, let me go back to slides here so hopefully, at this point, everybody has had the opportunity to take the social styles assessment. If not that's okay, you can go back and do it. But, as you know, you know, social styles is a framework. It's just a model. It's not intended to typecast anybody, but you know it's based off of behavioral.

A

You know drivers, so there's kind of four different styles, analytical driving amiable and expressive and we're gonna dive deeper into the social styles model a little bit more, and I think you know one thing that about social styles. That I think is different than other assessments is that it really focuses on observable behaviors, and I want to stress that point- and it's not so much about personality.

A

It's about observable behaviors and I'm going to talk a little bit more about that later on, but it's used by corporations worldwide and it's really a tool to help strengthen relationship, improve communication. It can help predict behavior based off of those observable behaviors that you may pick up on, and you know I think for all of us, as as leaders as managers, you know a key management principle. Is you know the more you understand your people, the more critical it can be to management and professional success.

A

So keep that in mind as we move along all right. So I talked a lot about observable behaviors and I like to use the analogy of a pie. So hopefully everybody out here has had pie before. If not that's, okay, I'm a big apple pie.

A

Guy myself and if you look at a pie, there's a crust and then there's a filling now on the outside of the pie is the crust and that's what you can see consider that your observable behaviors, that's kind of how others maybe perceive you how you come across, how you interact with people in settings and deep down that filling is your personality, so kind of who you are as a person to your core. Now personality in the workplace can sometimes take longer to develop amongst your team members.

A

um You know, I know for me, for example, like getting to know me on a really deep personal level is going to take a long time just because we all go through different things in our life. But my observable behaviors the way I'm talking I'm using my hands, I'm pretty animated. So I'm very expressive and that's you can usually pick that up the first time you talk to me and then in the social styles model.

A

There's you know kind of two scales of behavior, there's assertiveness and responsiveness now on the model, if you're more on the right you're more of a tell. So you might be a little bit more active. You might be a little bit more direct, you might challenge and then, if you're on the left side, you're asked you're, maybe a little bit more reserved easy going. You're tentative, you might ask questions and then the other scale of behavior is responsiveness.

A

So if you're on the higher end of the scale, you might be control and if you're on the lower end, you might be more emote and you're verbal versus non-verbal behaviors. Maybe if you're more on the control end, you might be a little bit more controlled in your facial expression. You might be a little bit more rigid in your body posture, you might use your hands less and you might be a little bit more monotone in speech again. These are all just based off of research. It's not intended to put anybody in a box.

A

um I know for me, like I've, had conversations with folks at gitlab that maybe are a little bit more rigid.

C

A

Bit more controlled and that's because of their social style. It's not not anything that I need to take personally.

A

So when we put those two things together, we get our social styles model and what I love about social styles is that you know it breaks up individuals and team members into four categories: analytical driving, aimable and expressive, and you know I think social styles give some actual tangible steps on. You know what somebody may encounter on on their best day and on their worst day, and all this is outlined in the handbook. But it's really a you know a tactical tool we can implement as soon as we know, somebody's style.

A

So, let's take analytical, for example, I can guarantee at gitlab there's probably a lot of analytical social styles.

A

You know if I have a meeting with somebody who tends to be a little bit more analytical, I'm going to shape the meeting a little bit differently, because I know they're going to want to get straight down to business they're going to want to stick to facts. It might be a little bit more historical time frame. They want to see the details and the data me as an expressive.

A

I want to spend the first five or ten minutes of the meeting getting to know that person um talking about their weekend and it's not to say that analytical versus expressive, or vice versa or any of the styles can't have those conversations.

A

But it's just a something to have in mind if you're having a conversation with somebody with a different style.

A

And what I also love about social styles is that it gives you kind of some tangible steps to take if you are working with an analytical style. You know I, I think uh me having meetings with somebody who's more analytical, like I said earlier, I'm gonna keep the meeting short, I'm gonna be really respectful, I'm gonna stick to data and facts, and you know I'm going to craft my communication style based off of their social style, and that's that's really the the key tenet of styles all right.

A

So I think we're all probably wondering- and you know, based on the challenges before how does social styles relate to on managing under performance?

A

And you know, I think, underperformance as a manager is probably one of the more difficult conversations to bring up as a leader, um and you know I think, under performance, the more we can get to know each other and the more we can identify our individual strengths and area for development, the easier it can be to have those types of conversations- and you know I think we need to if we have an underperforming team member.

A

We need to ask ourselves: why is that individual underperforming- and you know there may be a lot of reasons there may be a lack of growth, the lack of variety, a lack of communication, lack of trust. When I look back on my career and I think about underperformance, it's usually because I haven't built that relationship with the manager with my leader, yet I haven't broken down those barriers. I haven't really gotten some concrete steps from them, not to put the blame on the manager on how to do my job effectively.

A

um That's not the only reason for underperformance, but I can guarantee that that's probably a pretty wide percentage.

A

So let me open up this quick little video that we put together it's kind of bringing to life social.

A

A

Cool well, hopefully, everybody enjoyed that as much as I did putting it together, um and you know there's some additional insights here on the on this page. Just to you know, if a driver is dealing with an analytical and analytical dealing with the driver, uh just with some strategies that you could go in to having a potential difficult conversations that you could apply in your communication style.

A

So you know, we've got this awesome, underperformance handbook page that you can reference in terms of the process of addressing underperformance, but you know what, if the under performance continues. If you get to this point- and I think it's important to really have you- know coaching conversations and document the outcomes in a google doc, coaching is going to be the theme of the challenges next week and we'll dive deeper into that.

D

A

Continuing to be to help that team member you know, grow and resolve the underperformance, it's also really important to notify your your people business partner as soon as the underperformance persists and keep them in the loop throughout the process. I know we have some pvps on this call, so it'll be great to hear their perspective as well.

A

If you need to escalate it's important to create a written warning to bring attention to newer, ongoing deficiencies and conduct um and then from there it's, you know, consider a personal enablement plan of coaching and the written warning is not enough. I think sometimes I get lab like the personal enablement plan, may be viewed as negative, but you know it's really a positive way to help reinforce and help prepare that team member forward if the underperformance continues with concrete steps on how to get better.

A

Lastly, you know if that doesn't work, you know escalate to a performance improvement plan as a last chance to resolve, and if the pip doesn't work, the last resort would be off-boarding. Unfortunately, so I think, like you know, if we put it all together, like I said I wanted to go through these slides pretty fast. You know. Social styles is really a tool that you can use as a manager to get to know your team members. There are a ton of personality and behavioral assessments out there again.

A

I think social styles is great because it focuses on observable versus personality. I think it's easier to remember other people's styles versus say their myers-briggs personality types. I don't think I know anybody's off the top of my head and you know it really reinforces the more we know about our team members, unique strengths and areas of development, the more fluid it can be to have difficult conversations, and, lastly, just addressing that underperformance needs to be addressed as early as possible.

A

All right. So that's enough of me talking. I think next, we're just gonna go into fun scenarios, and this is where the fun starts. So I hope everybody is excited to do some breakout activities and do some role playing, and this is what we're going to do. We're going to break out into groups of three via zoom for a 15 minute, breakout activity that will be random, uh randomly selected if you're, an odd number group.

A

If you could take the first scenario and if you're an even number group, if you could take the second use this time to introduce one another in the zoom pod share, your styles get to know one another uh being a part of this challenge. Pilot you're part of this unique cohort of manager enablement so get to know one another and then role play the scenario as if this is a one-to-one conversation between a team member and a manager.

A

While the third team members is kind of providing feedback and coaching following a scenario, if there's more time, you can rotate roles, there's some slides in here, slides, 23 and 24. You can apply as resources, there's also some slides in the appendix and then ask yourself. How did you address the underperformance and how can you use social styles to frame the combo and then we'll come back as a group after 15 minutes, and we will uh share as a group?

A

So does anybody? uh Is anybody interested in sharing like group one uh scenario, one.

E

Yeah, so I was the person giving the feedback, um sam and justin you're welcome to chime in anytime, um but we went through the role play once we didn't have opportunity to go through it again, um and I think the only difficulty that we had was everybody assuming uh a social style that wasn't um aligned to what their actual social style is.

E

um So, for instance, sam is um amiable and the scenario called for him to be in a driver um style, and I think he did phenomenally the only feedback I really had for him was just to create a bit more structure for the team member, um potentially offering them insight into how to structure their day and how to block time off, to do certain tasks and offering a mentor or a buddy that could support their settling in process, because it is a relatively new team. Member.

A

That's a great point like uh especially around the having role playing uh social style. That's not your own, maybe very difficult. So I didn't even think of that, as thanks.

E

I think it's great because it speaks to the need for versatility. So, even though it was uncomfortable and unnatural, it sort of prompted um that aspect of it.

A

Yeah, that's great! That's that's! Definitely, critical! Being versatile, adapting your style to others cool anything else for group one! Anybody wants to share.

A

We can move on to group two.

A

That was around the sales um scenario for under performance.

D

Yeah so um nadia and david, uh and I work group two so we I was the manager and nadia was the the underpoint team member and I think david provided us with really great feedback. So maybe david, you can speak a bit to that.

F

There was lots of good examples of taking into account of the approaches not only from the manager's side, but thinking about the you know how the I'm, sorry, not only the the individual contributor side, but also how the individual contributor would respond, knowing what the manager's style was. So I think we had a good discussion of. Do you start immediately out of the gate with uh saying look, this is what the conversation is about.

F

We need to talk about underperformance and then go to complement, or do you start out with complimenting and then go directly to the underperformance, so we talked a little bit about that, but I thought the team did a really good job of being direct and short and sweet, not having too much detail and agreeing to all right. These are the next steps. The one other thing we talked about was just pausing.

F

You know once we gonna lay out the con the compliment of the the skills that person has, but then talk about the the facts of the underperformance pausing to ask for the individual contributors perspective right. So just you get a chance to see what their side of the story is.

A

Yeah, no, that's a great point. I think just giving everybody a voice. You know in that meeting is really important and I.

C

A

The fact that you know, if you're, if you're giving feedback to an expressive, do you just do you jump right into it or do you like compliment them? First, you give them a little bit of feedback on what's going well and then you dive into more of the facts around the underperformance.

G

So awesome we had a different approach. I put in the chat too, but um just to say we started our session with kind of seeking to understand just kind of like a personal check-in. Hey. How are things going? It's like. How are you you know? People have kids at home. People are. You know we live in a crazy world right now, there's fire the california's on fire and it's like hey. So you know how are you and then trying to feel a lot like? Are they self-aware of the underperformance or not and then acting accordingly?

G

You can either present facts. You give specific feedback and then kind of tee up the conversation, but really just to give them a chance to say yeah gosh, you know I know things have been difficult. You know not going well lately because blah blah blah blah and then you can come up with a plan to you know course correct.

A

Yeah, no, that's a great point. I think um you always want to account for things that may be happening outside of a team members in their personal life. You know, fires with covet with personal tragedy. I mean, like, I think, always reflecting on that and making sure you know somebody's everyone's doing, okay, personally and professionally. So awesome, all right group, three.

H

uh I was in group three um that was scenario one and uh kiki and candace were also in my group. We one of the things that we talked about was that it often takes team members time to process.

H

So our approach was my approach, as the manager was to offer kind of like a coaching opportunity for this team member, since they were amorable style, they'd, probably appreciate having kind of a pair programming approach, but we talked about how either you need to walk into that meeting with the details so that when those secondary questions come up, maybe after the conversation they that team member has answers to them, or you need to make sure that the team member understands that you're available, because we talked about um kiki's response um went kind of first to okay.

H

I've accepted that there's a problem now tell me exactly what I need to do to fix it um as a, and there are probably a number of questions that will come up later about well exactly. How does that problem surface? And what does it mean for me long term, and you know, am I on a pip and those kinds of things that um we skipped over, but we'll probably come back to.

A

Yeah- and do I mean just like the having the coaching conversation I mean: do you find that to be like a useful approach and kind of your day-to-day management? You know style like currently at gitlab.

H

um I mentioned that whenever I have difficult conversations, I do typically end with that. Hey I imagine there will be more questions that come up. I am here and available to chat with you, um I'm just a slack message or text or whatever it is um the thing that I said was typically team members. um If they don't have an uh if they end up with a question, they will kind of spiral into thinking.

H

It's the worst situation, and I tell them interrupting me or reaching out to me or any other leader, um is well worth limiting your stress right like if it means you're not stressed for five hours, and I and you ping me offline in order to answer a question quickly. That is more important to me um so yeah I I, although I think in our discussion and candace, were highlighting. It would be better to walk in with more of those answers. I'm just not sure if team members are prepared to listen to them and understand them.

H

um In the midst of that conversation,.

A

Yeah, no that's great, and I think, as long as like your team members know that you're you're there for them, and you know you can have those. You know coaching conversations that you know, especially if you have like examples from their from their work to to show them in the call. It's really important cool um group four, I think we're on.

I

All right, uh so I was in the group with rebecca and john, and we had the second scenario um we we took. We discussed a lot of the things that group two had mentioned. We had uh discussed just starting with some positive feedback, given the given the expressive social style. We thought you know this jamal likes to be recognized, needs recognition, so maybe that would help ground the conversation and less emotional reaction in terms of giving him some additional feedback on how he's doing from a data perspective.

I

And then we also talked a lot about, given that the expressive style is mostly unstructured, how we might be able to help put some structure in place with um for jamal and also discuss with him and point him to more of like the overall goal or the vision with with needing him to um really dive deeper into understanding. His quota misses and really dive deeper into understanding kind of the gaps that he has with the knowledge of the gitlab product.

I

Another thing that we had also discussed was um really, since he uh probably is more geared towards feelings versus data having him translate some of those feelings, because in sales, sometimes the feelings are actually data on whether a customer is willing to buy or is primed for buying. So having him really kind of understand how his connections to feelings are actually really data um and how you know that is is is critical to his success in the role. So those are just some additional things that we had discussed.

I

um On top of what group two shared.

A

Well, that's great, and would you say just from your experience and supporting you know the sales audience that a lot of sellers maybe display more expressive types of stuff.

I

100, yes, and um and just because gitlab as a company is so data focused and data driven. I think that that sometimes is a gap that for folks here in terms of you know how do we translate um their strengths into uh what we need from a data perspective as a company to grow and potentially understand predictability within our business? So um that is something I think that the managers are are constantly working on um with the team. I don't know if david summers or chris has anything additional to offer on that point.

E

I

C

Great thanks, carolyn.

A

um All right next group, I think we're on group five yep.

G

I feel like I totally jumped the queue. No, it's okay, there's, there's.

A

G

Out stephen, did you have anything to add to my little monologue earlier.

J

That's right, yeah. I think we also talked about the idea of hey the the manager was a driver in our scenario- and you know, the the inclination for a driver would be to come with this, this long list of of things that you're under performing on and metrics to kind of back it up, whereas the the person receiving it was amiable, um and so they and chris kind of discussed like hey starting off with like hey. How are things going? um You know, how are you feeling is there?

J

Is there any anything we should be aware of, and the idea of sort of tailoring the message initially based on the scenario and not and just coming up immediately with, like hey here's, here's this list of of all the things that that you're not doing well, I think kenny kind of touched on it as well, like that initial conversation can be very jarring for people who aren't self-aware, that maybe there's an issue, and so the idea of you know kind of taking someone's temperature a little bit ahead of time, and then you know adjusting course like, like chris mentioned, um to resolve it based on what you discover.

A

No, that's great, I think you know taking, I think, any sort of engagement you have with team members taking the temperature. All the time is, is really a good best practice to implement just kind of see how folks are doing and just how they're, how they're doing with producing results. So.

J

Yeah, the one-on-ones, I think, are super important for that sort of ongoing, because then you notice quickly like when there's a change.

A

For sure awesome and I think we're at the last group, I believe in group six.

B

Yes from group six uh ramya and the nadia nadia was in my team, uh rama played the manager role. This nadia was a team member. um We started the conversation with just asking how the person is doing and how are they feeling? How is the pandemic impacting them, and the team member came back with? How is the the pandemic has impacted them a lot with everything going on they're definitely stressed out.

B

This could be taken as a way of them trying to mask their underperformance, or it could also be taken as they're completely unaware of their underperformance. uh The manager took advantage of that particular situation, asking them what is making you so hectic, and how can I help you out that way? Let me know- and I'm here, to help you out and uh but at that point uh it was more towards the target that we had was probably too unrealistic. We, even though we tried to change it based on the pandemic state.

B

It seems to be too unrealistic, um so it seemed like the team member was coming with an excuse one after the other, or they completely blunt up the situation.

B

That's where the manager would have to come with the data points. This is what we have done did a comparison, not with a fellow team member per se, by name but more like within the team.

B

This is what we are realistically agreed upon, and this is how the other team members are able to perform versus here, giving them more of a data to help them see why we see that you might not be fully performing to your full capabilities um and upon how opening up that conversation, um the team member was more too inclined towards accepting it. We also tried to think about what we do if the team member is not going to accept it.

B

How will we make them understand that this is really the case, but in this case it was more like okay. If it is the case, they were more worried about what everyone else would think about them. Well, the team members would see as me as not performing properly or will the the the fellow team members of the counterparts would consider need to be not fully capable.

B

um That was more of their concern um and that's where the manager would be have to provide them feedback that it's completely confidential.

B

No one is going to think anything wrong about you as long as you're coming trying to be a part of this program and help yourself grow. So key points was one either trying to hide or be completely blunt of the situation too worried about how the fellow team members would see them and three was providing upfront data to really help them understand.

A

Yeah, no that's great, I think I think, especially with you know, expresses you know to go back to carolyn's point as well just showing that the data and the facts is really helpful to push that message home so awesome. Does anybody else have anything to share regarding the scenarios I know we're close at times, so anybody.

C

Wants to see something yeah. This is something I can do in a small, mr, but something we spoke about right in the beginning of the call and is maybe changing the page name to change in performance, and my thinking was that we don't label under performance immediately. But when you start that discussion, you're, you're ready to say I'm concerned about your performance, but you don't know what's going on yet so that was one small thing we spoke about um that. I can include it in an mr and we can take it from there.

A

Yeah, I love that because I think you know underperformance does have maybe not a negative connotation, but it can it can strike. You know, fear if, if you.

E

A

That one-to-one- and you hear the word under performance- um can be tough, so thanks nadia awesome. Does anybody want to share um any stories of addressing underperformance from their time at gitlab or at another career? That could be beneficial to the group? I know we did that in the issue, um but I know we're at two minutes at times, so if people can stay over, if you have to drop, feel free to drop, but if you'd like to stay on and talk through.

I

I'll just say from like a pvp perspective, because I see a lot and talk a lot with managers about underperformance in their teams. um Sometimes there is a tendency to avoid those difficult conversations, because they're they're hard and uncomfortable, um but hopefully, if you better understand your team members style and you have this foundation with some trust, you can have them more easily and, I would say, address performance concerns earlier um then wait until you have like a ton of different examples that are have kind of um uh piled up over time.

I

It's easier for folks, to course correct, and it's it's beneficial to the team member, even though it may feel really uncomfortable and they may leave the conversation um upset. It's really it's beneficial to have them earlier than wait. That's just my one comment.

A

Yeah, I think somebody posted in the challenge just a story about how they you know, gave somebody feedback during their annual review when underperformance was occurring before and it was took the team member by surprise. You know, I think thunder performance is an issue. You have to hit it head on and it's not easy. It's definitely not so.

H

G

H

Second, one caroline was saying: I do think as leaders we do tend to have that hesitancy, but I did. I have had an experience here where I highlighted under performance and the team member was almost thankful for being seen. You know because we work so remotely.

H

Sometimes they don't feel like their work is being reviewed and understood at an in-depth level and so just to have their manager say you know I I have been looking at what you're doing and I've I have some places where I think you can improve was like highlights to them in that in their ability to grow. So sometimes those conversations you can, you can think that they will go. You know in one direction and a team member can surprise you and go in a totally different direction with it.

A

Definitely- and I think like just having that conversation like those are very impactful for your long-term career so like reflecting on that feedback, so cool. So if anybody needs a drop feel free to, I know, there's some questions in the doc. um I'm happy to extend I'd love to answer some of these questions.

F

In the past of waiting too late to have those conversations, I think I'm finding myself in in you know in today's times of you know, am I pushing too much? Is there? Are the expectations too high relative to everything else going on? I'm just curious of how is everybody else managing that conversation when you've got some folks that are having challenges, um but you yourself is like all right. Are there expectations reasonable.

C

A

Want to take that.

I

A

No, I was just going to say, I think, like you know, just being at gitlab, for only like five months coming from a very corporate consulting high pace environment, I will say that gitlab operates just as fast in some ways and very intense, even though these are like unprecedented times, and I think our leadership has taken some pretty good.

A

uh You know steps to help. People like you know, take time off friends and family, but I think like as managers. I think it's always just good to be cognizant of that. I definitely think like it feels like business as usual at gitlab uh and I'm sure everybody kind of feels that, even though there's you know we're all we're all like doubly isolated right with covid and you know working remotely, it's kind of like 10x our isolation factor, so I think definitely being aware of that.

A

I

And also drop a link in we, um the pvp team, updated um some guidance for how to have those conversations during all these unprecedented times, and I think it is truly about transparency, so really encouraging your team members to tell you what they need um and what what um what you can do to help support them. For some who are like you know, managing school and kids, they may need you to take things off their plate and we we can talk about.

I

You know how to structure that um some may need some more formal time off like a leave of some sort, whereas some are just you know home and have no kids and maybe want to dive deeper into different projects and pick up more work. So it's really about having those transparent conversations, and I think it's important to do it often because I think with the world and the state of everything things are changing.

I

You know someone who was fine last week may be like facing fires this week and so that there it's kind of an ever-evolving check-in. um So I just recommend that you continue to do that as part of your one-on-ones um and pick up on those non-verbal cues too. If you can, I know it's hard over video, but.

K

I just want to add to what you say carol. I think it's important that doing it often because doing it suddenly doesn't seem as authentic and it doesn't build trust. So when you suddenly want to have these, you know emotionally rooted conversations to find out who your team members are learn more about them. You can't rush that process and do it all within a window of you know, 24 to 48 hours and talk about you know performance enablement.

K

At the same time, it really just takes away the authenticity, and it just makes people more fierce that psychological safety piece starts showing up so just something to consider.

D

Yeah thanks for sharing that um also carolyn and candace and david. So one thing I've from from experience at gitlab. What I've seen as well is that sometimes setting the expectation is a big relief for team members, because then they know, even if that's an adjusted expectation right, not um evaluating somebody, maybe at 100 performance but at the reduced uh performance.

D

That's a big relief, because um with these times it's super hard and sometimes team members are trying to do things which are simply impossible right, combining home situation with other situations and then definitely having that expectation. Conversation can be a huge relief to team members and- and I didn't expect that in some cases, but I think in almost all the cases um I've seen at gitlab. That has helped. So um I think that's the positive uh on the uh on setting the expectation and talking having just ongoing conversations about how people are doing.

D

Our team members are doing.

K

One last thing I was going to say: I apologize is, you know in the chat I had said the enablement piece and it is important. So when you talk about words nadia, as you had mentioned earlier, and how we you know, naming the page as versus you know, under performance and using change, is you know those words? Words mean everything regardless, I think of social styles, but words really change the emotion, the away from it so saying enablement as an example and you're.

K

Putting someone on something to improve their performance really changes to me how they receive it. That's just subjective, but you know I don't know what the group thinks, but enablement is is very key that you're setting someone up for success versus you're not doing well, and this is the process to get you out the door.

H

Yeah, I totally agree, and that applies both to under performance and what bruce was just talking about, like I'm gonna we're gonna enable you to be successful by setting the right expectations for you and making sure that we're all transparent about what those expectations are.

L

So I just had one question from one of my teammates as well, so this is regarding social styles itself, so uh I actually shared this with my team and uh we had this discussion today during rt meeting and one thing that uh there were few concerns raised about social styles itself.

L

Right like uh are we actually grouping people or what, if like, I exhibit some other I mean I'm not always exhibiting the same kind of things like it totally depends on uh various other factors as well, maybe like what I'm going through and stuff like that, and so that was not one question that was raised and the second one was about uh would would this affect my career growth in any way like? uh Do we actually consider this when we consider someone for maybe a manager, uh so would this come into picture?

L

So these are a few questions that were there in the minds of my teammates as well so uh yeah. Maybe we should clarify these uh very well in the handbook is what I thought.

A

Yeah, no, definitely that's that's feedback. We've gotten as well. Like I think the last thing is we don't want anybody to feel like typecasted into a social style like if you're an expressive. That's who you are to your core? No. This is just a tool to help people facilitate conversations. It's not the end-all be-all. I think because we work remotely there's less time to get to know one another, and it's just one of the many tools out there to facilitate that.

A

So definitely going to update the handbook, and then I don't think I don't think social styles plays into promotion or anything it's it's it's. Definitely it's more for managers and team members to use to to communicate better. So, um but that's that's great! I that's that's an interesting question. I'd love to hear more about that.

M

Yeah- and I know something we talked about josh before too- was like also not having people use it as a crutch, like. Oh I'm, acting this way because I like in a way that may not be acceptable because I'm expressive or I'm a driver or whatever like you, can't. You also can't use it as a crutch, because um yeah so yeah definitely.

E

M

For behaviors right.

A

Cool, so I know uh folks are dropping. um I hope everybody found the chest section uh useful, we'll send some feedback forms tomorrow. Thank you so much. This is week one of the challenge and we will continue to provide some some great learnings to you all. So thank you for attending and participating. Thank.

K

You so much! Thank you. Yes, thank you. Great work, great work, bye, bye. Now, thanks guys.