GitLab Learning & Development, 26 Oct 2021

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From YouTube: Leadership Q&A with the CEO

Description

During the October Manager Challenge, GitLab CEO and Co-founder, Sid, spent time with the cohort answering questions about his leadership experience.

Learn more about the GitLab Manager Challenge: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-group/learning-and-development/manager-challenge/

A

Hi everyone um I've got sid here, get lab ceo and co-founder he's here with the october manager challenge cohort to answer, questions related to leadership and management and sarah, it looks like you have the first question so go ahead and throw it out there.

B

Yeah thanks josh everybody watching I'm a group manager for the create stage here at the product, unique lab, uh sid first question and becoming a manager. I received feedback from multiple different mentors. That's all been somewhat similar. The gist of it's been spend your time on the high performers on your team. The same amount of time spent on them can lead to 10 times the output versus time invested, trying to engage your low performers, and I wanted to know your thoughts on that.

C

Yeah, I think that's good advice and it's at the same time like um if someone is underperforming. You have to spend time there, um but in general you should try to have your team have more high performers than low performers, so that you're, just if you're you're spending time equally.

C

High performers will appreciate kind of greater access. More frequent meetings, they'll be more proactive on them. Asking questions. They'll have more ambitious career goals, all else being equal.

C

So give them and engage more frequently but ensure that underperformance get gets uh identified and addressed and, in my case very often that's through a chain. But if that's a report of you like set clear goals and try to help them try to reach it.

C

But yes, business is both about um trying to shore up things that aren't that that aren't going as well, but also about kind of capitalizing on your strengths, and we should never forget about that.

B

Absolutely thank you.

C

Thanks for asking.

B

I also have the next one.

B

Since this session is close to our recent ipo, this came to mind as we were moving through um the management course. How much of a factor did our culture play in preparing the company ipo as managers? Our jobs are to cultivate the culture and then uphold those values that do so.

C

Yeah, I have some ideas, but let's hear it from the from the group. First.

D

um I'll verbalize um and then I'll go back and write it. But I think it was a lot more transparent than I was expecting. The entire process, uh and that was appreciated by me and- and I heard good comments from the team.

E

Yeah, that's actually what I was just about to say. I I had not expected the amount of information that was going to come out and the live stream. That was, you know, an entire day's worth of information and thought it was a cool way to tell our story.

A

Yeah, I think, if anything, you know watching the live stream being so open. It's definitely a reflection of our transparency and our credit values, because if you watched a lot of those interviews, our credit values were reiterated. A lot by the team members talking.

F

And like when it comes to preparing for the ipo rather than the actual ipo event, I think I know we had it in our handbook that we were going to go public on a certain date, and I know that that date didn't happen. But the fact that we had that in our in our handbook was just ultra transparent in the first place. I think that's a very clear goal for for the business generally going forward. So.

B

I think I think my question was: I love those answers. I think I asked it in a um unclear way. I will rephrase said you've often said one of your main roles as ceo is being a the enforcer of values um such that the rest of your leadership team and the company operates within those.

B

So my question was more focused on: do you think, leaning so hard in the gitlab spells values with a large part? Small part of what led to our ipo is that more clear.

C

That's a good question.

C

I don't know uh some things that came to mind and not necessarily or not answering your question, but it was um so as we got going public. It's super hard to keep transparency and I think we did a more than decent job now, there's some kind of cleanup to do.

C

I think we made a few things internal that shouldn't have been, and then I think we need to clean that up and but maybe we went a little bit overboard, but we certainly could have got done a lot worse, so I'm really proud of how thoughtful we were about that. I thought and in a in a recent group meeting I think, after after going public but like the legal team was telling people we should be more transparent, like the I think it was. I was.

C

A transparency is very much kind of a shared commitment and that very that was very great. To see too there's also just talked did a video for goldman sachs and they remarked that for the for the roadshow presentation and the testing, the water presentation, kind of the iteration cycle were very freaking with us, where we said.

C

Oh, these thing changes please and that's something they did for the first time with us and I think it it led to a really good presentation that we then also leveraged are now leveraging when we talk to potential customers, so that was kind of cool to see.

B

Awesome thanks for your thoughts on that, um I'm going to pass it on to nicholas.

C

Thanks. Sarah sorry, sarah I I did really don't know the answer to the question like to. To what extent is our success due to our values? I think the default ceo answered. It's like it's all due to the values.

C

I I I don't know it's hard to say you might just be really lucky in a market that other people didn't see and so very few people a very few companies are in. I do think that we can be proud that we've been able to grow our values over time and make them stronger. I think that's that's rare, mostly they dilute over time- and I don't know whether we're successful because or despite them, but it's it's great that we have strong values. I enjoy that every single day.

B

Yes, I do thank you for the follow-up. I appreciate that.

C

I'm pretty sure it's it's thanks to our values, it's just hard to say to what extent, maybe that's a better way to say. Nicolas.

G

Thanks ed, um so I'm an interim manager for a few months now and I'm the engineering manager for the product intelligence team and I found it quite overwhelming. Sometimes this role and the only strategy I found was like stricter prioritization and more delegation, but this is also tough because I can overrun the team as well. So I would like to know like how was your experience when you started leading and how did you learn to deal with multiple concurrent priorities in the sheer endless information over the years?

G

I can't even imagine it on your level, so I'm very curious.

C

Yeah, if you're curious, you should try to sign up for the ceo shadow program at some point and also read some blog posts by past shadows. um I had a meeting earlier today, which is wasn't a gitlab meeting, but it's.

C

Even the gitlab meetings today, like I'm pretty strict on how information is organized like if you go into a meeting, you need a google doc. It's about that meeting and kind of give context, or you can load that into your brain.

C

Yeah privatization delegation, for example like it's, it's super helpful if there's just if you always give me the option to just say yes or I approve so many times, think about like you, bring a problem like think about what you think is the right way to solve it and then describe that or give give a couple of given menu of options to pick from with a recommended one.

C

And then I think, like async information, whether that's a doc or a presentation or a video, so allows us to prep.

C

I'm proud that when I have a few minutes earlier today, I was able to read through this and already type in a few answers. I think on average it's going to lead to better answers than only answering in a moment.

G

If, if I may ask as a follow-up question and are there any times where you think like you're overwhelmed that like because there's so much going on like and how do you deal with this situation?

G

C

I just don't do certain things, so I haven't answered my.

C

The threats in slack that I should reply to now for two days and I'm gonna have bandwidth and it's just likely to be a few hours. I'll start catching up on that. But it's like first email doesn't get replied and slack then whatsapp, then texts and phone calls until I'm able yeah. I might just do the meetings I'm supposed to participate in and if I don't feel like it, I'll cancel those meetings, although that's that's rare that um start taking away communication channels until you, you feel better.

G

Thanks that that's an honest answer, I have the next question as well, so I'm curious: how do you approach hiring for roles where you don't have a strong background? Maybe, and what do you look out for to judge their expertise.

E

C

C

um If it's in a kind of a new role, then you talk to experts in the industry. I always find that helpful. uh You just go to you ask like, for example, my board members need you to ask your manager like who's who's, really good, and you try to get some time with them. You they hey, I'm recruiting for this role.

C

What should I watch for? Can you help me with interview, questions and then.

C

Keep thinking of blog posts, they still have to write actually working on a whole set of executive interview. Questions right now that I should probably publish.

C

And not only is it a great way to understand the requirements of the job better and what date looks like, but also how and get the questions but also they'll recommend people, and sometimes you end up hiring those people because they became interested during that course. So, like you can win in five five ways: if you do it so.

C

C

C

um Recruiting for uh a cmo yeah, I think I have to like this, so these are my criteria to do that.

C

um So these are the top five criteria.

C

These are other criteria. These are kind of bonus criteria and for the role I try to make sure I have that clear, mostly in an ideal world, these would all flow from the job family.

C

Thanks for whoever did that screenshot appreciate it, asiana.

H

Yes, thank you. My next question is what have been some hard lessons you've learned when it comes to difficult conversations with direct reports.

C

um We're going to bend this question slightly, if you don't mind and just ask tori, to write the blog post about this in slack a few hours earlier today, a big fan of situational leadership doesn't mean I always practice it, but I try to vary my delegation style based on the factors below those factors, are the experience level of the report, their skills in this exact task, my own skill in the task, the importance of the tax, the urgency of the tax, the group setting for it. I guess it did.

C

Group setting is it a group, is the one to one: is it shadows or no shadows um are other people able to learn um and like if it's a live stream? I might give more context. So it's also useful to others the reporting relationship. I've got a direct, indirect external.

C

How long? How long and how frequent the report have to fix it?

C

Well, the freaking this next one did they get feedback on the same thing before the shortfall of like the current solution to the achievable one, how much? How much that shortfall bothers me? It's not a really objective criteria, but it matters um how much time we have in a meeting for feedback. How long would it give me to give feedback?

C

um What state of mind the report is in? Did I already give the feedback earlier, which is like it seems similar to? Did they get feedback on the same thing before so I might have to reconsider that.

C

Are there metrics in place to catch this automatically.

C

How long do I expect to work with this person and how much time it would take me to do it, which sounds pretty similar to how much time do we have?

C

How long does it give to take this? So that's similar to 13.

C

Thank you, and did I have an elaborate set of reasons? Does it mean I always get feedback right and mess up frequently in my own emotional state and everything else.

C

I

Yeah thanks ed, so my question revolves around: how do you work with a cross-functional team? We learned a lot through this course about your direction: how to give feedback, how to create that collaborative environment.

I

But how do you work across functional areas and how do you encourage the functional leaders to work together to solve an issue or a challenge.

C

Oh, that's a broad question.

C

I like to see like I think, what's what can really mess things up if you, if you become kind of the in between station for information- and it feels good initially because you get to hoard information everyone's dependent on you and everything goes through you, but it leads to a lot of dysfunction in the team. So in one to one joke, you frequently hear me say like hey: did you already discuss it with that person or he put it on the ego agenda?

C

That's kind of my go-to so that we discuss things that are affecting multiple people that we discussed it in a group setting and uh the important conversations take place in that group. Setting that there's now some kind of like after meeting that's more one-to-one where the important stuff gets discussed.

C

That's that's, I think, a very natural thing to fail. If you don't watch out for it not sure I answered to what extent I addressed your question feel free to follow up.

I

Yeah, just a quick comment on that. I think what I was, what I heard was in the training as well. It's a question of being a coach versus a referee, and I heard you say it's better to come at it jointly. So thanks thanks for that approach,.

C

I think it's also. What state is it's in it like? In the beginning, you try to coach and get everyone to kind of come up with better ideas and evaluate things, but then, in the end, if like, if it's time to make a decision and then frequently or you try to avoid me being that. But if I have to be it, I'm more than happy to.

I

Yeah thanks thanks for that.

C

I should do it so that the organization can move on simon.

F

Yeah thanks sid, um so we've been learning a lot about psychological safety um and one point that has come up. um I think that pretty much everyone raised as one actionable point that they can all take away from from the learnings, was that we can be more intentional about uh opening up about our uh mistakes and our errors that we've made. um You know this little forbes idea of celebration of errors um as a as a ceo of a now public company.

F

uh I imagine that highlighting errors is a challenging balancing act between transparency and company image preservation. um So I was just wondering like how have you had to adapt the way that you surface errors, as you see it, um and how do you think that's going to change moving forward for both yourself and for kind of us like how cautious do we have to be around servicing our errors?

F

C

Thanks for that um totally subscribe to that errors, but also like when you change your mind, really important to kind of highlight: oh wait, I changed my mind, which is kind of like you were wrong about something before so. It's kind of an error, but maybe different than we did something wrong like. I thought something wrong.

C

I'm a newly minted ceo of a public company, so we'll see. How I do I think, what's super interesting to me, is that various forums have their own kind of ways of communicating.

C

So you can expect me in an earnings, call to sound a lot more similar to other earnings calls. So it's easier for the people in that earnings call to calibrate because they they all the earnings, calls look kind of the same and kind of they derive information by kind of the delta to another earnings goal, and it will be like we're going to go for the boring solution and make our ones look similar to the other earnings calls so that it's easier for everyone to understand and that we will calibrate it on the same page.

C

C

But, for example, in other pages we other places we we we can do something. That's common to that medium and, like I have my flaws listed on my ceo page, and that is still public um doesn't mean I'm going to start off the earnings call listing all my personal flaws like there's, um there's different kind of moments and media and places for different things, and I think that's super important to recognize and, of course, whatever I say has to be internally consistent.

C

If it's not that I'm telling something else, it's just your message in a different way um and then earning skulls you're going to be sounding a bit more similar to other companies, while in other medias like this live stream, you can be maybe celebrate the faults, a bit more.

F

So if I'm reading between the lines a little bit, we sort of saying that you know public facing versus private facing versus you know internal closed group. It just depends on the context of that.

C

Now, what I'm I'm saying is not whether what matters is not whether it's public or private, what matters are the expectations around the medium and the form you're using you're. You've got it and for celebrating errors. This is a public call. Yep you're happy to go into errors. I made here um in the earnings falls: it's um it's.

F

Just being expected to.

C

Have a certain way of kind of describing errors, and, if you, if you overly celebrate while other companies, don't do it, investors might think something is different than what it is and it's our intention to make sure that they they appropriately calibrated on the severity of things.

F

C

J

Thanks sid, um so my my question relates to effective 101. So one of the things that, in this particular program that we've been talking about recently, is a lot of different formats templates of how to conduct an effective one-on-one with your team members, and I know that you have a format that you use, um and so my question I guess, boils down to um have you found any challenges with this approach? What do you like about it the most and if you had a chance to iterate on this approach and improve upon that experience?

J

What would that look like.

C

Yeah thanks for that, I think I've been and omar will go after me, but I've been reluctant to push for this approach, which I think is the good approach and I've iterated on, because I haven't seen it be successful for my reports.

C

However, today we had the engineering skip level and they reported that their boss, eric johnson, is now successfully using the format with them and they they like it so that kind of now I finally have the data that this format works and we're going to roll this out. So we're going to give it a name that is so complex. I already forgot it and omar's going to re write the blog post, omar.

K

Yeah, I think in general um we will be writing up a blog post to talk a little bit more about how c parents. These meetings got some really good feedback as to how it helps um I've also been using with my manager um and we'll share it out as we as we kind of uh just go into it, and I think mark if you have a specific feedback, also having tried it and what hasn't been working for.

K

You just send that my way, because I'll use that, as I'm thinking through what may be helpful to put into a blog post to make sure that things are interpreted correctly and the adoption works well and then we can meet your design with that. I'm going to say we're out time.

C

Thank you thanks. So much and the gist of it is, this format seems to work. Well, so we're just going to make it a standard across the company. You can experiment with other things, but by default we're both going to use the same format thanks. So much appreciate it. Thanks for the question mark really timely thanks. Everyone yeah thanks ted.

A

For your time,.