Transitioning into Your First Tech Leadership Role with Robbie Clutton

Welcome back everyone to another episode of Mastering TestGrow. Today we have Robbie Clutton, who's a fractional CTO, which pretty much does anything engineering related. We have a very interesting topic today, so we're going to be discussing a fictional character who currently is an individual contributor and would like to transition to leadership role. We will talk how one would actually make that decision, how that transition looks like, and what is most likely waiting for you in the first year in that new role of being leader of people. Welcome, Robbie.

Hey, welcome. Thank you for, uh, thank you for inviting me.

Of course. So Robbie, give us who you are, how did you end up in tech, and what you're currently doing?

Yeah, so, so hi, Robbie Clutton, been in the business for 20 years, did a degree in software engineering, worked at BT telephone company making phones ring and doing some cloud stuff, worked for a small digital agency and then the Guardian newspapers, had a chance to work in New York, joined a company called Pivotal Labs, was there for 9 years all told, and that's where I started my management journey. So I joined as an engineer and then moved up into first line manager, and helping to run that New York consultancy practice. Moved back to the UK, took over kind of running our UK business and then our EMEA business, so dealing with people in UK, Germany, France, Netherlands, Ireland, and a few other people kind of dotted around. Went through acquisitions, IPOs, spinouts, another acquisition before kind of coming into 2020, pandemic, being acquired by VMware, which was great company to work for, but at 35,000 people, kind of felt like it wasn't really what I was looking for at that moment in time. Joined a developer security company called Snyk as a senior director, moved up into VP, and then got made redundant in 2022. And kind of figured, you know, I've been working for 19 years, I've at least got another 19 years left. And if I don't do something different now, when am I ever going to do it? And decided to start my own business. And I've been doing this kind of fractional fractional CTO job. So I've, you know, have some clients where I work a few days a week, doing some coaching, some advising, some small projects, some kind of classroom-based teaching. So yeah, just kind of, you know, trying to do my own thing. And yeah, I'm enjoying it so far.

It's good you are. And it does seem that this gig economy and that fractional approach is actually becoming quite popular. I've been not like tracking the numbers, but just people around me seems to be favoriting that fractional setup. Is that— do you have any like— because you're doing this for quite some time now. Is that like when it comes to the trade-off? Because, you know, you had the big gigs and not gigs, but big permanent roles in big companies, smaller ones. And then you have, you know, this fractional, like your take, like what's the trade-off like?

Yeah, I think, I think for me, and I imagine for a lot of people, this is kind of a consequence of the pandemic. And, you know, before the pandemic, I was traveling a lot for my role, kind of already mentioned, you know, traveling to Europe almost every other week, I was traveling to the US a couple of times a year. My kids were a bit younger there. So, you know, I kind of really felt like I was starting to miss out a little bit. On them and wanted to do something different. And then lockdown came along. So that kind of fixed that. But I think, you know, lockdown was, was quite good for me and my family. And it kind of gave the opportunity to have that reset and rethink about, well, what do I actually want to do with the career and how much time I want to spend at home. And I think doing this kind of fractional job and having a running independent business plays into that really, really well. Because it really means that you know, you're in control of your own destiny. You take on the clients that you want to take on, you take on the amount of work that you want to take on, and you work when you want to work. So that works, that works really well for me. My kids are still in school and they're young, so they're in primary school, so they're 9 and 6. So during sort of school holidays, it's very easy for me to dial down the work so I can be with them over the holidays. It's very easy, you know, if they need a day off, they're not very well, I can kind of dial that kind of down So, uh, that balance has really shifted, and that being an independent consultant and Fractional part of being, being a big part of that, uh, has, you know, really enabled me to, to do that.

It's good to hear. The one question which was going in my head, Rob, is like, what happens if you don't find any leads? Like, what happens if you don't find any clients? Did you walk into that with like a, you know, a bunch of contacts you had and you knew that you know, work will come?

No, no, I kind of, it was a bit of a bit of a roll of the dice. So, you know, so I got made redundant October '22. So this was, you know, the year of the interest rates and Ukraine war. So, you know, lots of redundancies across the industry. And a lot of companies just weren't really hiring. So needed to kind of do something different. But Because, um, because of redundancy and because I'd kind of gone through IPOs and things like, had a little bit of a financial runway. Not, not loads, can't retire, but had a bit of a safety net. Um, my wife works as well. We kind of looked at our finances and kind of figured we could do this for a little while. Um, and then found work quite quickly. Um, not, not straight away, but quite quickly. Uh, and that kind of built up a bit of, um, you know, capital in the business. So, you know, here in the UK, you have to have your own legal entity and your own business bank account. So that's kind of all going into there and really tried to be quite disciplined about finances. And, you know, I pay myself a smallish wage, like what's the smallest I can kind of get away with, but while I build up my business bank account so that even if I have a quiet month, I've still got money in my business bank account, so I can still pay myself every month in a predictable way. There is a bit of a resetting of kind of expectations and potentially lifestyle. And, you know, maybe I don't need 5 TV streaming services, maybe I I can just live with, you know, with 3 of them.

What do you mean? You need all of them. Disney, Netflix.

I've slowly added them all back in.

Yeah, here you go.

This show is on that one. So I really want to see that.

Yeah.

But yeah, trying to be a bit more disciplined and yeah, it's worked out. It's worked out quite well. But you know, you never say never. Right now it's okay. But yeah, who knows? Who knows in the future?

I'm sure you'll do great. And you know, with that background and And everything you can offer to startups and coaching and mentoring and, you know, everything you bring to the table is— it is, you know, that lead part, marketing, sales, it does maybe change a little bit how your life looks like. But again, change is never bad, right?

And I think one of the things which I was looking for was not a necessarily kind of full-time job as a contractor or as a permanent and doing the same thing every day. I wanted this portfolio lifestyle. You know, I'd been hearing about this portfolio life. And I was like, I think I want that. So, you know, so right now, so I'm doing some coaching, doing some advising. I've just done some classroom kind of activities, doing some, you know, fractional work. So I've got a portfolio. So if one of them goes away, I've still got other work and other revenue. And, you know, one will go away, the revenue will come down, but hopefully it'll be replaced. but it's not this kind of binary, like I'm working or I'm not. It's like I'm kind of always working. I just, it's a, it's a dial now rather than sort of a binary on or off.

Okay. I absolutely see that. Right. So thanks for this. So we know who Robbie is now. Uh, we've got some social proof, you know, of your knowledge and skills, right?

Yeah.

So let's, let's set the scene, right? So we have our fictional character, you know, let's call him James Bond just for, uh, for giggles.

Yeah.

So we have James, uh, he's the best at his team right now. He's individual contributor, you know, he's a backend developer again for the sake of argument, and he's the guy who everybody goes to. So he has all the answers naturally, you know, he's a senior, he's been doing this for maybe 5, maybe 10 years now. And, uh, without really noticing or understanding himself, he started, you know, realizing that he's coaching people. And all these things. And, and now, you know, he wants to advance his career, and, and things like team leads, uh, you know, something maybe more is playing with his head. So in your experience, Robbie, like, how one does really decides to, to become a leader of people?

Yeah, so I think there are, there are some people who do it for good reasons and some people who do it for not particularly good reasons. Um, And some people think they want to do it, and then it turns out that they actually don't once they've experienced it. And some people who don't really want to do it, and then when they experience it, they actually really like it. So there's no one answer, no one answer to that. I think there are patterns though. So we talk about some of the patterns. I think one of them is just this notion of progression, right? Like, I want to get promoted. What's the next step? And what, you know, at some point, as a technical person, maybe it's changing a little bit now, but there was a point where it's like, I can get to sort of a senior level, but if I want to go more than that, then I have to start taking over manager responsibilities, right? I have to be a team lead, I have to start managing people. That is the well-trodden path, right? I have to go down that if I want continuous career progression. So I think a lot of people will get into it because of that, because they just see it as, as the next step. I think there are some companies, and some probably do it better than others, and again, I think this is my bit more of a sort of recent thing, people doing more of it. We can— you can stay on the technical track and, you know, go from like a senior to a staff to a principal and beyond and stay and develop those technical skills without taking on the team lead or people management responsibilities. But, you know, it's still not as well-trodden path, I think, as like, next thing is a team lead, next thing is people management. So I think that's kind of the first pattern is like, it's just the well-trodden path, right? It's just like, this is, this is what people have done before me. I'm at this company, I look at the— I look at other people and how they've progressed their careers, and I'm just following in their footsteps. So that's one. I think probably a closely related aspect to that is compensation, right, and financial rewards. And, you know, I think rightly or wrongly, I think people assume, and it might be correct, that people get paid more as a team lead, as a manager, as a director. So it's like, if I want to kind of break through this glass ceiling of my earning potential, I have to take on these other responsibilities. Now you kind of have to ask those questions like whether that person wants it or not or whether they're right for it or not. But they kind of see that as the like, I want to increase my earning potential. So I have to go down this path if I want to do that.

Yeah, continue, Rob.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I think the last one is, you know, There are, I think, certain types of people who just sort of take on certain responsibilities within a team, not always being asked, but, you know, some of the things which are not necessarily the coding, the engineering tasks, right? Whether it's arranging a schedule or, you know, doing release planning, or they're doing the things which might otherwise fall through the cracks. And they kind of start to assume some of those things and they, and they start to potentially start to enjoy some of those things. And then they just take on more and more of those kind of responsibilities until the point where it's like, it now it seems like an obvious next step would be, I want to formalize this right now. I should go into a team lead, I should go into manager because I'm kind of already doing it, right. So let's kind of formalize it. So I think those are probably the, the main the main patterns. There are probably others, but those are the ones which I certainly, um, identify with, I think.

Yep, um, I think you nailed it. And so one question which instantly comes out is like, is that a good motivation though? You know, we have these compensations, the, the influence building within the business, you know, you want to lead people, uh, maybe you naturally sort of find yourself in that part, but is that like the right motivation? People should be making that judgment because effectively you're getting lured in the potential career path, which maybe is not yours, right? So, so because, because you want that influence, you know, you want that compensation. So you're getting sort of sucked into it. But then, as you said, people sometimes walk into that room and they go like, that's just not my environment. Like, I don't want to be doing this. And I actually have friends literally coming from, from that situation where they went into that team lead situation and they were like, yeah, it's just not me. They took a step back and went back into, you know, that, uh, hands-on path of just, you know, deepening their, their domain knowledge. So if, if I'm like not sure if I want to be a team lead, like, do you have, um, some tactical suggestions of how people could go through that decision-making process?

Yes, I think there's probably two 2 things here, right? So one is like, before you take on any formal responsibility, right, like start looking for the informal ownership of things, right? So whether it's like, we need to do— we need to— there's some activities which need to be done which are not like your normal 9 to 5, right? So if we just make an assumption that 80% of a person's job, 90%, 100% is like writing code as a software developer, let's you know, forget those companies where they spend an awful lot of time in meetings. But if that is your job, there's other work which needs to happen around that, right? It could be release planning, could be quarterly planning, could be release planning, it could be hiring, could be interviewing, could be onboarding new people, could be looking at new tools. Like there are other things which need to happen. So you could look to, you could look to sort of raise your hand and say like, I'd like to get involved in that. I want to do some of those things. Internships are really good as well, right? If you've got someone coming in, it's like, oh look, I'll, you know, be a buddy for the intern, right? They've got someone coming in for the summer or something. I can be their manager, I can be their thing, right? It's a limited amount of time. Maybe they're here for the summer, maybe 6 months or so. So you can kind of take on some of those responsibilities in a sort of time-limited way. So this is an opportunity for you to start to get some experience and exposure to what it looks like, what those other activities are, because a lot of those things are what a manager would be doing, right, or a team leader would be doing. So you can kind of start to take some of those burdens off. And you could, like, if you've got a team leader, manager, you can go and ask them, like, what, you know, what are you doing that I could take off your hands? Could I help you with anything? Whether it could be pair on something, or could I, could I do it for you, right? And then we can, then we can review it later. So I think that's the first thing is, right, it's like sampling, it's kind of try before you buy. And then if you're just like, I don't like doing this, I don't like organizing interviews, I don't like onboarding, I don't like, you know, it's like, then that's fine. Then now you know, but you've done it in a way where, you know, you've got this Amazon two-way door thing, right? It's like, I can go and sample it and then I can say, not for me, I'm going to come back, right? Actually, just give me back in the IDE, right? That's great. That's fine. You know what you want to do. Maybe try again in a couple of years. Then there's, um, so that next level, which could be, um, what I've seen a few times is trying to do it as a, like, something formal but time-limited, right? So let's do— and let's— there's good opportunities if people are, you know, go away, or that, you know, you need to basically sort of a secondment, you know, someone's on maternity leave, someone's on long-term sick, or we've got a new team which is a temporary team. It's like, can I take over that responsibility for a period of time? Like, it's a bit of a trial, right? 3 months, 6 months. And again, we can have some check-in points, and that might lead to a permanent role or permanent offer. Or it could be we do this for that 3 months, 6 months, and then we say, well, that was great, thanks very much, I'm going to go back to my old job. Um, so again, you can kind of get that little step without doing that full commitment. Um, and then of course there is the, like, applying for a job, going for the whole thing, and then, and then getting that job. The thing is with that is that that's kind of one of those like one-way— it's not exactly a one-way door decision, but it's like you've kind of made a commitment. You might have some expectation that you're going to be in this role for, you know, for a couple of years and that you're now on this track. So, you know, kind of going in there and then realizing quite quickly, not for me. It's like now you're impacting other people, you're impacting the business and your teams. So it's like look for those opportunities where you can have those two-way doors, you can do that try before you buy and get some of that experience to see if that's something which you like before kind of going for that, that bigger, more formal commitment.

I love having a chat with your direct manager because if you individual contributor right now, you know, and you're likely senior, you have someone you're doing one-to-ones with. Hopefully you have someone that you're doing one-to-ones with. But if you're not, you still have a reporting line to someone. And going in and going like, look, you know, I'm thinking about team leads, you know, I think that's a good career progression for me. I've been, you know, reading books, you know, I don't know, going to conferences or just preparing somehow. What could I do? You know, is there something you could give me right now so I can try all that situation? And just having that conversation and trying to create that opportunity for yourself, it is a lot more healthier. Than just making that decision yourself and just committing without actually, you know, going through all of that. And I love actually having an interview for it. Like internally, when people are getting promoted, I think it's like the easiest to understand how you're going to stack up is just like, just have a proper interview for that role. But you're, you know, with your manager or maybe it's like head of engineering or CTO, just get interviewed, get asked questions of what is needed for that role. And you're going to be like very quickly, okay, Maybe I didn't talk about that because I have no idea how to answer that question. So, okay, so we made the decision. So let's say our James, our fictional character, made the call. He just went, okay, I want to become a, you know, a leader of people. I'm going to approach this in the right way. So I'm going to take on some of the responsibilities within that. And I'm going to see how I'm going to be doing with that. So I made that call. What, what responsibilities should I be looking for as, as in that like trial mode? Like what is almost like one-to-one of what people should expect when they become a leader of people?

So I think, you know, different companies will have different types of manager roles, right? And a different balance of how much you're expected to be a hands-on technical person as a manager. So I think the first thing you need to do is really understand the expectations of the role for yourself, right? So speaking to that hiring manager, whether it's inside your company or whether you're interviewing somewhere else, like really understanding like what, you know, what the expectations, what the roles, how much time would I be, you know, writing code? If I'm writing code, am I doing things on the critical path or am I just doing like PRs, right? Um, you know, or other ancillary non-critical path kind of work. So like really understanding that and making sure that that's, you know, is okay with you. I've been, um, my first managerial role was at Pivotal Labs, which was, uh, you know, probably 90 to 95% of my time as an engineering manager was being an engineer. And it was no different, uh, it was just, it was that extra 5 to 10%, which was like, now I have to go and do I'm doing one-on-ones, I'm doing some hiring, I'm doing, you know, vacation approvals, I'm doing expenses, and some of the administrivia of being a manager, like, they're not the fun, but the, you know, it needs to be done. So that's probably like one end of the scale, right, where you're still 90% is you're still the same role. And then I've seen other roles where now you're a manager, you're not expected to write any code. And, you know, you're either still technical and you're doing, you are doing PRs and maybe you're doing more architecture kind of work, or you are non-technical and you're just doing, you are only doing people management stuff. So this is everything from, you know, hiring, onboarding, performance management, you know, reviews, one-on-ones, and that is your job. So I think the first thing is to understand like, where, you know, the role which you're applying for, where is it on that spectrum? And, and is that something that you want? Because those two things which I've just explained are very, very different jobs, um, and you might want one of them and not the other, uh, or the other way around. So I think that's the— that's a really important point. I think once you get beyond that first line manager, I think it does start to change. You become more of that people side. Right? And maybe you're doing more of the business side as well, and you start to take on more responsibility. And but you're doing certainly doing less coding. But that's almost like the one step removed. So it's like, are you this little half step engineering manager where you're still an engineer? Or is it like a full step? You know, you're going from, you're not really an engineering manager, you're a manager of engineers.

Do you believe the two-in-one roles actually work like that? Or not like work like that, but do they actually work in a sense of that they become an actual value add? And maybe I'll give more context. So I've seen that very popular in, especially in startups where, you know, effectively the funds are scarce and, and, and it's a sort of like a poor man's solution. Like you're gonna be doing 50% of your time coding and you're gonna be doing 50% of your time managing. So I call them 2-in-1 roles.

Yeah.

Like, in real terms, in your experience, do you think it's a value add or it actually is a disfavor to the person doing that 2-in-1?

I think, I think by the time you get to 50/50, it's probably not the right mix, right? Because, you know, anyone who's writing code knows that you need, you want to try and get into that flow state, right? You're, especially if you're doing something on the critical path, you're doing really important work, like you need time And if you don't have that time or you're being interrupted, whether that is like intent, like tap on the shoulder, do you have 5 minutes, which is quite common for a manager, right? Or whether it's, I've got, you know, I've got a half an hour meeting every couple of hours, like I can't just focus on something. It's really hard, I think, to be on critical path technical work and be doing sort of that people side. At that sort of 50-50 kind of ratio. Now, it did work at Pivotal when it was like the 90-10, right? Because a lot of people would carve out, say, an afternoon. So it was quite pretty. So the, you know, 4 and a half days of the week were totally engineering, and then like an afternoon or a bit would be, I'm doing people management stuff on like Wednesday afternoons. So it's very predictable and it worked. You can make it work, but it worked in that ratio. But I think more than that, then it's like I can't do both jobs, you know, I can't be good at both jobs. So I think at a 50/50, I think would be first for something as I think is, you know, engineering is a creative role and a problem-solving role. I don't think that's the right ratio. If it was something which was more predictable when I'm just doing the same thing over and over and over again, maybe. But I think for something which is more creative, like engineering, I don't think that's the right sort of ratio.

I echo the same, I echo the same, because I mean, my take is like, you are in a no man's land where, like, you don't want to be in a no man's land. You want to be either in the land of engineering where you're deepening your knowledge and you're getting the depth of your domain, cloud engineering, backend developer, frontend developer. You want like the biggest challenges you can get within that domain so you can advance, you know, your technical skills and you sort of just growing your career as a, you know, domain expert. Or you want to be a leader of people and really learn what's a good one-to-one, how to give feedback, how to give praise, you know, how to look at the team compositions, how to understand behavioral science of team compositions and, you know, all of that stuff. If you're trying to do both of them at the same time, which you in the beginning said, that's totally two different jobs. It really is. So if you're trying to overlap them, you're just in no man's land. You're not becoming a better engineer, as a coder, as a solution architect, and you're really not becoming a better as a leader of people. You effectively just managing some flows as a status quo, you know, I have to do this, it's very administrative. You're just sitting in that no man's land, as I call that, and you're not really advancing. So I personally don't like doing one roles. I think it's a disfavor to, yeah, to, to people. So I think, you know, if you, if you want to be a leader, be a leader. If you want to be an engineer, be an engineer. If you want to understand where you potentially want to go, as we discussed, maybe there's a good trial to be in that no man's land for you know, for an amount of time and just sort of get a flavor of what's waiting, you know, in another room. So, and I think people who never tried management or leadership and they're coming from this engineering background, one thing which I personally feel like it's being undervalued or underlooked is how distractive a manager role is. Yeah, like you constantly getting asked questions, you constantly, you know, have this fragmented diary of like meetings and this and that. It's, it's very real-time-ish. And of course there's a techniques of how you can sort of protect your diaries and things like that and stack things up, but it's a lot more distracting than just writing code, like, you know, because if you're coding, you just take a ticket, you put headphones on, you got like 4 hours of concentration, especially now with the remote culture, you're just getting things done. Manager get pulled all the time, all directions, especially middle managers. So it's just so, so a lot more distracting, and not everybody can cope with that.

You know, that's a— I think that example I gave that at Pivotal, those managers were, were really just doing a lot of that pastoral care of an individual, right? So it's really, it's one-on-ones, timesheets, some of the admin, some of that strat— the people strategy side, which you kind of mentioned, was done by the level above, right? Sort of the director level or senior, senior manager level. So there was that kind of split. So I don't think that was the no man's land. It was kind of a little half step in towards going down that path if you, if you wanted to. But I wouldn't quite place it in that, in that no man's land. But it's still like, you know, there's potential to, like, develop some, but not like a real well-rounded people leader. If you're only doing 5 or 10%, right, you're just kind of doing, you're doing some of the tasks on it. So yeah, so there's that.

Okay. So do you have like one-to-ones, you know, being the beating heart of any successful leader of people, do you have your own ways of how you like to approach one-to-ones? Like maybe a framework, maybe a process, or maybe just any tactical tips you would share?

So yeah, so a few things. So I quite like informal one-on-ones as a general rule, but following a structure. So there's an author called Michael Bungay Stanier, who's got some books on coaching, and he's got some great formulations of questions to ask, like, you know, what's the challenge you're dealing with right now? And, you know, can I help? And some other questions. So kind of like following. So there's a, you know, written in pencil kind of set of questions. It's kind of informal. I like to, you know, when meeting with people, I like to kind of get out of the office, like, let's go for a walk, let's go grab a coffee, right? Let's walk around the block, or if you've got somewhere nice, like walk by the park or down by the river, like try and get out of the building and just spend a bit of time with people and kind of just get to know them kind of just outside the office. So that's kind of what I like. But look, you know, People are, people are very different, right? And I think a lot of it is about not necessarily having a structure, but it's about really understanding what individuals, how individuals communicate, and how to get, how to get them to communicate if they're not kind of natural communicators. Like, I've had people who are, you know, within the first 5 seconds of, of a one-on-one, they're already like Right, here's my challenges, here's what I'm thinking about, this is what I'm worried about. And you're just like, wow, it's like an open book, right? It's like, great, you're just telling me everything. You know, I've worked with some people who you'd, you'd say like, let's go for, let's go for lunch, you know, let's go for, find somewhere like, and you spend, you know, 55 minutes of, of a lunch just talking about stuff. And then they wait for that last 5 minutes just as you're like, right, well, let's get back to the office. And they're like, I've got this thing on my mind. You know, but it takes you like 55 minutes to get to that point where they sort of now are comfortable to tell you the thing which they actually want to tell you, but you kind of have to go through that whole thing. So it's, so it's also about, you know, trying to use some of these tools and these frameworks, but understanding which tools and frameworks to use for which people and which people are going to, how to sort of unlock those people and kind of get them to open up. So that's, that's kind of another bit more of a meta skill, right? Trying to apply that to, to understanding what's the best one-on-one for this person. I've had also some other ones where it's completely informal. I've had some where we've got like a shared Google Doc, and people will put in notes, you know, they'll continuously put in notes. And then, you know, you're in a meeting, it's like, okay, well, these are things which have been on your mind since last time we met. Or some, you know, some people do a variation of that, which would be like, you know, the day before or something, but like, these are the 3 things I really want to talk about. Sending an email or Slack message or something. So it's, yeah, it's really trying to— having like a toolbox and then trying to feel like, what does this person need to get the best out of this time together?

I love that. And I do feel like it's a little bit maturity element with someone when it comes to being comfortable with one-to-ones and understanding the value of one-to-ones. For them and how they, how they use their time. I as well had many people who, you know, had the leaders before me and they know the value of one-to-ones and they know what, you know, they need to do with one-to-one. So you come in in that and they like, you know, what you basically said as an example where they go like, here's the things, you know, here's the risks, here's what I need you to do for me and things like that. And you're like, awesome.

You know, that would make my job easier.

Yeah, exactly. And then on the other side, you have people who potentially never had these one-to-ones. Maybe they just you know, came to this new organization and they're coming from something like a startup of like 4 people where this was just not a thing. And you don't really know what that means, that one-to-one. And so you need to almost like coach them for quite some time of why this is their meeting and this is where they get a lot, you know, done with you. So you're absolutely right. And tailoring yourself into individuals, 100%. So let's say, um, And this is, you know, going towards another tactical ask. Let's say, you know, I have this, um, what I call a courageous conversation in my one-to-one where I want to give a course-correcting feedback. Something is, you know, not right, so I want to deliver that constructive feedback, right? How do you go about that? Like, do you have your own ways of how you sort of give a course-correcting feedback to someone?

So I think first of all, we need to understand that you understand the context of what's kind of going on. I've seen, uh, not lots, but I've seen sometimes where there's assumptions which are made and then you kind of go in with some of that kind of course corrective feedback and then you learn something in that where it's like, oh, there was a reason for that and I wasn't aware of that and now we've kind of gone down this path, um, which is not relevant, or now it might actually backfire. So I think first thing is like, if you see, then if you're like, I think there's a challenge here, there's some, there's, you know, we're not getting, we're not getting the performance level or the output or whatever it is. I think the first is kind of going in, um, like staying curious, um, and asking questions, you know, just like it could be like, you know, hey, how are you doing? What's that like? Is there anything You know, anything on your mind, anything kind of going, going on, like, you know, what's stopping you from having your best day at work, you know, and trying to, trying to make sure that you've got that, that con— that wider context. And then, you know, depending on the type of feedback that you need to kind of give, there's some, there are some really good feedback frameworks. So If you're kind of going into that and, you know, potentially it's kind of some level of conflict, like just thinking through some of those things or jotting some of those down, looking at some of those feedback frameworks. So there's, you know, a couple which I like, I continuously go back to. So there's the SBI, which is Situation, Behavior, Impact. So like having that structure of like, okay, here's the situation, you know, here's what happened, here's the, you know, the behavior, this is what you did, and this is the impact of that. You know, another one is the Nonviolent Communication by Rosenberg, I think, and the structure which he has is quite similar, but it talks a bit more about feelings and trying to say like, well, this is how I felt. And, you know, it's hard to— it's more subjective, so it's kind of hard for someone to argue against how you feel about something. It's like, when you did this, I felt like that. You tend to elicit more response of like, I didn't really intend that. That wasn't, you know, it wasn't the intention. So there are a couple of different frameworks for different types of feedback that you need to give. But generally, I'd kind of go through that, you know, think through it in my mind or write something down and then kind of go and use that as a sort of a bit of a framework and to have that conversation, right, to kind of tease those things out. So Um, look, they're really important. That SBI is quite a good one because, um, if you take one of those things out, it can be really— it can be a really negative experience. Yeah, so if you say— if you don't have that situation, if you're just like, look, here's your behavior and here's the impact, uh, you might say, but when am I doing that? Like, I, you know, and if I can't see when I'm doing it, I can't create the, um, sort of an association. So then I can't stop myself from doing it again. Or if you say, like, you know, in this meeting, um, you have this impact, but if I don't know what I'm doing, um, to cause that impact, then I can't make any correction. And if you're just like, hey, in this meeting you're doing this thing, and I'd be like, okay, so what if I don't know the impact? Then, like, I don't know the, the effect that it's having. So you kind of need all of those three things. And ultimately, and where possible, doing it in like a timely fashion, right? So it's recency. So it's not that thing you did 9 months ago on a Tuesday, it was raining, you remember? No, I don't remember what you're talking about. Um, you know, so trying to do it like timely and, and, you know, having that association is going to help those individuals to say like, to, you know, place them in that moment in time, give them that, you know, be that explicit, um, so that they can kind of see that, so they can start to think about what, what they could do differently. And, and that kind of corrective things, you know, when it is more behavioral, most of the time people aren't aware that they are doing something which is perceived in, in a poor way. And most of the time people are quite receptive to getting that feedback if it's given in a good way. So you just need to make sure that you do that homework to make sure that you're giving it in a sort of professional professional way. We had something at Pivotal called ASK, which was actionable, specific, and kind. It's like, make it actionable, tell like, you could be doing this different, make it specific, here's the time, here's a location, right? And doing it kind, being professional, and just like, hey, you're just being a, you know, not being a particular nice person, but like, giving it, giving in a kind way, like in a professional, professional way.

I mean, at the end of the day, you are their leader. So your job is to course correct, if something is not right and it's just two individuals talking about how they can better themselves, of course you can always deliver in such a poor form that people cage out and they become quite defensive and evasive about, you know, the feedback you're giving. So all these frameworks, you know, are very great. And I personally love to add a thing which is like pattern matching before, you know, you give that feedback. So you, you talked about the context and understanding what's going on. I love to not engage in, you know, constructive feedback until I have at least a couple of times, ideally it's like 3 times of the same behavior taking place. So, you know, it's like, it's a real thing rather than people doing something because they had a bad day, you know, maybe something happened at home, you know, maybe they got caught in the traffic coming to office and they just in general were quite hyped up, negatively speaking. And they show some, you know, some bad colors, but it's not a thing, you know, it just came once, disappeared. But if it's constantly repeating itself, then you go like, okay, maybe we should have a chat about that.

There is the— whilst I agree, I see what you're saying, I would say also that you don't want to let things go on sort of too long, right? And I think if you think about it as like pressure, right, like pressure builds over time. So if people kind of keep doing things, you know, and there is a behavioral thing, the more you let it go, the more kind of pressure that goes. And when you kind of give that feedback, you'd be like, you could be saying, I've been doing this for 6 months, why hasn't anyone told me? And then you could kind of get a really adverse reaction. But if you are doing it, like, you know, like you come out of a meeting and you could say, hey, you know, James, look, the way that you spoke to, you know, that other person right, that developer, when you're estimating that story, right? Like, I think you made them feel like pretty bad, right? Because you told them they didn't know what they're talking about. If you can address it quickly, they might be like, ah, yeah, you know what, I just, you know, I got caught up in traffic and I'm kind of, yeah, I'm sorry, I should go. And I'm just gonna go and say sorry. I didn't like, I'm, you know, so you can like nip things. I think if you can nip it in the bud and you can catch it before it becomes an issue, I think there's something to credit there. But I think there's also one of the things as a leader You know, that, and maybe here's the difference between like managers and leaders, right? Like, I think as a leader, you have to get comfortable in delivering, in having difficult conversations. You have to be comfortable in working in conflict, right? So whether that's like, I have to create conflict and have that hard conversation to give that constructive feedback. You know, I think it's quite a human trait to avoid conflict. And you know, like, ah, you know what, you know, they probably just had a bad day. They probably just got caught up in traffic. I'll address it next time.

It's very—

I think it's very human to be like, I'm just gonna let that one go. And then if it happens again, maybe I'll do that. And I think also for, you know, for us in the UK as well, it's kind of quite a British sort of cultural thing as well. Like, oh, I don't want to say— I don't want to say anything bad, you know, I'll only be nice. But we're actually probably doing a disservice by You know, not being nice and kind are different things. You know, sometimes being kind is, you know, just saying it like it is, right? And doing, doing it in a timely way. So, oh, 100%. Yeah, yeah. So, so as a manager, definitely, as a, as a leader, getting comfortable with that is, is hard but really important. And I think it would— it makes you stand out as a better leader if you're able to do that in a professional way. But if you learn to feel to learn to deal with that. You might never enjoy it, but learning to get good at that is going to make you a better leader.

I'm going to go as far as— and I'll say that there's no way you're going to be good at leading people if you're not able to have a courageous conversation and give a course-correcting feedback in a way it actually yields results where people accept it and they start bettering themselves. There's just there's just no way you're going to be able to take 8 people, you know, you're leading in and make that team stick if you're not addressing what is called a healthy conflict where you're taking issues with the team, put it on the table and you discuss it and you, you know, sort of try to resolve them. Like if you feel uncomfortable and it will be uncomfortable maybe all the time, but in the beginning as a fresh leader, that's going to be maybe not the most uncomfortable thing you ever did, but it's going to be quite, quite uncomfortable.

It's going to be up there. Yeah, it'll be up there.

Yeah. So you need to go through that. And then, you know, all these techniques, all these frameworks, they really help. And one thing when it comes to talking about, you know, these feedbacks and why I like, you know, the pattern matching is that I love the saying of you cannot talk yourself out of a situation you behaved into. So when you talk with people about certain situations, you know, the defensiveness often comes out and people try to talk themselves out and they go like, you know, oh, this happened, that happened, it wasn't me, it was something else. Like, you can't talk yourself way out from a situation you behaved yourself into. So that means there's a behavioral traits within your character which places you in that, you know, anecdotally, that, you know, making someone feel bad when they're doing story sizing and you just sort of say something, you make remarks and you just make others feel stupid, something like that. Like, that's, that's something you behave yourself into. Like, that's, uh, you have to take that feedback in silence and really go home and think about that. All right, so we drifted a little bit towards the feedback. So let's go back to the James, you know, who is trying to become, you know, a leader. So before we go and talk a little bit about, uh, you know, what happens in the first year once you sort of come to that role, we have this question which goes, um, in the spirit of the show, we have this question which basically goes like this: if you would choose one, one piece, or one, uh, I'm trying to phrase this now, so what is the most important thing for any tech venture growth? But you can only choose like one thing. It could be action, could be framework, you know, it's like anything, it's one thing.

So what, so repeat the question.

So what's the one thing, the most important thing in your view for the AnyTech venture growth?

For the growth, I think, um, you know, ultimately people are doing the work for now until AI takes over everything, right? Um, people are doing the work, so, uh, creating a culture where people can thrive, uh, is you know, as a leader, probably one of the most important things which, which you can do. Now, how that manifests is going to be different from company to company, but I think really thinking about like, if I can help people be successful, people are going to have— are going to do good work, and that's going to feed back into the company being really successful. So I'd say if there's, if there's one thing, it's, you know, creating that, creating that culture. Because you as a leader, if there's only one of you, and even if it's you know, 5-person company, 20-person company, 1,000-person company, there's only one of you. You're not doing all the work, other people are doing the work. So, so creating that culture and that, you know, whether it is the psychological safety, whether it is the sense of mission, purpose, or the values of the company, like those things are important. And, you know, if you get that right, will yield the business results that you're— that you want at scale, whatever that looks like.

Okay, I love that. People, effectively the lowest denominator within any organization, which is the people, if you make sure they can do great work, as a result your tech venture grows. That's pretty much what we're saying, right?

Yeah, that and blockchain.

Buy Bitcoin. Some, some adverts I should play, like crypto ads right now. Buy some Bitcoin, right? Okay. So jokes aside, back to the main topic, right? So, okay, let's take our fictional character James. He made a decision. He did the trial. You know, he talked with leadership. He was able to sort of spend some time into no man's land, get a taste of the potential team lead position. He was like, you know what? I really enjoyed it. I really liked learning about good interview techniques. You know, I developed a sense of what is a good team player, you know. Now I'm in, you know, working with the teams. I'm doing these one-to-ones, you know. I love helping people, you know. I love achieving results with and through people. I want to stay, and I'm getting a role. So I'm getting a team lead role. How will my first year look like? And we're talking about the differences between what I left behind, which is the individual contributor, and And I'm now walking into this leader of people room. Yeah, like how that room looks like for me in that first year.

Yeah, so, um, there's a, there's a book which I really like. It's very, it's quite dense, but it's called The Leadership Pipeline, and it has this visualization of like a series of turns that you have to make throughout your career. And really what we're talking about here is, in this, in the parlance of this book, is the first turn. So you're going from Managing yourself to managing others, that's the kind of the first, the first thing. Now, a lot of people when they make this transition don't realize that it requires— it can require a change of skill, a change of time management, potentially a change of values, right? And kind of how you do the business, whatever that is. A lot of people, you know, they get promoted into a new role and they— and but they carry on doing their old role. You know, they don't actually make that transition. So I think the first thing is really to understand, like, is it a change of role, right? It's a different job, and that different job has different— you need to learn new skills, you need to think about how you manage your time differently, you need to— you might have a change of values or behavior, set behaviors which you have which need to change. So I think it's really trying to get to grasp with that. I think some of the things which will change is likely is the need to collaborate with different people, either across the organization in different roles. So maybe, you know, maybe as an IC, you're used to just working with engineers, maybe you're also in— maybe a product manager, maybe designer, but probably you're just used to working with engineers. But once you kind of get into that leadership position, now you start, you know, you might have to start working with product marketing or with sales or with others, right? And so trying to build those bridges, build those relationships, understand their needs, right? And you might have been as an engineer, you might have been like, ah, sales, you know, they're always just like shoving really unrealistic requirements into our backlog. But now you're like, now I'm going to a manager, I can fix that. And then now you realize like, oh, actually, look, they've got really big problems as well, right? Quotas and pressures and everything. So starting to acquire that empathy for those individuals in those roles and, you know, building those relationships is really important. Managing up is a really important skill as well, right? You know, as an engineer, you might have had an engineering manager who was really protective of you, and you kind of created this amazing environment, a bit like a bubble. But now you're outside of that bubble, or you're outside of that umbrella. You don't have that layer of protection anymore. So you kind of need to kind of go and talk to Maybe the senior management maybe needs to go and talk to customers more, right? You need to tell them that something's going to be late or the issue which is in production is not fixed yet. So there's more communication skills which need to be learned and sort of the both the sort of the conciseness and, you know, how you present messages and especially how you present bad messages, how you build those collaborative relationships, um, you know, it becomes, it becomes much less about code and much more about like human to human interactions.

I love that. Um, you mentioned the bubble of protection. I think that that's, that's probably going to get felt, uh, at least it was for me. And we're talking about fictional James, but now I'm just reflecting on my own experience. The, the realization of how you think about, you know, projects coming in, the requirements you're getting, uh, you know, not being clear, not enough, and getting annoyed with that. And all these things, once you're on the other side, you do realize that someone else is doing the best they can as well.

Yeah.

And, and that is the, like, the best form they can give you because they don't get things from, like, sales, and sales didn't ask. And it's really like this big chain reaction, and you start developing that realization or empathy towards these other processes. I do think that people who actually— team leads who protect their teams too much actually doing disfavor. I know that this sometimes happen, and I think there's a notion about like they don't need to know about these things, you know, they need to concentrate on coding. I have a different approach. I mean, I don't like protecting people too much. I think it's more about really explaining them the whys Yeah, and allowing the team to think about the house, because if you start protecting them from, from everything, you know, they lose the connection with the context. And that's where that frustration actually comes in, because they just don't know why requirements are, you know, shit like that. And they start filling those gaps with their own ideas, which sometimes can be, you know, a big disfavor. So I actually lean towards like, look, here's the situation. You know, here's a big why between, you know, before— not before, but behind what I'm asking. You go now figure the how, and you sort of, you know, don't have that bubble, or that bubble doesn't appear. Just a side note. So, um, um, relationship, I think, and do you agree, is a— you are in a relationship game now. Like, if you are a leader of people, you're going to be building relationship. It's going to be like very important thing to think about. Do you have your own ways of managing up and, you know, managing your peers, or managing down as well? Like, you know, some tactical tips of how you can manage up?

Yeah, so for managing up, just being very clear in your ask. So in my experience, You know, you're— when you're trying to manage up, you're trying to push something up. The person who you're trying to talk to is generally, let's say, like, they're generally very supportive of the work which you're trying to do, um, but they are probably quite time poor. So, uh, and, and again, trying to understand that, like, change of, like, time and values and, and the work if you don't have an appreciation of what's different about that person's role compared to what yours are, you're probably going to try and meet them on the same level that, that you are, you know. So you could be like, oh, let's book an hour meeting so I can walk you through this thing. It's like, I don't have an hour, right? Can we just— can we grab like— can you give 5 minutes? Just tell me like, what do you need? And I think I've seen it, I've seen it a couple of times where like people don't— people fail to kind of see that, and they'll kind of go and they'll go and present to leadership and executive, and they'll come out and they'll be really frustrated, like, I didn't get what I wanted. And then you say to them, like, you didn't make what you wanted clear. And, you know, you didn't— you left that ask way too late. You know, so I think just a general thing for managing up I've seen is make sure that what you're asking for is clear, and you ask it kind of early. And then Then you kind of say, you know, do you need more detail on that? So you might say, look, I need, um, we need some budget, we need to hire, we need to go and do this thing. Um, and, and like, do you need to know why? Do you need some more context? And if they say, yeah, well, that's a big ask, like I need to understand more about that before I approve it, like, great, I've got that information ready for you. But if they're just like, you know, if you go and say, you know, it's equivalent of like, oh, I need £2 for something, like, here's £2, go away, you know, leave me alone, I've got other things to do. And you're like, great, I got what I needed. So it's really about trying to understand, yeah, making it concise, probably putting the question, putting your ask up front quite early, just making it very clear, and just trying to have an appreciation of the difference of what that person's, you know, day looks like and how busy they are. And so I think that's something which I've kind of seen, yeah, a few times. I think is useful for managing up.

It's just remembering probably how your diary changed going from individual contributor to becoming, you know, a team lead or something higher, in general becoming, you know, a leader or a manager. And we're using this interchangeably effectively. I mean, there's a slight difference between leading people and managing, but it's very often that the best leaders, you know, go through some segment of their careers of doing just, you know, pure management. If you empathically remember yourself, you're going to be like, okay, well, that room looked totally different. You know, my diary just lit up as a Christmas tree compared to when I was individual contributor. Now it's just like meetings, meetings, calls, and all that. So now if you're managing up, think about the same. They probably have even worse than you do.

Yeah, so I kind of like to think of it like make it easy. If you're asking me something, it's like, make it easy for me to say yes.

Yeah.

You know, it's like, yeah, here's the thing, I need this. Can you help? Yes. Great. There you go. On to the next. If you kind of come and you're like, right, well, you know, I've got this thing and here's some background and I want to hear and what happens and you're just like, ah, why are you still talking? What do you need? What do you need? You know? Yeah. So I think it's just like clear, concise, you know, get to the ask quickly. And then, you know, they'll either say, yes, that's fine, carry on, or they'll say, I need more information, right? It's a big ask, it's a big commitment, or like, I don't understand it, right? And then, then they'll pull more out from you.

Yep, I love that.

I think in terms of like the, you know, the peers, um, I think that is where you just kind of— it's more classical, just relationship building. It's just like, hey, can we— great to be working with you, can we go and grab a coffee, can we get some lunch, right? Let's just try and get to know each other a bit on a human level. And, you know, I'd love to understand, like, what's your— what does your day look like? What is your— what keeps you up at night, right? I just want to, you know, try and build that empathy towards those people to get those relationships. I think that's kind of more— that's kind of more key at that point. And then when you understand each other on a human-to-human level, then when you kind of go into like, all right, now we're going to go, let's do some business, you're building on that foundation of having like pretty strong relationship already.

I, yeah, I echo that very strongly. I, I, I tend to never skip a lunch or do a lunch alone. Sometimes, of course, it happens, but I always try to fill in lunch and go with someone, with my peer.

I find it very hard to turn down a meeting that's got food in it.

Yeah, there you go. I'm not buying it though. It's like, you buy your own lunch, but we want to have it together, so we're gonna, you know, be humans and chit-chat about you know, the best TV shows you watched, or kids, or whatever will resonate with. And it's just going to be that human connection. And then I do love to ask a question of, how can I help you? Yeah, because, uh, when, when it comes to the peers, you're going to be very closely connected. You know, if you, uh, team lead for a certain team, that team will have deliverables which, you know, some product manager will depend on, some, you know, head of delivery will depend upon. Maybe there's some other team leads, you know, and you're sharing some, some spaces and code repositories and things like that, that there's always, um, you know, interconnectivity. And, and asking that question, you're effectively giving them permission to, uh, you know, share that, those dependencies. And just knowing them, not necessarily you go and do something about that because you're probably busy with other things, but just realizing where your indirect influence towards others comes from you know, you can always think about either avoiding or actually, you know, double downing on that help. So that's very healthy as well. So, so what would— what we have, Robbie, we have like feedback, one-to-ones, managing up, managing down, just building relationships. That's definitely coming like, you know, the first month you're in that role. But, you know, that's your first year. So undoubtedly, you know, there's a lot more things and and someone in that role would benefit from coaching to get that role done well. Do you have any advices or tactical tips of how a newly positioned leader, fresh leader, could get either external or internal help, mentoring towards just being a better leader of people?

Yeah, I mean, I think it can be, you know, inside your company, right, of having like trying to find some peer support. So maybe if you're a manager, like finding another manager who you can go lunches with, right? And maybe someone who's in a different part of the business. I mean, maybe they're still an engineering manager, but maybe they're like in a different group working on something else, right? So you get a level of abstraction away from what you're doing. So you're not necessarily talking about details of the job. You can be talking a bit more about like the people challenges and a bit of a higher level. So I think there's definitely that, just, you know, just do that. Go and talk with the other managers. You know, work with your people department, your HR department, and ask them, right? They, they— it's funny, as a, as a people manager, quite a lot of people don't actually go and work, like, talk to, talk to the people in the people team and the HR team and just say, like, what support is there? Like, is there— are there courses? Are there, you know, are there coaching things? You know, the 360s are really effective, right? So Maybe they've got programs, maybe they work with partners. Like when I was at Pivotal as a director, you know, I got put on a program which was similar to that where I got a coach and they did, we did 360 feedback and then they kind of gave me that back to me. And it was really instructive. So, you know, that was something which was organized through the company and they ran it for all of, you know, people in similar management roles across the company. This is probably, you know, a few thousand people at this point. So You know, it's better, it's more cost effective to run it as a program than as individuals. But of course, as an individual, you can still, you know, reach out and try and find coaches and mentors outside of the business as well. You know, just yourself. Again, you could work with your manager, you could work with someone in the people team. There are, you know, a number of coaching communities, you know, either people advertising directly or, you know, I work with organizations like CTO Craft, right? They've got a list of coaches, you can get in touch with them and they'll try and match you with someone who's, you know, you know, good fit, and based on what you're looking for in your career and the type of company you work for. So you can kind of get matched up, and then, you know, you have a relationship with that external person. So yeah, lots of opportunities there, I think, for people if, you know, they go out and look for it and ask for it.

I do love the external one for one simple reason. I feel like there's no bias baked into it. It's like when you— so I'm not diminishing the internal, uh, mentorship by any means.

I think, I think you should, you should do the internal one anyway. Yeah, yeah, you should. It's an, it's an and, not an or, I think.

Yeah, here you go. Like, you have that, you will have your one-to-ones with your, uh, you know, that direct line, and you will be giving your own one-to-ones or having your own one-to-ones with, you know, managing down. So you, so you will have your own one-to-ones. It might be just that it's going to be much shorter, you know, maybe it's half an hour will have like 45 minutes to an hour with your own, uh, you know, team, depending. But you will definitely have that, and you can always ask the questions which, you know, bugging you of how to become better. Sometimes though, it's like when you walk into this new career, and it is new career, it's, it's very, very different. You don't really know what to ask until you are in the situation. So you want, if you want to be proactive, maybe you're going to buy a book which tries overview that, you know, that first year, or you you know, couple years of that management and they'll, you know, give you some tips. Then you can sort of, you know, try to ask these questions. And that's why I really like external coaching. Like they don't have any sort of like biases baked in. There's no politics. There's no like, I don't know that person, so I have no opinion about that. So I'm not going to be withholding anything. It's just like, look, here's a theory of leadership, like boom, boom, boom. You know, you get all that knowledge given to you and then, you know, you can just sort of go through your weeks and and have these sessions. Of course, external, you know, being paid ones, not everybody buys into it, but I personally felt and got a lot more value from external leadership than internal in all occasions I've personally had. Okay, so, so we got that, and I'm doing well now, you know. I, you know, I have my team and, and, and all of that, and, you know, then it's just like new career path, and now you, you're just gonna you know, growing, you're going to get more people and maybe eventually going to become a leader of leaders and things like that. That, of course, is, you know, is totally another sort of episode. But before we finish, Robbie, one last question is, do you have any sort of stories to share where you've been with someone and, you know, maybe that's yourself, where someone went through that journey which we just discussed And on reflection, uh, there's like one thing or couple of things which, you know, very clear was done as a mistake. And if you would go back, you would go like, I wish someone told me that that's not what you do.

Um, well, yeah, it's, um, I don't know, it's very open, open question. I don't know, I can't, I can't think of any, um, any one thing I think maybe there's some of the patterns though. I think I see quite often US businesses who sort of just copy and paste the US culture and policy onto especially European organizations and then are surprised when things don't work out.

Doesn't stick.

It doesn't stick, or there's friction, or surprise It's like employee contracts are very different in Europe than they are in the US. So I think mistakes, but that's more of a kind of like real executive leader of just kind of, you know, making assumptions or just not even trying, just like we'll just do the same thing over here and not doing any kind of localization or really understanding the market and individuals. But that's quite a bit of a more of a, you know, the a meta one, I guess. Um, yeah, I don't know, it's, it's hard. You talked about the, you know, we talked about the bubble earlier as well. I think there's another pattern there of being overly protective of, of individuals, right? Um, uh, and then, yeah, being surprised when you have to kind of give some bad news. Then they're all surprised of like, I didn't, didn't realize it was that bad, you know. And it's like, yeah, it's been really bad for months. I've just been protecting you, uh, you know.

Here's the redundancies now.

Yeah. We're out of business.

What?

You know, yeah. So I think there's, yeah, there's different angles. It's kind of hard to think about one that's kind of really relevant at the, you know, I mean, hopefully if you're at that manager level, at the first line manager level, you know, hopefully you've got enough protection from your peers and your own manager to stop anything really bad happening. And any mistake— and you will make mistakes, and that's okay because you learn from mistakes— but hopefully your mistakes are like limited in their sort of size.

Hopefully you have a manager who will give you that feedback we talked about in that one-to-one and go like, look, you're making, you're making bad calls over here.

Yeah.

And here's, you know, here's how you could do that, and, you know, I'll coach you through that, or here's another person who can coach you through that. And that's You know, that's a good feedback loop which allows you to grow.

And yep, so like maybe one thing is like not asking for help actually, uh, and thinking that you can do it yourself. And then if, if you don't ask for help, if you don't share that with your manager, um, and you just take action sort of unilaterally, um, which potentially is inconsistent with the rest of the organization, that's when you can kind of get into get into trouble. So, you know, if you're in that first line report and you're not sure, ask for help. There's no penalty. No one will think any less of you asking for help, right? I think probably the inverse, you'll probably be like, thank you for asking. Thank you for asking for help. It's good that you asked that because we have this new policy which we haven't told you about yet that we're going to do this thing. And I've seen that manifest through potentially people implementing sort of a policy, their own interpretation of a policy. So I don't know, say it was like, can I take some time off to go to a dentist appointment or something? It's like, oh, look in the rulebook, the rulebook says no, so no, you can't do it. Versus the, well, let me just ask my boss, and it's like, oh yeah, of course, that rulebook, you know, don't worry about that, that's not really relevant, you know. So it's ask for help, or the error is not asking for help, I guess.

Yep, I love that actually, that's a very good shout. We had a couple of people historical episodes, we had Rob, uh, you know, who's a head of IT. We had Axel Craig, who's a CTO for a law firm. And in those two episodes, they basically were like, the smartest people are the ones who actually acknowledge they don't know things and ask for help from others in the team. It's just so simple, but just for whatever reason, our human nature is like, I'm not gonna tell that I don't know things. I'm gonna try to solve it myself. Maybe, you know, I'll read books or Google or whatever. It's like you got people around you, everyone are willing to help, just, just reach out. So that's a very good shout, that's a very good shout, Robbie. And where I was going with this question, by the way, is myself. Uh, I remember when I stepped into— I never went through any, uh, education, and it was very quick for me because I came to a business to interview for a senior role and I left being offered a team lead role. So I, you know, I made this jump too quick. So I walked into that team lead role as a senior developer. So I just micromanaged everything.

Yeah.

And my understanding of helping people was doing things for them.

Yeah.

And just telling them how to do things. So I spent like first 6 months of just doing basically a very poor leadership role. But it's good that I had a good CTO who basically just had to chat with me and went like, that's not how you do it. So this is where we finish today. All right, thanks everyone for listening, and thanks for everybody coming in. And hopefully that was, uh, you know, uh, as pleasurable for you as it was for me.

Oh, it was, uh, it was great. Thanks for making this happen. We've been talking for 7 or 8 months to get this to work, so I'm glad we could finally make it work.

Here you go. I'm glad as well, Robert. So thanks for coming again. Thanks everyone for listening. See you next time.

All right, see you.