Promotions and advancements.

And so I think a lot about where are employees involved when it comes to diversity, equity and inclusion.

And I look at that in the same way that I look at other metrics that we we strive for and whether they're driving towards those metrics.

If they're spending time on DEI initiative, that is time they're spending outside of their day-to-day.

They're building leadership skills, they're helping create an inclusive culture and that should be measured in the same way as other metrics are.

So I will put some weight into that as we make promotion decisions to at our company.

Welcome to the Super Managers Podcast, where we interview leaders from all walks of life to tease out the habits, thought patterns, learnings and experiences that help them be extraordinary at the fine craft of management.

Our goal is to bring you the lessons and the insights so that you don't have to learn through your own mistakes, but so that you can shortcut your way to being a great leader.

This podcast is brought to you by fellow the software platform that helps managers and their teams collaborate on meeting agendas, track action items, and turn chaotic meetings into productive work sessions.

Check it out at www.fellow.app Hey fellow managers and leaders, I'm Eden and I'm the CEO of fellow dot App.

Today, I'm very excited to introduce you to Sabrina LeBlanc.

Her and I have known each other for quite a few years now.

I want to say more than a decade.

I originally met Sabrina when she joined my last company, Fluid Ware.

And you know, more than a decade ago she joined and rose up the ranks at AT Fluid Ware.

And together we built the company and of course sold it to SurveyMonkey.

And while my cofounders and I were at SurveyMonkey for, I want to say just over 2 years.

Sabrina continued to stay at SurveyMonkey and continued to rise up to the ranks, do amazing things there.

And today she is the VP of Customer Success for SurveyMonkey Global.

And her and I always keep in touch.

We always talk about management and leadership.

We always talk about what's going on.

I always appreciate her insights.

She's also an avid listener of the podcast, and so I thought it was time to ask Sabrina to come on the show.

And of course, the conversation, as I expected, did not disappoint.

Very insightful.

I think we touch on a lot of different topics, but one of the ones that Sabrina spends a lot of time on is Cross Functional Communication.

She's in a CS function, and of course CS works a lot with other departments.

And so we talk a lot about the things that she's learned there and advice that she has for other teams that have to work cross functionally very often.

So much more in this conversation as well.

So I'm excited to dig in.

But before I do, just a quick thank you for everybody who's been giving us five star reviews.

Really appreciate it if you haven't done that yet.

It really helped us promote the show, so we'd love it if you could take a moment to do that now.

Five star review on podcast app of your choice.

And of course, if you wanna join the Super Manager Slack Workspace and hang out with other listeners of the show, lots going on there.

So send us an e-mail to super managers at fellow dot App and we will let you in.

And with that said, and without further ado, here's Sabrina LeBlanc on this episode of the Super Manager's podcast.

Sabrina, welcome to the show.

Hi Aiden, good to be here.

Yeah, Good to be here.

So for the audience that probably doesn't know this, yeah, you and Nine know each other very, very well.

How did we meet?

How do we know each other?

Yes.

We used to work together at a startup called Fluid Ware, which you were the Co CEO at the time with Ellie Fathy and worked there for two years with you before we got acquired by SurveyMonkey.

Yeah, And then?

And then.

You've been at SurveyMonkey ever since.

How long have you been at SurveyMonkey now?

Just close to 9 years now.

Nine years and then and then plus two years where we spent working together, so.

In total, 11 years of surveys and research, which Which is a significant amount of time.

Yes, it is.

It does feel in a lot of ways like I've worked for five different companies during that time because there have been so much change in evolution.

But yeah, it's been an interesting ride.

Yeah, that.

That's awesome.

So I mean lots of stuff that we're going to talk about today, but for the audience, you know, Sabrina is one of the most talented.

Leaders out there, someone whom I really, really respect.

And we had a fantastic journey together, building fluid Ware and subsequently selling it to SurveyMonkey.

And so there's a lot of lessons there to share.

But one of the really interesting things is Sabrina has.

Has continued to rise up the ranks at SurveyMonkey today.

She's VP of Customer Success there.

And there's a lot of insights and things that I constantly learn from her.

So I figured it might be a good idea to press record and share some of these things with everybody else too.

So I'm very excited to do that.

But why don't we start with the thing we typically do, which is to start talking about mistakes.

And Sabrina, I know you're a listener of the podcast, so you've heard many other mistakes from other people, but.

Do you remember when you first started to manage your leader team?

What were some of your early mistakes and some of the things maybe you don't do as much anymore?

I sure do.

Yes.

My first time as a manager was that fluid where where it was asked to build a VDR team and so this is a team that didn't exist before We were hiring people.

We were thinking about the process and the systems, and I remember early on as I started managing people that I had a tendency of wanting to be the hero and wanting to solve all of the problems for my team.

And it felt good.

You know, there's a feeling that you get when you're that manager who is going through the trenches and getting all of these problems solved.

And I think there's some positive to that.

But at the same time, I was disempowering my team by trying to solve everything.

And as we were scaling and as the team grew, I became a bottleneck as well.

And I was overwhelmed because I felt like I was dropping the ball everywhere.

And so I learned through that mistake that you just have to empower your team and help them figure out the solutions.

And sometimes you'll do that together.

Sometimes you are that person that needs to solve a problem for your team, but it doesn't have to be you all of the time.

So that was a big mistake that I made early on.

And I'm not saying I don't necessarily make it sometimes today, but I'm much better at recognizing when I I go in that direction.

So how did you how did you realize that?

Or what led you to want to change things up?

Yeah, I think I realized that through couple of different ways.

The 1st is my team giving me that feedback.

So early on I always been keen on asking for feedback, understanding how I can be a better manager, a better leader.

And so it's feedback that I've received from employees that I've managed.

I also remember one-on-one that we had together, you and I, Aiden, where I was telling you how overwhelmed I felt and that I was coming out of my one-on-one with my team members with all of these action items.

And I just remember you telling me why are you coming out of all the one on ones with these action items.

It should be the other way around.

And that really stuck with me and I realized that I was for no reason just taking on all of these actions and that was making me very overwhelmed.

Yeah, I can definitely resonate when you just want to do things and, you know, you know, push things forward.

You're in a meeting, you come up with things and you're like, yeah, I'll take that.

I'll take that one too.

Yeah.

And while I'm doing that, I'll also do these other things too.

And so before you know it, you walk out doing all of the things.

And so yeah, this is really sort of if some today like I I want to just dig into some of the details.

So for example, can you give me an example of something that might come up and maybe how you would act today you would try and?

Get someone else to solve a problem.

Let's say there's a serious problem and someone needs to solve it.

Say some metric you're tracking is, like, really, really down.

What do you do in a circumstance like that?

Yeah, yeah.

I think when I'm in let's say A1 on one and an employee comes to me with a problem, generally it'll be either an issue dealing with a customer situation or with a peer.

Let's say customer success in sales, they work very closely together.

So maybe they had a bad interaction and they're feeling like they want me to do something about it or they want to talk to me about it.

And I would ask a question after this conversation and say, is this something you want me to take action on?

Are you telling me because you just wanted to walk through the situation with me?

And a lot of times they'll say, well, I just wanted to talk through it with you.

And I'm like, OK, so how are we going to handle the situation?

Or have you talked to this person?

Or maybe they don't know who they should be talking to?

If it's an issue with the product, as another example, then I might direct them to the right place that I've been at SurveyMonkey for nine years.

So I know some of the leaders and the teams that and how they work together.

And so I'll guide them towards where to find that answer or who to have that conversation with instead of having it for them.

Yeah, I love that.

And especially that first question that you asked, which is do you want me to take action on this or are you just telling me because you want me to know?

And it it's very interesting because you can stop yourself from taking all sorts of unnecessary action.

And yeah, sometimes people just wanna be heard and have someone to brainstorm with.

So that's that's really cool.

And I agree that's a great, great question to ask.

You know Sabrina, you know part of part of your role obviously being in in CS.

CS is a very cross functional role, so a lot of the the stuff that you do is interacting with other teams and other leaders on other teams and.

You know, sometimes teams can have conflict or they might not work all that well together.

I remember when you and I were working together, there were a lot of times where we had to resolve, I guess, relationship issues between sales and customer success.

And so I think right as we were getting to the point of resolving those things, I think like that's when my time ended and I, I moved on from SurveyMonkey.

So I actually don't know where a lot of that happened, but you've been solving those sorts of problems for a long time now.

So yeah, maybe we can talk, spend some time talking about just cross functional teams and just things that you've learned and and helping make teams work Better Together.

Yes, I love talking about this topic.

I have a interesting background too because I come from a sales background and then I moved into customer success.

So in some ways I do know what it's like to carry a sales quota and the challenges that come with the end of quarter pressures if you're especially if you're a public company.

And then on the customer success side, now I've seen the whole other side of things, which is when we sell to a customer and we have to fulfill on those promises and make sure that we're delivering with the product.

And so it does help having that background.

But more importantly, I think communication has been so key to improving the relationship between sales and customer success.

Before I joined the customer success team a few years ago, I think there was a lot of friction that existed between sales and customer success and how to approach certain customer scenarios.

The sales and customer success teams weren't necessarily talking to each other very often and there was communication with customers that was disjointed.

So it was a bad experience for customers, it was a bad experience for the employees and no one was really finding that we were in a good place and that was something that I prioritize is trying to improve that relationship over time.

It does not happen overnight.

You really have to invest in those relationships.

You have to understand what are the friction points.

And one of the things I've learned through that process was that our incentive models were very misaligned.

And so when we were looking at what sales was getting compensated on, what they were rewarded on and the metrics that were being tracked.

And then on the other side, what success was being compensated on and rewarded on also did not align with the sales side.

So as you can imagine, when you're talking about individual compensation and metrics and you're not driving towards the customer outcome and what is right for the business, that can create a ton of tension.

And so we resolved that over time.

For example, in customer success, now we have both the gross retention target and a net retention target.

So we are not only responsible for renewing customers, but we are responsible for expanding them and sales owns the expansion target too.

So together, we're driving towards that outcome.

Yeah.

So it sounds like, I mean, two things if I were to pull these two points from what you said.

One is you mentioned that at least in some of the teams when you first got involved, they weren't really communicating as much with each other.

So it sounds like communication and making sure that they're just systems that ensure that people communicate more.

That's a positive.

And the other one which you pointed out was people having the same sorts of goals and the same sorts of incentives so that they're driving in the same direction.

So those are two really good points and I'd love to maybe dive in a little bit deeper into them, but.

Is there anything else?

Or if you do those two things, you'll be in good shape.

I think those are the two main things.

And I would say at the leadership level, when you're looking at your managers and your directors, depending on the size of your organization, having alignment at that leadership level and being aligned on the goals that you're driving towards and being able to share that same message across teams has been another factor in improving the relationship.

So we hold quarterly meetings as a team where we talk about issues that have come up in the previous quarter.

We talk about the wins like where we're seeing good collaboration between our Csm's and our A E's and then we build an action plan for the quarter ahead.

So an example of this would be, oh, we're noticing Csm's are not always inviting account executives to join business reviews.

Let's focus on that for this quarter to make sure that they're doing those together or maybe a CSM feels like an A E is not holding their weight on building the account plan for a customer.

Let's make sure that we're enabling the AES to, you know, work on that account plan and work collaboratively.

So we do a lot of work at that leadership level to align on what's working and what's not every every quarter.

Got it.

So it's almost like a retrospective that you run once 1/4.

That's right.

Yeah.

And so who attends these?

So is it just the leadership?

Is it everybody?

How do you get the feedback to bubble up?

To the leaders to discuss them, yes.

So we do it with the leadership team, but we also host sessions with the Csm's and Ae's.

So just earlier this year we had a panel of a Es and Csm's that talked about some of the realities of a day in the life of an AE and a CSM.

And that was such a great session.

And I remember the team sharing afterwards like they just didn't realize some of the pressures that the teams face.

And building that empathy, I think, helps improve the relationship.

And sometimes it's easy to judge someone because you don't really know what's happening on the other side.

But once you get a sneak peek, it really helps build that empathy and relationship.

So yeah, the panel sounds super interesting, so I think it sounds like a very entertaining thing.

Probably some like provide some Comic Relief where people come in and have those sorts of chats.

But maybe explain to me the setup.

So if I wanted to run one of these.

You know, at fellow how would I go about doing it?

Like what was the format, you know, how did you invite people?

What happened?

Yeah.

We invited the entire sales and customer success team and then we had a facilitator who walked through a series of questions with these and Csm's and they were tailored towards understanding what a day in the life is of the CSM and an AE, understand the challenges that they face and then also dig into some of the issues that they see in the collaboration and what they would like to see improved.

So it was very candid and open and honest conversation.

It was respectful.

Of course, that's important.

It's not meant to be a live conflict, but it is something that just helps us bring the relationship forward and acknowledge where we still have room to grow.

And then of course letting people ask questions and probe a little bit deeper onto certain topics.

I think that's the something that can help the the conversation when it comes to the panels.

Yeah, I mean what I like about the this sort of thing, I mean doing this retrospective I think and I've you know we've heard this from other guests as well.

But anytime you have two teams that do a lot of work together, it's just in general a good idea to have some sort of system, a retrospective if it's quarterly, heck if it's twice a year, you know at the very least once a year, right.

Like there should be a mechanism where people get together and reflect on how you work together so that they you can improve.

The other thing which is really helpful is people will feel heard, right?

Because often times if the complaints are not addressed or things don't get better, what I find is in retrospect is if there's an opportunity to talk about, hey, we, you know that thing that we talked about last time, guess what?

Like it's it's going really well and now we're doing it like this.

And you know, that just instills a lot of confidence.

I find in people that this is a company that listens.

And we change things and we got better every quarter, that's right.

And I think it's important to celebrate both the wins and the mistakes.

So sometimes you can get stuck on everything that's not working.

But there are great stories to share about how the collaboration between two team members led to a great outcome for the business, for a customer.

And sometimes there are some mistakes that we made and we need to acknowledge those two because that's what's going to build the trust with the team that we can look at the two sides of the coin.

Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

And so the other thing that I did wanna talk to you about is from a mentorship perspective.

So I know that you are very passionate about the topic of mentorship.

You mentor a lot of people and you're active to make sure that, you know, you receive mentorship.

So maybe talk about that, you know a little bit more in detail.

Why is mentorship important?

Yes, sponsorship is really important to me because I think as you're growing in your career, you acquire this wealth of knowledge.

And as we've talked about in the beginning, we make a lot of mistakes that others can learn from.

And we do some things right too, that we want to share with others.

And I feel like a big part of my role is to empower that next generation of leaders and to impart things that I've learned.

And I I think I learned as much from the people I mentor as they may think they learn from me.

It's very much A2 Way St.

And I seek mentorship for myself.

And I've been fortunate to have so many people in my career who have been there for me.

Sometimes mentors, they come and go.

Other times they stay with you throughout your life, and they become not only career mentors, but even personal mentors.

And that, to me, is something you should always carve out time for.

It is a point of reflection.

You want someone who is invested in you as a person and someone who will give you advice in an honest and constructive way.

So I always carve out the time both to mentor others but to get mentorship for myself.

And I think you have received many of my phone calls in the past eight.

And as I was going through different challenges and wanting to get a different point of view, and I really value that because it makes me a better leader and then I can bring those learnings to others.

So I feel like it's one of those things that keeps on giving.

Yeah, it was that mentorship.

I just thought we were having fun and having a good conversation.

So yeah, I'm glad some.

Some useful things were said, so let's talk about the like, how do you actually do it?

So for example, when you are finding people that you want to mentor, do you just find someone in the org and you say, hi, I'm going to mentor you?

Do people come and ask you how does it practically happen?

Yeah, I think it's a hybrid.

I think sometimes it happens organically in that maybe you're on the same team and you develop a relationship and then you continue that on in a formal mentorship capacity.

Maybe you have a monthly coffee chat to talk about their career.

Other times you might seek someone, and I've done that in the past too, someone who I see just a ton of potential with that we have a a good connection, but I want to explore that further.

And so I'll bring that to the table and see if they're interested.

And then I've had people ad hoc come to me and ask for mentorship from me that I may not know recently or they may not even work in my organization.

And I have always said yes.

Anyone who has come to me asking for time, I will always give the time because others have done this for me too.

And I think it's a good use of time.

No matter how busy you are or the work that is on your plate, Carving out that half hour makes a whole difference and it usually will come back in spades, so.

Got it.

And and so how does it work in terms of if you wanted to ask someone else to become a mentor like what what is the the playbook?

Do you actually go out and say, hey, I'm looking to fill my mentorship roster, would you like to join and be a mentor and we're gonna meet once a month or how does it work?

It's a great question.

And as much as I am passionate about mentorship, I don't like the label of mentor and it's like you said earlier, I don't say, hey Aiden, can you mentor me?

I would give you a call and ask for advice and I see that as mentorship and I think that term mentor may overwhelm people or find that it's way too formal that you're not willing to take that step and ask someone.

So instead of asking, will you be my mentor?

I think it's as simple as saying, hey, I would love to spend time with you, grab a coffee.

I wanted some career advice and I think you can really help me in this area.

Would you mind spending 30 minutes of your time with me to talk about that?

I think that's a lot less intimidating.

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And with that said, let's go back to the interview.

I love that.

That's so much better and I think like that's such a great playbook because what I like the way that you phrased that was.

It's not high.

Can you know we have 30 minutes and I will pick your brain because that just sounds so vague.

You know about what and you know why would I do this And but when you say something like I need help in this particular area and I think you can help me because of blah blah, blah, it's just a lot more focused and people are are much, much more likely to say yes.

So I think that's a really, really good approach.

And then what I would also add is that when you have the initial conversation, sometimes there's just really good rapport, right?

And it just becomes natural.

Like you wanna talk to them more, they wanna talk to you more.

Other times, you might not want to continue this over the long term.

And so, yeah, I think it's.

It's and you know people wanna help too so when you're when you're asking for mentors like they do get something out of it like you said it's a two way St.

mentors will learn from you but also at at some level you know everybody wants to be helpful and that you know also helps them feel good too.

So I think it's definitely definitely something that people should engage in.

So do you have like a active learning plan like would you ever say you know this year or this quarter I wanna get better at?

Thought And then, you know, find new people that you've never met.

Like, do you ever cold outbound anyone in that way?

That's an interesting question.

I don't think I've cold outbound based on a specific skill set I'm trying to develop.

But I look for the people that I admire and that have a skill set that maybe I'm not excelling at quite yet And I'm like, I really want to get there.

And I think I can learn from this person and that's when I'll outreach them and and ask for some time to help me grow in a specific area.

I can give you an example of this to this year.

I went to gain site Pulse and I was selected to speak at the conference and I had never spoken at a conference on content that I was building.

And I felt really overwhelmed by the idea and didn't think that, yeah, it's.

Really huge conference, right?

It is.

It's the biggest CS conference, so for us it's like a big deal.

And I was overwhelmed even by the idea of applying to speak at a conference.

And so I seeked advice and mentorship from my friend Alexandra, who had done this many, many times and had been a keynote speaker.

And she told me something that stuck with me, which was you don't have to have the whole plan and the whole presentation, just throw your hat in the ring and know that you are an expert in this field, and then take that next step.

And so she really distilled it down to something very simple which gave me the courage to go and apply, and I think that is really good advice that she gave me.

Yeah, and of course Alexandra Sunderland been on the show as well.

Make sure to go check out that episode was also a really great episode.

But yeah, sometimes it's distilling things into super simple ways, talking to people who've done it before.

That makes the difference.

And yeah, it's.

The other thing is like you can have mentors or role models in.

You know, for different skill sets because it doesn't mean that you wanna learn everything from that person.

And maybe they're not good at all those things, but maybe there's something specific that you wanna learn.

And and I think that's a that's a really good way to go about it.

Yeah, I mean, same for me, right?

Like, I I have my, my set of mentors and I like to learn different things from different people.

And so, yeah, that's definitely, definitely part of the mix.

So Sabrina, another thing that I did want us to talk about is.

DEI initiatives, right.

So you've been involved, this is an area that you've also been passionate about driven a lot of the initiatives at the various businesses departments that you've been involved in.

Why don't we talk about what are some of the initiatives that you're championing today at SurveyMonkey?

How do they work and what can people learn from them?

Yeah.

I mean, on the DI front, I think at the core what it's all about is people feeling that they are included, that they have a voice, they feel heard and they feel valued.

They also want to feel like they have equal opportunity for growth and advancement.

And so as part of my role as the executive sponsor of the Ottawa Diversity, Inclusion and Impact Group, I want to make sure that I'm empowering my team to be able to create that inclusive environment.

And our focus is on the Ottawa community within SurveyMonkey.

But we overlap with all of the other ergs that are company.

So ERG stands for Employee Resource group where groups across the company who share common issues get together and they might be planning specific events and we are helping instill those within the Ottawa community or they want to raise awareness to certain issues.

And so we need to make sure that we're communicating that broadly across the business.

And for me, as I think about being a leader in this organization, I make decisions on promotions and advancements.

And so I think a lot about where are employees involved when it comes to diversity, equity and inclusion.

And I look at that in the same way that I look at other metrics that we we strive for and whether they're driving towards those metrics.

If they're spending time on DEI initiative, that is time they're spending outside of their day-to-day.

They're building leadership skills, they're helping create an inclusive culture and that should be measured in the same way as other metrics are.

So I will put some weight into that as we make promotion decisions to at our company.

Got it.

And and so how does it work?

Like, what are some of the goals that you might have?

Yeah.

So I would look at that as a criteria that we talk about when we make decisions.

So the way that it works is we have calibration sessions where managers come together and they bring employees within their team that they think are ready for that promotion.

And there's different criteria based on role, but as part of the questions that we ask and the decision making workflow, we would ask you know are they involved in ergs and big groups, Have they helped foster inclusive environment?

How did they show up for their teams?

How do they help others feel heard.

So it doesn't always have to be formally as a Co lead of an employee resource group, but it can be that someone brings the voice of the team every time.

We're not hearing from someone, they're the ones that are asking them to chime in like that also is part of creating that inclusive environment.

So we talked about that a lot in this process and we talked about mentorship earlier too.

I think it's very important, important when you're mentoring others that you are being thoughtful of how inclusive you are.

Because it can be easy to want to mentor the people who are just like you.

And you're like they remind you of you when you were just starting out as a leader or you have so much in common and so you're going to give a lot of time to that person.

But also think about other people who may not have as much in common with you but can be a great person to shape up the leadership team over time.

And so I think about that too, as I I mentor individuals and look for potential talent.

That's awesome.

And so that is a great way to make everybody in the company know that you're serious about this when it's a promotion criteria.

And so yeah, it shows a commitment to really foster that kind of environment.

And if it's a criteria for advancement, then everybody gets the message.

And so I think that that is awesome and a good way to promote it.

Sabrina, another thing I know that you're super passionate about is just promoting a growth mindset culture at work.

And you know I I've seen this in action from you.

So maybe we could talk about some of the examples.

So if someone says that I want to build more of growth mindset culture in my team and my company, what are some things that you might advise them to do and what are some examples of things that that you've done?

I think I've been very fortunate in that my early career I spent at a startup where I think you had no choice but to have the growth mindset.

There is no such thing as any activity that is beneath you or this responsibility doesn't fit in your job description because your job description keeps expanding.

And I think I learned very early on in my career through working at Fluid Wear that a growth mindset is the only way to to grow as a leader.

And I've brought that into my leadership and my management team ever since.

I would say that if you are looking to build this growth mindset with the team, need to start with yourself and how you're showing up and how you're leading by example.

Are you asking for feedback?

Are you acting on that feedback as a leader?

Because as you lead by example, that is the best way to showcase the growth mindset to your team.

And then are you capable and able to give honest feedback with care and empathy to your team?

A book that I think is great in that realm is radical candor.

You do need to give feedback constructive to your team and be as specific as you can, because that's how they're going to grow.

And if you have that foundation of trust and empathy, then you will see that it's received well on the other side because they know that you have their best interests at heart and you're doing this to help them grow.

And so promoting that culture of feedback in real time.

It can happen during formal reviews too, but it can't just be saved for that one point in time.

It has to be organic and something that you do very regularly.

And one of the things that I do in my role now as a VP is I because I don't have as much time with individuals who are on the front plans.

As I scheduled skip level meetings on a regular basis to hear from the team to understand what's top of mind for them, issues they're they're having, how I can better support them as the leader of this organization and what are the roadblocks they're facing.

And then I take all of that back and I try to act as on on as much as I can of the feedback that came out of those those skip level meetings.

I I think that those are all really good ways And one other thing that I'll also point out which we we were talking about as you were talking previously about you're talking about the mistakes and what you learn from them when you have retrospectives.

I think that also adds to it, right.

So if people are not afraid to make mistakes and and take risks and know that it's gonna be okay and we'll make mistakes, but as long as we learn from it, then I think that that's another thing that you know to your point will build trust and you know, allow.

People to experiment and and try these new things and get outside of their comfort zone.

Yeah.

And I think I would encourage leaders to foster conflict.

That might sign sound strange, but if everybody's always agreeing all the time, then you're probably not progressing towards the right outcomes.

So I'd like to ask in meetings if I haven't heard from someone.

I haven't heard your point of view on this.

Can you tell me what what you think or does anybody disagree with the direction that we're taking?

Don't assume that because people aren't speaking up that it means that they're agreeing with the solutions that you're you're discussing.

So I make a point of trying to get like another side of the team and opinion and how you react to that disagreeing comment.

That's how you say it is going to say a lot to for the team if it's a safe place to disagree or not.

So if you're reacting very defensively or well we decided this because of this, then the team is not going to feel comfortable the next time around to say their opinion and be honest with what they're really thinking.

So I try to, as much as possible pause when I'm hearing a differing opinion or disagreement with something I am presenting or something that as a team we thought was the right solution.

And I will probe on that and ask questions about where they're coming from and taken into account.

And I have made decisions before based on feedback that came out and decided to go in a different direction.

So I think it's a really healthy thing to do in a meeting and ask for for different points of view.

You know, it's what you said reminded me of.

I'm pretty sure I'm remembering the anecdote correctly.

But in the the book, the effective executive famous Drucker book, great book, worth rereading.

I actually, I think sometime last year I I reread this book and there was this anecdote in the book where you know, I think Alfred Sloan is hosting a meeting.

And everybody's agreeing on whatever the topic is.

And he says, ladies and gentlemen, we're gonna excuse ourselves.

We're gonna adjourn this meeting until you can all go back form some disagreements, and then we can come back and redo this session, right.

So just to the point of actually encouraging disagreement, I do agree that this is.

Something that everybody should definitely invest in and yeah, encourage healthy conflict.

Healthy conflict is always a good thing to encourage.

And one more topic that I think we should also touch on is it's been a, you know, crazy few years, right?

Since your first server is COVID, then there was, you know, hybrid and remote.

Now there's all this AI stuff that's happening, basically.

It seems that the world just doesn't stop changing and it can be scary because this change is so rapid and it feels like the rate of change is also increasing, which which also adds to the detention there.

So what are your thoughts?

I mean as a leader in, in these times, how do you show up to work and what do you think some of the things are that everybody should do to to manage well in these environments?

Yes, there has been a lot of change and uncertainty in the world and especially in tech in the last year, just a ton of change in the markets and and companies struggling.

And so it's it's not the easiest time to lead, I will say that.

But I think what's truly important is how you show up for your team and how you check in with them individually.

And I think the pandemic made things worse too where people felt even more isolated.

Not everybody has a a partner at home that they can lean on that everybody is in a workspace that's super productive.

So checking in, having those one on ones, having those skip level meetings, those are ways that you can get a pulse for how the team is is feeling.

Another thing that I implemented with the customer success leaders has been what we call state interviews.

So we spend some time, one-on-one with everyone in the organization and ask them a series of questions to understand how engaged they were, how they felt about the direction of the company, how they felt about the leadership of the team and whether they felt supported to and addressing certain issues that they were having in their role.

And so we took all of that back.

And then.

Built an action plan as a team to address some of the challenges that came up in the last quarters and so those are some ways in which I check in.

I've done red, yellow, green exercise too with the team at the top of a meeting to understand.

Like on the professional side, where are you on the red, yellow, green front on the personal side as well, red, yellow, green.

And what you'll see oftentimes is those are different on the personal than they are on the professional.

And it also builds that connection to what people are going through at home, and it's a good way to check in.

So lots of good tips here.

Let's start with the red, yellow, green things.

So is this, say you know, you're in a meeting setting?

It's a group meeting before you begin.

Everybody kind of weighs in on that on each of those.

And you go around the table and if someone says, I'm just curious, so if someone says I'm a red in personal, do you dig in or do you just like, you know, move right along or how does that work?

Yeah, usually they'll share a bit more than that, but it's whatever they're comfortable sharing.

So.

And not everybody's level of vulnerability is the same, I've learned.

So you let them share whatever they they like to share.

And if someone goes in and says I'm a red and doesn't provide context, I would probably follow up after the meeting and say, hey, like, are you okay?

Do you want to talk about it?

In a group setting, it can be a little overwhelming.

I also wouldn't recommend to do this in a huge setting, a huge group, but in a smaller group that works well.

Yeah, so that that's really good advice and let's talk about this.

Stay in interview again.

I'm going to get very tactical here because you know, one of the goals on the podcast is for people to be able to take things and.

And be able to try new ideas with their teams.

So I mean, would I send you a calendar invite and literally in the title it says stay interview with a series of like questions that I'll share with you in advance or how did how does this work?

Or is it just, hey, just a casual thing as part of a one-on-one that you'll know one supporter or some some cadence like that, you'll ask special questions like give us the very tactical details of how do people do stay interviews.

Yes.

So we took it very seriously.

We gave questions to everyone ahead of time to help prepare and think through these answers.

And we stick to the questions.

And there were rules in place too, as we were having these interviews.

The number one rule was do not interrupt or chime in or provide an example or a rebuttal to what the team was saying.

It was purely listening.

So you ask the question, you listen, you type and you take notes.

So that was one of the things that we gave us guidance.

We had a a group of leaders that was doing this across the org.

So we were following the same template.

And then the last question that I think gave us the most insight was more open-ended and less specific, which was, is there anything else that you would like to add to this discussion today?

And that's where we got things that we weren't necessarily thinking about in the questions we were originally asking.

So I think having a more open-ended question that doesn't point people in certain direction is a good idea if you're going to do something like this.

I think we do a lot of work with exit interviews sometimes, like thinking about why people are leaving, but why are people choosing to stay?

What keeps them here, What keeps them engaged?

What are they excited about?

And then what could make them reconsider?

The decision to stay with the company is something you should know.

And so I think it's a really good exercise to do in addition to understanding why people are leaving.

So in in an exit interview, sometimes you know, depending on the company and you know who works there and who who does these things.

Sometimes it's you know, HR that that runs these interviews.

Sometimes it's the hiring manager.

Sometimes it's another manager on the team that's not the direct manager of the individual like who runs these stay interviews.

And and also let's talk about cadence like how often should people do this.

Yeah, for the exit interview it's usually our HR team that would run those conversations and if there are big issues that need to be discussed, those would be shared with the the managers.

But they tend to look at the feedback holistically and look for trends as to why people are leaving and and addressing those trends on the state interviews.

Those are run by the leaders on the the team and it's not something that's mandated across SurveyMonkey, it's something we chose to do and customer success and we've run them like once a year roughly so.

OK.

Yeah, that makes sense.

So, yeah, that's the tactical playbook on how to run these things.

And I assume this is a thing that you've done and the thing that you will continue doing because it's worth it and the results actually contribute to better team environment, better team performance.

Yes, it is absolutely worth it.

And we've got such positive feedback from the teams and starting these stay interviews.

So we plan to continue doing them.

We've taken action based on the feedback and you can't action everything.

So I want to be realistic that you're probably going to get 20 issues that people are concerned with, but even if you tackle five of those, that you're making progress in the right direction.

Yeah, that's awesome.

And so Sabrina, we've talked about a lot of different things today.

We talked about DEI initiatives, we've talked about cross functional teamwork, we've talked about growth mindset and so many other things.

And it was a fun time also talking, taking a trip down memory lane and.

And talking about some of the ways that that we used to work together.

So the final question that we like to end on for everyone on this show is for all the managers and leaders constantly looking to get better at their craft.

Are there any final tips, tricks or?

Words of wisdom that you would leave them with.

Yes.

Well I will start with a book recommendation.

One of my favorite books is The 1st 90 Days.

I would recommend that you read that if you're a new manager or you're stepping into a new role or taking on a new team.

I've read this book four Times Now, so every transition I've made in my career, I reread it to remind myself of the importance of listening, having a clear plan for the 3060 and 90 days and there's some super tactical advice.

So that would be one of my book recommendation and in terms of.

Yeah, I was just gonna say, I have to also shout out Michael Watkins, who wrote the book and is also was the Super Manager's guest and he was one of the most contrarian people that I've ever met.

And you should absolutely go check out that episode if you haven't.

But yeah, I agree, great book and I interrupted you.

So what else would you have as advice for everyone?

Yeah, I would say trust your instincts.

I think we sometimes can get overwhelmed with data and metrics and wanting to have all of the points of view.

But as a leader and with experience, you'll see that your gut and your instincts are right most of the time.

And so put some weight into that as you're making decisions for your team and listen to your team as much as you can carve out the time for feedback.

We are a feedback company after all.

So we we do surveys a lot you to engage employee centers and I would just encourage you whatever format makes sense for you and your company to take the time to listen to your team and understand what's working and what can be improved.

That's great advice and a great place to end it.

Sabrina, thanks so much for doing this.

Thank you, Aiden.

It's great being here.

And that's it for today.

Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of the Super Managers Podcast.

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