Management is an art.

It's not a science of exactly do this, this, this, it's an art where you're applying a lot of different techniques using different tools and learning as we go, right.

I mean, it's, it is a work in progress.

I think for all of us, 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 in 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.

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I'm Aiden and I'm the CEO of fellow dot app today, I'm very excited to introduce you to Karen Catlin.

She has an extensive bleeder ship career with more than 25 years of experience, building software products and serving as a vice president of engineering at macromedia.

And Adobe today, she coaches women to be strong or leaders and she coaches people to be better allies for members of all underrepresented groups.

She coaches Executives at companies like Airbnb doordash, Google Intel Into it.

And the list goes on today we talked about a number of different topics including the idea of glue work, the idea of acting as a savior and how sometimes that can actually be a trap, being a door opener and not a gatekeeper and a bunch of other topics.

Including if you are having a hard time on how to give feedback, it's possible that you actually have to take a step back and start by thinking about whether or not you delegated.

Well, To begin with.

So lots of topics that we chat about today, really enjoyed this chat with Karen.

And what I wanted to say is a big, thank you to everybody who's been giving us five star reviews for the super managers podcast.

These reviews really, really help us promote the show and recruit the guest that we do.

So thank you all for helping us with this and giving us your reviews.

And finally, if you haven't joined the super managers, slack workspace.

And you want to join just send us an email to Super managers.

Fellow dot app and we will bring you into the community.

And with that said, and without further Ado, here's Karen Catelyn on this episode of the super managers podcast.

Karen.

Welcome to the show Aidan.

It's a pleasure to be here.

Thanks for inviting me.

Yeah, very excited to do this.

I know you've had a pretty expensive leadership.

Career working in Tech leadership companies like macromedia and Adobe, I remember using the first versions of, you know, everything from, you know, Flash.

But also things like Dreamweaver and fireworks and like, those were like I was very much into those tools and was very, very sad when things like fireworks disappeared and so on and so forth.

So I don't know.

Were you involved in building any of those products?

Yeah, I was the first program manager on Dreamweaver.

Oh wow.

So yes.

I was part of that and I had been at macromedia before, then doing a bunch of different roles.

So working kind of across the product line and when Adobe Acquired macromedia, I joined Adobe.

So I was there for 18 years.

So I pretty much work.

I would say every product over those 18 years in some capacity.

Yeah that's awesome.

And so you must know, Tom Hill.

Oh yeah.

Good friend of mine.

Yes.

Oh excellent.

Yeah he worked at I don't know if you knew this but I used to us work at Survey Monkey and he spent some time at SurveyMonkey and so we had some over up there.

But yeah, so lots of stuff for us to talk about today.

You know your coach you spend a lot of time.

Coaching a female leaders focusing on teaching, people to be better allies and work with all sorts of companies.

All the names, we're all familiar with Airbnb.

Google Intel, so on and so forth.

So let's start from the very beginning there.

When you were at wherever you started your first leadership prayer, whenever use for sure, managing or leading teams.

You remember, some of the early mistakes that used to make, do I remember the mistake?

So, yes, they're still like, cringe-worthy, in my memory banks.

A lot of mistakes.

I worked at a small research group that for whatever reason I moved into leadership roles management roles like within a couple of years of starting my career.

So I was in my early 20s when I started managing people and while I had a great role model in my manager, I still made a lot of mistakes.

Okay.

It's embarrassing to admit, but let's think about this one big area of mistakes that I made.

I'm sure was around giving constructive feedback.

Really like I cringe when I think about some of the conversations and I still remember some of them to when I reflect on giving people constructive feedback.

How I used to do it?

I think the real problem with the situation was I didn't know how to delegate so if I didn't really know how to delegate work in a good way, in a productive way, in a way it's like here's my expectations.

Here's what the deliverable looks like.

Here's what success looks like.

If I couldn't do that then of course I can't give someone constructive feedback on the project.

I tried to It to them because they can't read my mind.

They don't know what my expectations are if I don't express them.

So I really think I mean constructive feedback is a huge topic doing it.

Well as an art but I think one of the underlying problems I faced was I couldn't delegate correctly or properly or effectively, maybe that's the word I'm looking for and as a result I couldn't give people feedback on the stuff I had been delegating so over time I did get better at that but looking back that was a big challenge.

Super interesting.

So just so I have it correctly.

Is it that if you don't delegate something?

Well and it's not super clear, you're going to have to give a lot more constructive feedback but maybe the problem isn't that they're not doing right but that you have delegated it correctly.

Is that how to think about it?

Or are you saying something different?

I'm saying it's just hard to give the feedback if you're giving feedback based on some way that they did something that doesn't meeting your expectations but you never set those expectations.

Let me give a very tangible example.

If you have children at some point when they're young, you might say, go clean your room, like, go tidy, up your room, something like that, right?

And to the child, that may mean going upstairs and like sweeping everything into the closet and just getting it out of sight, right?

And that might be tidying, the room, but as a parent maybe your expectations are the dirty clothes are going to go in the hamper.

The clean clothes are going to get put away in the closet and the toys are going to be put in the toy box, right?

If you don't tell them all of that and then you end up giving constructive feedback.

Like you didn't do a good job.

You should have done it this way or something like that, like why you never sent that to?

Then you never told them what success was going to look?

Like you guys just gave a vague delegation of a task and they did it their way.

But if that wasn't your way then who are you to be giving feedback to them?

I love that.

That clarifies it a lot and just play Devil's Advocate.

Is there a world where you can just maybe hope?

As people like this exist to write that, it almost seems like they surpass expectations.

And, you know, maybe you did expect that they would, you know, put all the like toys and everything in the closet because that's what you did when you were a child, but they come back and they do the hampers and like the clean clothes and they tidy things up and they wash the windows and they do all these extra things too and sometimes that happens to so like, is there I mean yeah, let's have fun that that scenario.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Awesome.

Of course, and Aiden.

Isn't that the case?

When that happens?

The first time that happens to you, as a manager, you all of a sudden realize ah this is why I delegate because someone might do it a different way than I did.

It would do it myself and that is better.

I mean you want to get to that sweet spot where people are surpassing your expectations or doing things in a different way.

Instead of using the broom, they're using the vacuum to get the same results or is Said they're actually taking a step further and washing those windows.

And that was never something that you would have expected.

So, absolutely, you want to be giving people guidance, but then let's be delighted when they also exceed those expectations.

Yeah.

Is there a world where you can set expectations?

It would be nice to have your expectation surpassed.

I can't.

Why not?

Why not?

Why not say exactly that.

Here's the bare minimum.

Here's what we need to get done, but if you can think of some additional things too, Please our customers to improve quality to get what the reliability numbers up.

Let me know about that.

Yeah, so now this is very exciting because you're kind of outlining some of the expectations but you're also leaving the door to be surprised to the upside.

And, you know, hopefully if that surprise to upside happens, there's some sort of positive reinforcement and you see more of that going forward.

Absolutely, you have.

Absolutely.

I mean it, That like just Nirvana that's just amazing.

Sounds a little too perfect.

Let's hope it happens.

So I know it does.

Yeah you know but this is super interesting and I love that we went into this discussion because I can see that you know someone bringing this might be in a world of think they might get stuck in the rabbit hole of well you know my feedback isn't getting across or maybe I'm not doing a good job of giving the feedback but it's really interesting to just point To the fact that here's a problem.

And you can solve this symptom or you could take a step back and see like what the holistic solution is.

You know, I think something related here that I've thought about is similar to setting expectations.

Sometimes if you don't do the right job at hiring, you know, the right person for the role, like, you might be in a situation where you end up, you know, having to give a lot more feedback, or maybe not showing the level of trust that Should.

But you know the root cause could be that you just didn't do the right job at hiring the right person.

And so that's why this stuff is very complicated.

Absolutely and management is an art.

It's not a science of exactly do this, this, this, it's an art where you're applying a lot of different techniques using different tools and learning as we go, right.

I mean it's it is a work in progress.

I think for all of us.

Yeah.

And so there's a lot of stuff that we can talk about today.

Why don't we start with?

The idea of glue work and so maybe you can Define for us what glue work is and what the things are that you see surrounding that type of work.

Yeah.

So very quickly the background to how, I even know what glue work is and then I'll Define it.

But the background is after I left Tech, I started a coaching business for to help and Coach women who work in Tech, help grow leadership skills and I love doing that.

I still Ship coach today, but I quickly learned that while women can benefit from coaching.

Anyone can what they really needed to be more successful.

Was that their companies would be come more conclusive that they would speak set up more like meritocracies where everyone can get ahead on their merits, the impact they're having the work, they're doing.

Because unfortunately many of my clients were working in companies where the closer you got to the top, frankly the mailer and paler it got and With all due respect anyone's who's listening his mail and are pale.

I'm white myself.

It's just like, that's what demographics were revealing.

So I started trying to understand a little bit more about.

Well, I'm going to coach my clients but I also want to figure out how we can make their workplaces more inclusive, and that led me down, wonderful path, to exploring allyship.

And how we can all be better allies and I've written a couple books on this topic and a key part of a lie Shipwrecked.

One of the pillars of allyship is to understand the experience of people who aren't like you, what is their experience in the workplace and for women, and especially women of color.

Part of that experience, is being expected to do more glue work than their peers.

And what is glue work, glue work.

Is this work that has to get done for the health of an organization or a team?

Any kind of working group it has to get done.

But it's No one's job.

So what are some examples of glue work?

If there is no program manager or project manager for a team and you're having a weekly project meeting.

Somebody's got to take the notes and track the action items and set up the follow-up meeting.

Oh and by the way ping, all the people who didn't show up on time to the meeting, these are all examples of glue work that again need to get done for the health of the organization, but aren't anyone's job and there's research showing that the stuff is it goes to it.

People are voluntold or That's it to do this work mostly are women and women of color.

Now, what happens when women and women of color are doing all of this work in support of the health of the organization?

First of all, it's busy work.

They're busy doing that stead of maybe something else that is going to have more impact that they're going to be measured on in their annual reviews and so forth.

So they're busy, they get burned out there.

Also seen at a lower level than some of their peers because they're in service of everybody else's success.

Yes.

And of course, if they're busy in a meeting taking notes, tracking action items, doing all that kind of work, they're kind of a step behind the conversation that's happening in that meeting and maybe not able to make those really important points chime in, at key points, because they're a step behind.

So it's really a bad thing.

And I raise it in my work, on my books and newsletter and speaking on better allies so that people are more aware of it and that allies not just white men but anyone W this glue work and make sure that it's getting disrupted and not just going to the same people who are always.

So kind and saying sure I can take the notes again this time or whatever it might be.

Yeah.

And so is that the way that you would think about addressing this with an organization's?

Is just make sure that it's distributed distributed is a perfect way to start, is be aware of it and then make sure that everyone's taking a turn noticing that, you know, you've got a monthly virtual happy hour for your team and you want to have Some fun team building event will make sure that everybody is taken a turn coming up with that, fun team building event and it's not just the one person who tends to have a lot of good ideas having to do that.

Because that takes time out of their schedule, leading up to that fun virtual happy hour, right?

Where they're working on that versus something more important.

So make sure it's scared now 8 and I have to tell you a cautionary, tale about setting up kind of distributed schedules of sorts and rotations few years ago, I was doing a consult Think project for a large Semiconductor Company in Silicon Valley, I won't name names but I was attending a meeting of their women in Tech steering committee.

So they had an employee group.

There was a group of leaders on that, who were kind of figuring out what to do for women in Tech across the Semiconductor Company.

And they had a monthly meeting to talk about initiatives programs, all those types of things.

And they had already set up this rotation program for their house work and so the midnight Meeting I was at the organizer opened her laptop and she looked through the list.

She said, let me see whose turn.

It is to take the minutes and do the timekeeping for our agenda today.

And she looks through a list and she said, okay Brian it's your turn.

Now, Brian was the one male Ally on the steering committee for the women in Tech initiative.

And then Brian said, you know, I'm not that good at taking notes, I think someone else should do it and even I couldn't believe he was saying that because Aware of this research that women do it more than men and so forth.

And fortunately, in the moment and I was a consultant, I guess I could get away with anything, but I kind of just said to Brian.

It's like, hey, Brian practice makes perfect.

And this is the perfect place to practice because I didn't want him to not do his fair.

Share of this work that had been planned to be distributed and expect one of his women peers to take it on.

So definitely a best practice for any kind of off.

His house work with these like monthly meetings or ongoing needs is set up a rotation but the best practice is also hold people accountable to taking their turn.

Yeah, that's I think a good way to phrase it.

I guess one of the questions around this is say for something like the monthly happy hour or virtual event or something of that nature and say that you do have a person who does have really good ideas and really actually does want to The work.

Should you stop them from doing the work?

Because the other alternative is.

I mean, I want to say that but also say that if this person is always recognized and everybody talks about them and like they're a key person in the company and everybody kind of recognizes that and gives him the shoutouts and they want to do it.

And yes, it is extra work but it is appreciated and they're seen as someone who really helps a culture of the company.

Is that bad?

Should you take it away from them?

No, it's not bad.

How Ever should you coach them as their manager and say, hey, I see you volunteering for a lot of these things.

Let's have a conversation about your career.

Let's make sure that you aren't holding yourself back by taking on all of this glue work.

So I would have that conversation and I would also look to make sure that there are ways to reward that person not just hey, thanks, once again, you're amazing at doing this team-building thing, but figure out how I want to thank them and connect what they're doing to further leadership kind of qualities recognized them, in an annual review or in a company.

You know all staff meeting or something in terms of, let's say one of your leadership qualities and things that you look for in senior leadership is that you're good at retaining employees.

You have a good track record at retaining employees because you create an environment where people feel like they're having fun and working hard.

And I'm making this up, of course.

But I'm just saying, let's just say that as a value, something that you measure more.

Senior leadership on connect, the dots between the work that that person is doing and that volunteer effort to that higher leadership quality so that they get the recognition in their annual performance, review that they are already acting at that level, like a senior leader.

That's one way to do that.

Of course, there are other ways to reward people to to make sure that this isn't just the grunt work unappreciated, but it is a Shadid, you know, bonus pay.

Maybe there is some very highly coveted training program that people get to apply for and get entrance to maybe it is.

There's lunch with some senior c-suite person every so often and they get an invitation to that lunch.

If it's in person, maybe there's an employee parking spot, Employee of the Month parking spot or something like that.

But look for how you can reward someone for doing this glue work, which is so important.

Yeah, it is.

So unappreciative Dated hey there.

Just a quick pause on today's episode to let you know that we really appreciate you helping us spread the word about the super managers podcast.

If you're enjoying what you're hearing so far dial into your podcast app of choice, whether that's on Apple or Android or Spotify and just leave us a quick review.

Now, back to the interview, I've spent, you know, most of my life in startups and inevitably most startups.

Most companies, I would say, a lot of Forward Thinking companies always have some sort of a value around ownership and taking initiative and that's something that's really encouraged.

And so you know, I think when people show initiative on things that no one's job but then yet they do it.

And so we're talking right now about some things that may be looked at in an administrative way, but there's other things who there's many things.

In a company that's nobody else's job.

And I think like what I like about what you're saying is that it's not that something is good or bad, it's just when people contribute, and they help move the company forward, like they should be recognized, and they're doing a very important job, like they're keeping the team organizer, keeping the company moving forward, they're keeping and these are super valuable valuable things and it's hard to find people who are that bought in that want to do those sorts of of things.

So, if you have them in any way, shape or form, it should be, you know, recognize it.

And you should encourage other people to do it, too, because it does show a level of ownership that I think should be encouraged.

Love that.

Yeah.

Hundred percent to what you just said.

Definitely.

Yeah.

So, can we talk also about the concept of a savior?

What is a savior within the context of an organization?

Yeah.

And within the context of the work I do on allied ship a safe.

Here I mean let's think of that knight in shining armor writing it on the white Steed to save the Damsel in Distress.

That's a savior.

And I think unfortunately that a lot of people when they are thinking about, yes, I want to help people who are underrepresented in my field.

Maybe that's because of gender or race, sexual orientation identity, their abilities, disability status and so forth.

I want to help them be successful.

And so I'm going to To do this.

And that's a great starting point great mindset, that you're going to do something to write some in equity to address some in equity.

But if you also are thinking in the back of your head, I'm going to rescue them from their own situation.

I am such a great person like the white knight in shining armor.

I am so amazing.

I am going to like go in here and do good stuff.

You can't make it about yourself.

That's sort of a savior mentality and you can't think that you're just there to rescue.

Someone because they're not capable because there are a lot of people are highly capable of taking care, taking charge of things doing work, but they just start set up for Success because their workplace culture is not inclusive enough, it's not expecting them to be.

Successful is excluding them from certain opportunities and so forth.

So let's break this down.

I like really making things might talk at the high level, but that let's make this more practical and pragmatic.

Dramatic with an example, let's say you notice that someone didn't speak in a meeting and you may think if you have the Savior hat on you may think.

Well, I'm going to Advocate them by talking to the meeting organizer to let them know that they didn't talk open up space for them in the meeting.

And the next time we have this stand up that they really need to call on everybody.

You know, we might say something like that.

We're doing a good job.

We're saving this person from having that situation again in the future where they aren't able to speak up.

Well, here's the thing.

You don't know all the details, you don't know like maybe they already gave feedback in a document, a shared document ahead of that meeting, right?

You may not know that they might just not have had anything to say.

You may not know what was going on in their lives that day.

You may not know if they want you to even do anything for them.

So it's better to actually pause.

If you're feel like I'm going to go help someone save them rescue, someone, pause and check in with that person and make sure Sure, they actually need some help.

This whole thing is connected.

That savior thing is connected to a collection of biases that are called benevolent benevolent.

Sexism, benevolent ageism benevolent ableism and so forth benevolent sexism, I'll explore that one a little bit benevolent.

Sexism is when a man thinks that they know what's best for a woman on their staff.

Again, I'll share a story.

This really happened to me, I had a man working for And he had a new head count that he was able to fill and I was asking him.

What's the responsibilities?

You're going to have with this new headcount that you just got?

And he was outlining some really good job responsibilities and I was thinking my gosh this would be a great promotion for Soo who's the top performer on his team already.

So as he finished talking about the responsibilities I asked him, I said it sounds like this would be a good opportunity and a promotion for Sue.

Are you thinking about talking to her about taking This on.

And he said, in this is the benevolent sexism.

He said, oh no, she has small children at home.

She wouldn't want all the travel that comes with this job.

Hey, he made a decision for her or was trying to without checking in on her.

He was rescuing her and saving her from a situation where she was going to have too much travel and not be home enough with her young children.

So I fortunately had the presence of mind to say to him.

You know, that's not your decision to make if I think she's got the skills.

Go talk to her.

See if she wants to have this job with all this travel and Aiden, he did.

He went and talked to her and she said, yes, I am ready for this and whatever her situation was at home.

She did not have to worry about the travel.

She had enough support and so forth.

She could travel, she made it work and so and by the way, she was awesome.

Because job do I just have to add that.

So that's benevolent sexism where we're making decisions for.

Or someone else were acting to save them and so forth.

So please stay away from that.

If you feel yourself, just even being drawn there a little bit and I do periodically in the work I do today on allyship.

I feel like I can do things hold back or bit.

Check in with that person that you are thinking about helping and making sure they need the help.

And so I can get like the full color here.

So for this particular, basically checking in it, if you're a savior and making sure that the person actually You know, requires support in that particular situation, does it also apply in the reverse as well?

So for example, like maybe you think they need help and you check with them and then they don't.

So, that's the situation that we talked about, but is there a situation where you think that they might not need help but they actually do.

So does it apply in both contexts that make sense.

Well, of course we always Ways we had think about different people.

I've worked with over the years who didn't seem like they ever needed help on things, they didn't want help and so forth.

I feel like it's a different topic.

I feel that's a different topic.

That's a whole nother issue of helping people, understand where they need to be more open to constructive feedback where they need to learn a new skill, that's giving someone feedback as opposed to rescuing them, got it and show thee.

Just in terms of like the emotions that goes through someone's head.

So basically it's that it's good that you want to be helpful but sometimes if you're helpful in the wrong way or you're making assumptions for someone, it can actually cause pain and be worse off.

So you're looking to help and be a savior but what you're actually doing is may be causing this sort of a problem, right?

You're impacting their career, their career growth or a very short-term situation.

You protential, ER, Causing some harm their yeah, yeah, that definitely clarifies it.

And yeah, very interesting story and definitely drives the point home as well.

So another topic that I did want to chat with you about is door, openers and Gatekeepers.

So what are the differences between people who open doors and people who are Gatekeepers?

Yeah, let's start with Gatekeepers.

So, Gatekeepers are like the sky I mentioned before, who had this new Head count.

He was gatekeeping, he was keeping someone away from this opportunity.

He would not have phrased it that way.

He was doing the best thing for her but that's really what was happening.

He was setting up something that prevented her from pursuing, that it also may show up gatekeeping in terms of advising someone who doesn't quite look the part to take a different career path.

Perhaps that is, let's just say a black engineer.

Two approaches you for a job you're like have you considered working in this department instead because they don't look the part to you and I'm making some assumptions.

I don't mean to say that you be saying this aid, but just like, you know, they don't look the part for whatever it is or maybe it's an older employee who you're like, I don't know if they're going to be Innovative anymore.

Work the long hours.

Have you considered something over here instead?

So that's another kind of gatekeeping is encouraging people into a certain direction.

That because you think that they don't look the part in the thing that they want to pursue.

I hear a lot about this in terms of from women who as they are studying and making decisions about what they are going to study in College University, grad school and so forth.

But advisors telling them go this path.

It's going to be a little bit easier for you.

That's gatekeeping by contrast door, openers are doing the opposite.

They are always encouraging, they are looking for those opportunities.

They are connecting dots for People so that oh, you want to work in data science and you're not data scientist yet.

Here are some ways that we can get.

You more aware of what the opportunities are here.

Are some career Pathways for you.

They are opening those doors that sometimes people might not even know exist or did it did know, but they are connecting those dots and helping people along, is there a way to be because sometimes that mean it's also possible that if you're an advisor and, you know, a lot about a person that you may actually think that they may be better suited in, you know, to study this topic versus this other topic or something like that.

So is there a way to like be able to help without necessarily saying?

No, you can't do this.

That's not for you.

You should do that.

Like is there like a balanced way of doing this?

Yeah and I would say the balanced way.

So it's a good question.

The balanced way is to make sure that what you are talking to them about is not rooted.

In bias which you and here's the advice for so much of what comes out of our mouth, in terms of guidance feedback and so forth.

If we are giving it to someone of a certain demographic, let's just use gender.

If we're giving that guidance or feedback to a woman, we in our head, should flip it in our head and say would we say the same thing to a man?

If we're saying something to a black person would we say the same thing to a white person.

If for saying something to a A graduate of a boot camp.

Would we say the same thing to, you know, someone who has a degree from a university.

Let's flip our feedback to test it and if the answer is, yes, I would.

Anyone who wants to do this, I would suggest this pathway or something.

It doesn't matter what gender race so forth.

If that's really true, then that's great guidance.

But I want to encourage people to check what they are thinking about.

Guiding someone towards just to Sure, it's not rooted in some biased, interpretation assumptions about that person and that identity that makes sense.

Yeah, I think that's a very good way to look at it.

Always and a good way to check to make sure that again, it's sometimes it's unconscious bias, right?

Doesn't mean it's intentional but to flip it in that way, I think is a very healthy way.

To look at it one question, which is maybe related.

It's not necessarily same realm, but not necessarily.

Ali related to bias in the same way but say that you have someone who is say more senior in their career and they decide to, you know go back and take on a much more Junior role.

So in a situation like that like if you have you know maybe assumptions about well that's not, you know like do you really want to do that?

And is that a good move?

Is that like I'm trying to think about situations Change where, you know, maybe you don't want to limit them, but at the same time you can kind of maybe advise them or make sure that this is really something that they want to do.

I mean this is a great management quality is to be curious about the people who work for us understand what their career goals are understand enough about their personal life that they're willing to share about what they, you know, what's going on and help them navigate what's going to be right move.

In forward.

I feel like that question that you just posed is like that's just being a good manager and being curious about what they are trying to achieve and not making assumptions again about what you think is best for them because maybe that's the right path for them at this point and whatever is going on.

Yeah and I definitely see this as like a key learning in our discussions which is a lot of the you know, maybe the bias or some of the things that happen in the workplace are about assumptions that we make.

And I like your point about just being more Curious longer versus assuming you know what's right?

For any particular person on the team and yeah, just coming from that lens.

I feel like you'll build a better team, build more trust and get people to be on the right seat in the bus more often.

I love that, I love that.

I'm gonna build on what you just said to.

In that, I've learned this wonderful phrase which I have just embodied the phrases.

Be curious, not Furious.

Now, you didn't mention in your scenario that you're getting furious, but we've all been there was someone like resigns from our team to go do something else.

And I don't know about you, but I used to get a little Furious.

I gosh, shoot, like just got them trained up their incredibly valuable and they're leaving.

What am I going to do?

Like, you kind of go down a path, but if we pause and set that kind of the Furious or the frustration side, we can start being curious and understand a little bit.

Or I don't do this, I've tried to do it a lot more than I used to, but I'm thinking about one time I did have a star employee resign because he wanted to move from his current role to do product management.

And what he had been doing product management and the Furious, the frustration just started to build instead.

I just talked to him like to get a little more curious about why and as a result I was able to have him not resign right away because I told him let's try to find that role that You're looking for at our current company and I became his sponsor looking for another role at the company.

So he didn't walk out the door with all the knowledge.

He had from our company.

He stayed there, but he moved into a different role where he was just thinking, I need to quit, start doing a job search, so that no shipping, curious not Furious is so good as a leadership quality and frankly, it is so good whenever we get feedback from someone because frankly I don't about you, but when I get feedback myself, let's truck to cut a fee.

Back my defensive side sort of starts coming out and again I try to put it aside and just be curious a little bit more.

I got more to learn I need to understand.

This more tell me more about what's going on kind of thing.

So curious not Furious is something that has been a new kind of slogan that I have embraced and I think it's really powerful.

Yeah, I love it.

I think it's a lot of management.

I think it applies to Parenting and apprise the Human Relationships across the board.

So I love the phrase.

Definitely one that lends itself to being remembered, so great, great phrase.

So can't we talked about a bunch of different topics?

I did want to just quickly give a shout-out to your books.

Your most recent book is better allies.

It came out in 2021 and I assume that you know, for the readers like if you want to dive deeper into some of the topics that we've talked about today, you know, the book is really great source for that they can find it on your Website better allies.com is, you know, link to the book.

Are there any other topics like to get people, who else should read that book or who would you distribute it to?

Absolutely everyone?

Everyone, I want everyone to read that book.

And the reason is, is that I think that I hope that everyone listening feels that part of being a manager is setting up your team for Success.

It's hiring the right people and creating an environment where everyone can do their best work and thrive.

And a key part of all of that is to make sure that you have an environment that is inclusive.

That is welcoming of people from all different backgrounds and walks of life and education's and so forth.

And experiences is welcoming all those people into this wonderful fabric so that they can be Innovative together.

Do good work and that they want to stay there and keep doing that.

Good work.

A key way of getting that done is through these everyday acts of allyship and that's what I write about in better allies.

So it's not just a job for Leaders and managers.

It's a job for people in every little corner of an organization.

So to speak individual, contributors in those hallway, conversations, those stand-up meetings.

Those everyday settings where things are happening.

I want everybody to think about how they can be better allies and create more inclusive instances, so that the whole culture, therefore becomes more inclusive.

So that's why I want everyone to read it.

I'll also mention Aiden.

I know some people like Adding a nonfiction book is the last thing that they want to do, and that's fine.

I also have a Weekly Newsletter which is free goes out to over 35,000 people and I call it five Ally actions and it's like simple things that you could be doing every day during the course of everything else you're doing to be more inclusive.

So I kind of think about this is like a new habit to form and I'm there every Friday with a few more little ideas to sprinkle in and see how you can add those to how you are showing.

Up as an individual, contributor manager, senior leader.

Yeah, love it.

And of course, we will link to both of those things in the show notes to everyone can find them.

And so, we've talked about a lot today, I mean, we started with learning how if you don't delegate properly giving constructive feedback, might be difficult afterwards, sting curious, and not Furious and, of course, some cool definitions like, how to think about glue work within your Ation what it looks like, what you might do, and, of course, being a savior and how that can actually misfire at times if not done correctly and with the right sort of guard rails around it.

So lots of very interesting discussion and the question that we always like to end on is for all the managers and leaders constantly looking to get better at their craft or there any final tips.

Tricks are words of wisdom that you would leave them with be a better Ally.

I'll just leave it at that.

Great advice and of course a great place to end it.

Karen, thanks so much for doing this.

Aiden pleasure was all mine and that's it for today.

Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of the super managers podcast.

You can find the show notes and transcript at www.elllo.org app / super managers.

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