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Hey, fella managers and leaders.

I'm Aiden and I'm the CEO of fellow dot app.

Today's guest is a lascaux.

She's the director of marketing Communications at procure Phi, 1 of our friend companies here at fellow, Alice is a Gallop, certified strength coach, she's a CPA to Career paths.

We discuss during this episode, I was really curious to learn about Alice's transition from accounting to marketing.

And in particular, to hear, Advice for managers and leaders looking for a career change.

We also talked about the importance of creating psychological safety and all its nuances.

And why using a blanket management approach is the wrong way to go.

Alice knows a lot about communication.

It's one of her passions and so we actually get into some detail about some tactical advice on how to improve communication within your teams.

And using some really interesting acronyms like RW AR TS and a few more very, very interesting things.

This episode is filled with great Insight but also a lot of very tactical things that you can start applying in your team's today.

So, without further Ado, here's a lascaux on episode 43 of this.

Super managers podcast Alice, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much Aidan.

It's great to be here.

Yeah, very excited to to View on, you know, there's a lot that, you know, we're going to talk about.

And one of the things that's really interesting for me is how diverse your background is.

You've worked with Brands like Louis Vuitton or its Sia and and also founded your own digital marketing agency and I want to dig into this concept of being a Gallop, certified strength, coach, which I know you are and today, Your director of marketing at procure Phi.

This is going to be really interesting conversation.

I'm excited to dive in.

So one thing that I did want to kick things off with is just to rewind like in your entire career, like spanning all these different companies.

What has been a memorable boss or manager that you who has been a memorable boss or manager that you have reported to in the past.

Whether that's a You know, something very favorable or something, very negative or anything, that you remember, that's a great question, Aiden.

And I've worked for a lot of different teams meaning I've had a lot of different bosses and the one common denominator with the good managers is they always built a culture of psychological safety.

Meaning they cared about me as an individual, I felt comfortable in front of them and you know one of the the best best managers that I ever worked for he told me his name is Curtis.

He told me that managers should be measured on retention and they rarely are right there measured on things like performance.

Did you hit your goals productivity efficiency but they're rarely measured on retention and that really stuck with me.

So it's kind of tied into how I've developed my management style which is all about psychological safety.

Yeah, that's super interesting.

You know, you are right.

It's, it's not a common thing that we Talk about retention is so important for employees across the organization.

And you know it's it's such a topic but you're right.

Like I don't I don't think most companies have almost like a retention metric for their teams.

I'm curious.

So let's talk about this concept of psychological safety.

What are some things that you can do to very practically encourage that within your team's great question?

I think it is different remotely as well.

So, I think we should start with defining.

What is psychological safety?

I think a lot of people get confused and I was actually made aware of the term.

I'm not sure if you're familiar with the Google project Aristotle or they studied, I think it was more than 180 teams over two years.

They wanted to know what the most successful teams at Google.

What made them successful was it?

The level of intelligence was it?

The people, and they discovered that it was psychological safety, that created the most Successful teams.

And so what this means is that you have a culture where people feel comfortable speaking up, they feel comfortable being themselves, they don't worry that.

If they suggest an idea or maybe, if they disagree with you, that they will get that, there will be a backlash.

And so they feel safe coming into the workplace.

So this makes everybody feel more creative, more effective that they're valued, but who they are as individuals.

And so, So so now that we've defined psychological safety, I personally think.

And what I've done in my team's is really get to know.

Everybody is strength and differences, get to know them more than just a worker.

Who are you as an individual?

What was your childhood like, what kind of things do you do on the weekends?

So things as simple as every Monday on slack.

I asked our team.

Alrighty.

Mm.

How was your weekend, share your roses, your thorns and your buds.

So we talk about everybody's weekend first thing Monday morning before we I've been to weekly group meetings weekly company, meetings little things like that.

Make us feel more connected.

Yeah, and I love the terminology There.

Rose has thorns and buds I like that.

No.

Yeah and I throughout the week we have we asked social questions.

So this is just a way for team members to get to know each other better because when we're working remotely, we lose that water, cooler chat, I can't walk up to somebody and say, oh, you know, why were you meeting right now?

Sure.

And randomly slack that but it's not really on our mind.

It's not natural to do that to slack.

So we've actually programmed this process in.

So I think just this past week, the question was describe your favorite meal in as much detail as possible.

The week before was, do you collect anything the question the week before was, what was your favorite music who is your favorite musician from 10 years ago?

So, little things like this, start to build that psychological safety because you learn who your team members really are.

Yeah.

And it allows everybody to be their authentic selves, which, which also helps in that.

What about this context?

I know that one of the things that at procure, fi that you Advocate, it is also constant, you know, experimentation and trying things.

And, and when there are failures almost encouraging them, what does that look like?

Especially in your teams?

Yes, that is definitely something that Simon Stanley, who?

Is also on the super managers podcast, that something that he is a very strong advocate for learning.

I think we're really lucky in Tech especially because we encourage each other to fail fast, right?

We encourage that it means that we've tried something that we've taken a bet.

And so recently, we discussed the importance of actually not just celebrating wins but also celebrating the failures.

In our slack.

We also have a daily slack bot.

Where are we?

He's like, well, I'm sorry or we talk about here is but I'm doing this week here's what I need help on and we've discussed the importance of adding in a field or what did you fail at recently?

What are you try?

Where did you fail at?

Because in this continually build that environment of learning of encouraging each other to take those bets.

That's really interesting.

You know, a lot of people talk about celebrating failure when it happens because, you know, if you don't then obviously people Will only try things that they are sure they're going to succeed at and that's not a great environment for growth.

But it's very interesting that you actually work it into your to your stand-ups to actually ask that we are going to.

Yes.

And then again Aid in this all goes back to the concept of psychological safety because when you feel that you're allowed to fail you don't have to be successful.

Every single thing that continually built the psychological safety on the team and then this It's greater.

There's actually build a greater performance.

Yeah.

I I love this concept and, and that was in the, the Google study that was, that was like, the top-rated Factor, right?

That differentiated.

And I guess that leads to retention.

But, but also like the most important thing that a manager can do, like, if you fail at everything else, but you do this one thing, you'll still be okay, even more than okay.

Exactly.

Yeah, I really like that and it's very Very interesting and I'm curious to get your thoughts on.

I mean, you mentioned that across your, the different companies that you've been at that there has always been like the constant thread in the managers that have done really well, was, you know, they really got to know you and also form psychological safety in places that are not Tech.

I mean, you've worked with large Brands and places that are not typically very technical or a Sprint oriented or these things that people do.

Technology, how does it work there, like are there the the same sorts of Concepts or would you give the same advice of building psychological safety in those teams answer your last question first?

Absolutely, I think anybody who manages anybody, whether you're a team Lead, Supervisor and manager, a director and executive.

You need to think about psychological safety.

It is quite different in a non Tech environment.

Oh my goodness.

Let me think about, you know, I worked in the Retail space, for quite some time.

You know, you mentioned.

I did work at the headquarters of Louis Vuitton, North America, and New York.

I've also had a company called Remy Martin, a Frenchman, Walmart, that sold alcohol Brands and the culture is different, right?

Because these companies have been around for so long that they developed their own internal culture right from years and years ago, whereas tech companies.

Now while, you know, they're popping up a company that's been around for Seven years is considered old.

So when you work at institutions that maybe have that embedded culture in it already, you have to start with yourself because it is very difficult to change to walk into an organization and just say I'm going to change the culture, you have to start with your own team start with the one person that you manage start with the three.

So we start to unpack and start to do these things on your own team.

Get to know them, on a personal level, ask about the personal life, ask about the Thorns going on, not just in work but in Life.

And then soon I expect that other teams other managers will start to see.

Wow.

That team is really thriving.

They're really creative.

They feel in sync, there's safe.

What are they doing?

And then what you've created in your own mini culture starts to expand throughout the rest of the company.

Yeah, I think that's really great advice because I think for those listening to podcast and say, well, that's easy for you to say in Tech, it's just built in and you have these Concepts, but I love your right.

There's nothing stopping anyone from being able to, like practice these things just within their own team exactly.

You don't need to get permission, you know, really form a shower to build out practices within your own team.

Start with you.

Yeah.

So it's very interesting and it seems that you're like, somewhat of a Trailblazer not afraid to try new things in in your own teams.

And one of the things that's actually interesting about your career is that you actually started as a chartered professional accountant.

And, and now your director of marketing.

So, I'm super curious.

How did that happen?

Yeah, I became a CPA Cai article that KPMG considered one of the big four.

Honestly.

I was really interested in the profession because the big four typically they come to University's weekly business programs.

Can they make it sound so wonderful.

It was something that I wanted to do.

I wanted to work in a big corporate environment.

Yeah, I wanted to learn from people.

I liked the idea of traveling for work.

Who doesn't But I knew as soon as I started at KPMG, it wasn't going to be a lifelong profession for me.

I had actually been a writer, I'd always blocked, I'd blog since 2004.

If anybody out there remembers Blogspot, I was on blogspot, but I stuck with it.

I wanted to give it a chance.

All right.

You know big for didn't work out for me.

Let me go work in house.

That's why I moved to New York actually work in housing.

I got out of Consulting and I thought, well, maybe this will be different.

Let me try this, let me experiment and you know, After seven years, I kind of knew.

No, I need a change.

And so it was then that I decided to move back to Vancouver to switch careers.

Honestly, it's hard to get a visa and the United States as a Canadian citizen.

So I made that move back for that reason.

And why leiter?

It's, yeah, I also started experimenting.

I was lucky enough that I was able to move from the finance group.

I don't see ya into their e-commerce group and that's when it all it was validated for me.

All right, I need to be Be working in a faster paced function such as marketing.

This was 2012, right?

When Instagram was launching it in.

Do remember when Instagram wasn't around you imagine.

So I'm because a lot of companies didn't know how to use social media and I worked in the fashion space for quite a long time.

I started helping startups with their social media marketing and blogging.

And it was that opportunity that I began to grow my relationships.

In that area, I started to become known as a Media expert marketing expert, for fashion startups.

And that is really what kick-started my new career marketing.

Yeah, that's super interesting and very inspiring for for those that might be doing something but thinking about another area and then obviously, you know, continuing to grow in that role and, and now you're leading teams.

So that's a super inspiring story.

Hey there, just a quick pause on today's episode to let you know that we'd 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 One of the, you know, we've had a chance to work in and discuss things with each other for, for a while on, on various platforms.

So on Twitter through our manager chats and, and things like that.

So one of the one of the things that like we've chatted with you about is and you kind of hinted at it here, which is using a blanket management.

Approach is never really good.

I'd love for you to dive into that concept and Play strengths and what you do to figure out and really learn about the people on your team.

Absolutely.

So, when I say blanket management approach, I mean, you use the same approach on everybody and when we break it down, we know that's not going to work because individuals are different.

Everybody has a different motivations.

Everybody has different needs of different strengths.

They have different weaknesses that we already know that applying the same thing.

And everybody is just not going to work.

I was actually introduced to strengths its formerly known as strengths.

Finder, outer its Sia.

The, the team that I worked on everybody had to do the assessment and then we printed our out, our results, and everybody had them on the wall.

So every day you would see your own strengths and then you see the strengths of your team members.

And I thought, okay, this is interesting and then add a few other companies that I worked at down the road.

Oh, we also did strengths and then I really started to see the value.

All you and understanding people as individuals.

So what's the opposite of a blanket approach?

It's an individualized approach because we know that everybody has, like I said, different means different motivations.

They bring different things to the table.

So it makes sense to individualize your management approach.

Yes, I'm a certified gallup's drinks.

Coach, the Clifton strengths assessment for those who don't know.

It's um, it's a web assessment based on positive psychology, it was developed by bye.

Donald Clifton the psychologist and it's based on more than 50 years of research.

And I think this is what a lot of people don't know.

There's been a lot of studies around this particular assessment.

There are technical studies validity studies, reliability test and what I have found personally.

Beneficial to me is that it improves self, awareness of yourself.

So as a manager, we all managed differently, how I manage is going to be different than how you imagine, right?

This assessment helps you determine how you are different and then it helps you determine.

What are the strengths of your different team members?

Is everybody that you work with is going to be different and this creates a shared language within the team and so it improves your communication and I'm very passionate about good communication.

So when you have this language of strength, it improves your communication with other people and improves your understanding of who to partner with and then it actually helps you gift.

Feedback easier and it's easier to resolve complex.

And this all ties again, back into psychological safety because when you make somebody feel appreciated for who they are as an individual and you stayed on them.

You know what, how do you like to be managed?

How do you like to be managed?

How can I set you up for Success?

It's going to be different than the next person.

Let's talk about it.

You create again, you're building Foundation of psychological safety and then people are going to be more creative more engaged.

And you'll have better retention.

Yeah, I love this concept.

And so how do we like for those that are looking to implement some of this within their own teams?

There's so many different I guess.

Assessment types out there, there's the Enneagram there's disc.

There's just like so many.

Where does one get started?

It is true.

There are so many assessments and, you know, I'm biased because like I said, I'm, I'm a clipped in strength coach.

Ouch, I would say, do you research talk to other people, talk to other people in your company because your company might have ruled something out already.

I can certainly say for myself that I appreciate strengths because it's based on more than 50 years of research.

They have quite a large database.

Almost 25 million people around the world and more than a hundred countries have done this assessment.

And like I said, there have been a lot of technical studies to support strengths.

Yeah, this is makes a lot of sense and What?

Actually, drove you to become a certified strength coach versus just doing the assessment and getting other people to do the assessment, okay?

Okay, I will tell a story about how I became a strength coach.

Like I said, I started at procure fi as their very first full remote team member.

And what I mean by that is I was interviewed remotely and I started from only very first one and started at the team and this team is amazing.

They have amazing.

Values.

They treat each other like family and for a new person coming in, it was honestly quite difficult to understand the culture understand what was going on and I was in a few remote meetings where I noticed some conflict, I noticed.

Oh, that's interesting.

We're not really understanding each other.

We're having a disagreement.

People are leaving these meetings, not in a good mood.

I wonder why, you know what?

Let me bring in the strengths assessment to the marketing team specifically.

So I was lucky to have a CMO that really encouraged this.

She had done the assessment results.

All right, let's do it.

So we had everybody on the team, do the assessment is because I have been so familiar with it.

I gave a workshop and explained.

Okay, this is what it is and then when I presented the team strength on it, It.

All right everybody.

Here's our team grid.

Here are the strengths that we have in common here.

The strengths that we don't have as much of.

And that was a lightbulb moment.

I think for everybody on the team and we really understood that.

Wow, we are different.

Here's how we're similar.

And here are some individuals with very specific strengths.

It was, it was a lightbulb moment and it was from then on that.

I decided, well, this is so effective that I want to increase my learning and really Understand how to coach a team on how to use this framework more effectively.

And so yeah.

Just in my, as a manager myself, I individualized approach.

So, I have one person who is very, very high as strength called Harmony, you know?

She doesn't like conflict.

So, how I manage her is very different than somebody else with the strength of high command.

Hi self-assurance, they don't really mind conflict that much.

They don't really need a lot of one-on-one time, so this has really improved my relationship in that Style with my team members.

Yeah, I really like this.

It's very interesting.

I mean, the other day I heard the stat about manager training that the average person doesn't get manager trade over.

The average manager, doesn't get manager training until twelve years into their career.

So that's just like an incredible incredible stat.

But what I was going to say is I feel like this kind of whatever personality assessment of choice that you have.

I feel like one should because I've got one should dive deep and really understand this stuff because it's such an important part to actually be able to like take these things into consideration for you know, obviously managing a team but I suspect that you probably use this for hiring as well.

When you said, you know, our team is missing strengths in this area.

Thank you for picking that up and I will say that this tool in all tools they're not meant to be the one and done solution specifically for strength, they So you say you cannot use the server recruiting and I'll tell you why, he's really, because people can gain the assessment, right.

You can give somebody an assessment and they can say, well, I think I'm looking for somebody really competitive and, and they'll answer the assessment to sway the results.

And that's why however you can use this assessment, you can look at your team grid and you can say, you know what, we're already really high on this type of strength, we probably need some people who have these strengths of discipline our Focus.

So, how can we structure the interview, too?

Determine if the candidate has those strengths.

So you can certainly Taylor your interview questions, but certainly not to use this strictly for recruiting and that's for all personality assessments.

Yeah, this is this is really interesting how how hard is it to remember, all these things about the different people on your team is it is it like it becomes?

Second nature is the first week hard, and the second week is a little less hard.

Or how does it work?

It certainly can be Depending on the size of your team.

So I started with marketing team and then I started doing workshops for the rest of the company.

The leadership team has also done their strengths and so it always starts with self though.

If you're a manager, the most important thing, what for any individual doing this?

It starts with self awareness starts with understanding, okay, who am I?

What is my reports say?

What are my top 10 to 12 strengths, what are my lower five strengths start with yourself?

And then start to pay attention to your own strengths in the workplace.

So 8, and I'm not even sure if you've done the assessment, have you?

No, I haven't.

I'm so curious though.

Okay.

So let's say, I'll just pick a strength.

I'm, I'm a very high activator and the strength of activator means.

I am very good at bringing ideas to action.

I'm the one in the meeting that says, okay, well, what our next steps guys?

What?

Our next steps.

Can't wait to get started.

Let's go.

Let's go.

I activate, I activate both every strength.

There's also, what they call an Achilles heel.

All right, with great power comes great responsibility.

And I have to look out for when my activator is causing the team stress or when it's actually hindering me.

As a manager is if I'm encouraging people to just start ideas, just go, go go.

I have to be aware that.

That might be stressing people out.

That might be causing them anxiety.

So I have to dial back, my activator in certain situations and dial it up another's.

So always start with self.

How am I showing up as a team member?

How am By showing up as a manager.

And then you can start to look at everybody else on your team.

There's only 30 only, there's only 34 strengths, but you can start to slowly understand them one by one.

Depending on what is in your group?

Yeah.

And is it the sort of thing that changes over time?

So, for example, would you ever do the assessment again, five years from now?

Great question.

They have done test-retest studies on Gallup, specifically on the Gallup poll It's drinks.

And there's about a set.

If you read the technical papers, there's about a 70% match based on the test of the Dead.

I personally had done the assessment seven years apart my top, five stayed the same, but my six to ten change.

So certainly because human beings we have people managers, we change, we develop.

So, of course, it makes sense that your strengths would shift but it's highly unlikely that your number one strength Would drop to be your dead last drink.

Does that make sense?

So we will certainly shift depending on how you developed as a person throughout the years.

Yeah, it's always really interesting.

I feel like if you're maybe well into your career that some of those things are maybe more stable.

But you know, if you're just straight out of school then I don't know, maybe it's more variable but I don't know that.

That's just I'm hypothesizing, that's a great hypothesis Aidan, you're right.

A lot of college, a lot of University students do this assessment.

Student at their school as they're trying to confirm or think about careers that they want to be an absolutely yeah no that's super interesting so you don't use it for hiring but you use it.

Well maybe you don't give it to candidates but you definitely help it in for like it helps inform your hiring.

So it'll be I'll give you another example.

There was a there's another very small startup team.

They worked on it was four or five people.

I can't remember to doctors to Founders when we did the assessment.

All of their strengths for in the relationship category.

These Founders were so relationship.

Focused High empathy, right?

Like high include ER hi people's strengths.

A bit lower on the execution side.

And so as they hired into their team, they hired a lot of contractors who had very strong execution strengths.

And of course, they gave you a assessment to the contractors after, but it was really interesting to see like, wow, this is how they compensated or this, you know, supposed Gap in execution strengths.

They were hiring relationship and while they didn't give this assessment to people, they knew who to hire for.

So as they interviewed people They brought in contractors, they knew that those people, what they were good at with the contractors were good.

At would bring in things that they were missing.

Yeah, no.

That's a, that's a smart way to play it.

And the sense that I'm getting is whatever the assessment type, that is your favorite or the one that you research that for, you know, that speaks to you and your specific use cases.

It's, it's about the self-awareness, right?

And I think that you will hopefully become more If aware over time or you can accelerate it and maybe get there faster and this might be an approach to help with that.

And on top of that I was going to say that in a world where a lot of people are remote.

I feel like you're it's going to take a longer period of time for you to pick up on the nuances of someone's personality and so something like this might, you know, it's useful in normal times, it's even more useful today.

You're absolutely right.

Aiden it Speeds up the level of which you can understand and get to know new people on your team in remote environments.

Because as we discussed you lose that water cooler, you lose the walk to the coffee shop, right?

And so, this is a way to speed up building that psychological safety on the team, you know, if you have, if you have a high empathy strength.

All right, well, this assessment says that you have high empathy and now my team members know that it didn't take three months for them to figure it out.

Yeah, this is interesting and I think like another related concept here is, we talked about manager, readmes, and Some of the controversial, some people believe in some people don't, but this is an another, another way to like, I guess, feed into that.

Yes, yes.

And we talked about feedback briefly, right?

But again, this is really useful for managers to use as a Performance Management and development tool.

For the routine members, we talked about the Achilles heel, right?

Every strength also has an Achilles heel but then also, some people are not as dominant another strengths.

So these Our growth opportunities.

I know you know, Simon talks about growth mindset a lot and this is exactly one of the ways that you can help your team members.

Determine what do you actually need to work on, right?

You can give them feedback and then the feedback becomes less personal, people aren't offended when you give them feedback based on their strengths.

And so you can see something like, you know, in the meeting.

I noticed that you didn't speak up about X-Play said, let's work on bumping up your communication strength, Or do you know when the meeting I noticed someone might say to me, you know what?

Alice I noticed in the meeting that you just wanted to go, go, go.

You kept asking about next steps maybe you could have spent some more time to be deliberative and analytical Co okay.

Now using the powdered language of strength, I've gotten feedback, I know have something to work on.

Now, I know where I can continue to grow.

Yeah, so that's interesting because I know Gallop is very big on managing by strengths in general.

And I, There's a school of thought where you're always improving your weaknesses.

And then there's, I think, the more well, at least certainly, I'm a fan which is figuring out what your strengths are in doubling down on them.

And so, I like that they're reframing these things.

All of them as strengths.

And even if it's, you know, may be weaker than your other strengths, it's still a strength.

Absolutely.

There are no, all strings, are neutral, there are no good strengths.

There are no bad strength and the best leaders.

You know, the best leaders, the best managers are self-aware, they know what they're good at, they know what their strengths are and they can draw upon the right strength at the right time and then they can draw that out in their team members as well.

Yeah.

And to have you figured out, you know, just going back to the hiring concept.

So if you know that there is there's an area that you're looking for.

Do you do you actively try and figure out questions or get that candidate to talk about scenarios where you can actually test for?

Those things?

Yes, absolutely.

I actually worked with a career coach a few years ago, who gave me the greatest advice when assessing candidates or even if you're a consultant, assisting clients, the interview starts, the moment that you email them, but you get on a call with them, the interview doesn't start with the interview the interview starts before.

So if you're looking for somebody with high responsibility, you know High reliability well in the email, did they contact you?

You, when they said they were going to did, they email you when they sit there going to?

Does that make sense at purpura fine?

I think a lot of companies do this.

Now we do technical assignments, so I'll send out a technical assignment to the candidate and I'll say, when do you think you can get this back to me and they'll give me a date sometimes a time and I pay attention to that if they send back the assignment at that time, that the indicated, okay?

This person is probably you know, very accountable to deadlines And so you can start to assess how people will fulfill in the things that you're looking tore through their behavior and actions.

Yeah, I don't have to ask them.

Well, tell me.

Are you reliable?

Are you responsible?

You can see it in the way that they respond to your email with write emails.

And I look for people with very good remote communication skills for an adorable.

Look at the emails that the writing to you, are they clear and concise?

Yeah, that's super interesting.

All these different interview methodologies where you're actually, so You know, say it was an easy task that everybody would get your actually not looking for the content of the task.

You're looking for the The Meta situation around it.

So that's super interesting.

I have to tell you this story, I forget, which company it was, but I heard this story of an interview, I think it might have been for a theme park or something like this and they were really looking to hire very helpful people.

And and so what's interesting is that they would do these group interviews where everybody would Would sit in a room and one by one, they would look at them and they'd say, you know, you why do you want to work at this this company and what was interesting was, I mean, obviously they're answered did matter.

But the other thing that they really paid attention to was everybody else in the room, all the other candidates and were they looking at that person where they nodding were they being supportive?

Or were they like trying to practice what they were going to say in their own heads and not paying attention and so I just thought that was really interesting.

Now I don't know how Effective it is or something, you know, and whether it's a good approach or bad approach, but it but it's interesting, it just reminded me of looking at things surrounding the actual task as signals to to test for things that you're looking to hire for.

Wow, that's such an interesting story.

I love that.

I completely agree with what you said, look at those signals, what are the actions?

What are the behaviors that your candidate is presenting to you?

Is that cyber person you want on your team?

Yeah, it's super interesting.

And you know, one of the other things Alice that I know you're passionate about is good communication.

You have this, you have this quote that we found which is, which is really cool, which is bad, communication creates more work.

I'd love for you to just dive in and tell us more about that.

I am so excited to talk about this with.

You bad, communication creates more work especially in remote environments as human beings.

We are wired to create certainty.

In a remote environment.

We lose the context or not surrounded by people, I can't look over my shoulder and look at someone's face.

And see that what everybody else is working on Clarity creates calm.

I do this to my team all the time, Clarity creates, calm, communication, helps create Clarity.

And what this is really important because improving your written communication skills and verbal, this actually decreases burnout And again, we can go back to it will burn out you know, this leads to poor performance and engaged people hire Christian.

So this is why starting with basic good communication skills is crucial, when the quality of our communication goes off the quality of everybody's work goes up and the quality of everybody's life goes up.

And so I'm a really big acronyms person people on my team will know this.

And so to help one of the easiest things that people can do is actually used Location shortcuts in a remote environment because it and you ever get a message from somebody and they say a tin.

Can you send me X, Y Zed, you're in the middle and your and you think to yourself?

Okay, well, do you need it now?

Do you need it now?

Or can I give it to you in an hour?

Can I give it to you?

Give it to you tomorrow.

So adding something as simple as we use our WR reply when ready this can, all right, this will look.

Okay.

So now a Danos heat can reply when he's ready.

You don't need it ASAP.

And if you needed ASAP just type in TS time-sensitive.

I love that.

Yeah, these small tips and tricks that we've implemented in the marketing.

Team have really made a huge difference in terms of leveling up our remote communication.

So, R WR, + TS, what are some other ones.

This is such a great tactical tip that I have to dig in.

Okay, yes.

To be used a lot of we use rwr, we use time-sensitive.

We also use something called a RN no reply needed again in slack threads or teams threads, you have this thread.

That's going on.

There's 50 messages.

All right?

So many it's cut it off at some point.

All right, here's our decision.

It just wanted to share this and our end no reply needed.

We can stop.

Yeah, that's super, super useful.

You know.

It's, can we talk about an example or it could be a mock story of where bad communication can create more work.

Yes, I I have this other app name, it's called cat a cat plus latte equals lot.

A simple things that went to really written communication are things.

Like, did you add context?

That's the see a, do you answer the question T?

Did you give a timeline another T, where you transparent and E, you had an emoji for emotion?

And so in let's go through an example, actually.

So, this actually just happened to me yesterday, I was asked to Change a sales deck.

Oh, can you add transactions?

Can you add transactions sales Tech, right?

No problem.

So, I talked to the product team, I talked to our CTO.

I got the number of transactions.

Oh, but guess what?

That person didn't mean number of transactions.

They meant dollar value transactions.

Oh no.

So bad.

Communication creates.

More work.

And this is on both of us.

This is on me.

I didn't ask for clarity, you know, I didn't actually ask well, what do you mean when you say transaction?

And so, again, adding context, you know, asking for more details this now I have to go do this again.

I had to go pull the information again.

I'd go bug people, we've lost a day, have created more work for myself.

Start with your communication.

So how would you so?

This is very interesting because this happens all the time, right?

And what would you do differently?

If you could rewind back in time?

Yeah, I mean I guess like you could say well if they were more clearer but I think generally speaking we have to try and control her own destiny.

So if it was on you, what would you do differently?

Sometimes I don't think slack or teams or email or DM's actually helps get across really Messages.

I would have called this person using slack phone or just call them on phone say, hey, let's talk through this.

Let me clarify everything that you're thinking of, so I would have asked, I would have asked Mark for more context as well, right?

Like, oh well, why do you want transactions?

If I had asked, why do you want it this way?

Or if that person had, just given me more context to begin with.

I would have easily figured out what they had meant by transactions.

Yeah.

No that's super interesting.

And I love the the acronym to so we'll also include that in the show notes.

It reminds me I love that.

It starts with context context is so interesting.

I recently heard this story of there is a very design minded CEO.

I guess he worked at Apple and worked with Steve Jobs or something.

And so, he was in the room and, you know, product team presents something and then he just asked a question of like have you considered this, you know, fast forward, six months, A new product Branch based on that feedback and he finds out and he surprises.

Like what?

Like why?

No, I was just asking because I was curious.

And so, again, it's just concept of context.

So sometimes it's important to understand and say, well, you know, just so, you know, it's mostly because I'm curious no action necessary.

But here's why I'm asking this question.

Yes, exactly, exactly.

You know, there's there's a lot that, you know, we were able to get to and And and some things that we were not, but I think in general, this has been so interesting.

But there is one question that I did want to believe you with.

And this is something that we ask all of our guests, which is for all of the managers and leaders out there constantly looking to get better at their craft of management and Leadership.

What parting advice, tips, tricks, or even words of wisdom?

Would you leave them with the first thing that I'll reiterate is what?

What Curtis?

Me, which is managers should be measured on retention and there have been studies that indicate managers actually account for 70% of the variance in some of these performance.

So, think about how you can increase the psychological safety on your team, how can you go from boss and manager to a coach that has been really helpful for me, in my management.

Practice learn how to be a better Communicator.

Communication.

Bates, Clarity and Clarity creates calm.

And this helps with building the psychological safety and we have psychologically safe teams, you have better performance more engagement lower turnover, that's awesome.

And great place to end it Alice.

Thank you so much for doing this.

Oh, thank you so much.

Aiden, this is so fun.

And like I said, I absolutely like that.

So thank you for building that tool.

Thank you.

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.fafsa.gov / super managers.

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