Month 1 Summary
Philippe Mesritz
Customer Success Executive for Technology Companies | Employee, Customer, Shareholder - a Virtuous Circle! | Transformational Leader | Customer Experience & Retention | Chief Customer Officer | Speaker | Advisor
A month ago, I wrote an article about Execution & Being a Leader. In that article, I surmised that I'd post on LinkedIn weekly and then on a quarterly basis turn that into a newsletter. Well, LinkedIn doesn't allow for quarterly newsletters -- just monthly and I've also discovered that there's actually a lot more to read if I made this quarterly. Thus, this newsletter is born as a monthly summary of posts, polls and additional thoughts based on the poll results and commentary received. I may post once in a while about a new poll that's up during the week, but typically the goal will be to provide an effective roundup for those interested.
November 30th, 2022
“Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.” – Publilius Syrus
This Latin writer had it right. Calm seas, growth companies with tons of money in the bank, easy decisions, lots of open positions, you name it .. this is when it is easy to lead. Currently, the sea is not calm at many companies – whether it is layoffs and the uncertainty that follows (both for impacted employees and existing employees or even the leadership), whether it is trying to raise new funding through investment during a very difficult economic situation, whether it is high turnover due to the Great Resignation, whether it’s dealing with mental or physical health challenges with COVID or something else, and a multitude of other heavy scenarios weighing on people’s minds.
Part of our job as leaders is to be there for people around you – be there just to listen, be there to help provide guidance, be there to support their teams. This can be emotionally and physically taxing on you – it is critical to ensure your OWN health as well and realize that, sometimes, the best thing you can do for your team is take a break. Take an hour and sit outside or play video games (or whatever floats your boat). Once you’ve taken care of yourself, you can take care of your team. It is important to engage with them and make sure that they understand that you’re there for them. They need to know that you’re available for them, that you’re in the trenches with them working through the challenges.
It’s not easy, but that’s why you’ve chosen to be a leader. #leadership #itsnoteasy #management #economy
I used this blog post to ask a super simplistic question – and, honestly, I couldn't imagine a different result. Sure, there’s only 14 people that voted on this – it was my first poll and a rather pedantic question that didn’t take too much thought. People that voted on either end were more likely to burn out or have their teams burnout. The balance doesn’t mean you always balance between the two. It means that overall you do – sometimes you have to prioritize the team, sometimes yourself and sometimes leaders have to juggle both. It’s why you get #paidthebigbucks as it were!
December 6th, 2022
“A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves”. —Lao Tzu
The sentiment behind Lao Tzu’s statement is fairly simple and straightforward - A team does the work and the leader has been but a guiding force. Many times, people who are in leadership or management roles feel that their worth is driven by the credit that they directly receive. In my experience, it is so much more rewarding and fulfilling to have set the vision and direction so clearly that your team completes a project without needing to come to you. Granted, it’s not easy to either relinquish the facade of control or the reality of feeling important because you’re directing everything, but it’s literally impossible to do as much if you need to have your hands on the wheel of everything happening.
A front line manager has more of this “direct control” typically, yet if they focus on working with and empowering their teams, they’ll have a greater impact. As an executive, this becomes even more critical. Running teams of 100+ doesn’t allow for touching every situation, so the vision and mission of the team becomes crucial for the broader success of the business.
Make sure that your team has clarity on where they’re going - a “North Star” as it were. #leadership #management #careers #vision
Spike Jones, Sr Director at Udemy, had a really great point: “I've never been a fan of the phrase and meaning of "command and control." Sometimes do you have to take the bull by the horns and push through? Yes. But too much command and control communicates that you don't trust your team to make decisions or know how to do their job. And that breeds frustration.” while Nutan Sharma, Director at Spinnaker Support, made the statement “Enable, empower and hold accountable”. The final person, Oren Rosenthal, a Customer and Data Operations leader, chimed in that there’s a dimension that modifies this as a whole which hasn’t really been talked about “Another critical dimension is Communication. The success of every leadership style depends on clear and authentic communication.”
I love those thoughts and the votes. There’s a lot of variability here in my opinion – a North Star to empower the broader team is extremely beneficial, but not without communication; being “bull by the horns” works, but only during strategically necessary times or as needed, and balancing the needs to really push execution.
December 13th, 2022
“Where there is no vision, the people perish.” —Proverbs 29:18
Since most of us aren’t involved with life or death situations, this quote from Proverbs is certainly best taken in a non-literal manner. Whether one considers death to a company, project or an individual’s career, the lack of vision is often what drives the inability to be successful. Lack of a north star drives havoc in your team’s day to day.
In line with Lao Tzu’s comment from my last post on this thread, the only way to scale your teams is to help them be self-sufficient in as many ways possible as you can. #empower them, #coach them, #teach them. Help them see where you’re taking the business, help them understand the #strategy behind your decisions so that they can adapt that to their own choices. If you don’t, you have the potential to lead your business to perish.
Be creative. Be better. #leadership #management #careers #vision
Pretty simple here, although not a lot of responses. I haven’t quite figured out how to get greater audience visibility, so that’s something I’ll continue to work through! I love Aditya Dutta’s thoughts as Head of Support for Algonomy - “Personalized coaching in a relaxed environment works best. An official tone where the speaker must to (sic) tow an official line makes it a bit boring. Casual mode lets the speaker and listeners engage in a more candid discussion.” His commentary supports the entire “spend more time with my team” concept.
What I’ll add is that spending more time with your team is both on an individual basis as well as broader groups. Small group skip-level sessions and discussions are invaluable. My habit around these is to NOT include the managers at all in these skip-level groups. That lets people speak a little more freely about their issues. The other that I’m a fan of is using tools to connect asynchronously with people – slack is a great example of this. 15Five is another through their check-in capabilities and weekly ongoing bi-directional conversational engagement model.
December 20th, 2022
“I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?” —Benjamin Disraeli
The #ServantLeadership” terminology was coined in the 1970s, but the concept has been around for generations. In the 1800s, Benjamin was the prime minister of the UK – he didn’t call it the same thing, but as you can see, the sentiment remains. There’s a reason for that. Ruling by fear, by mandate, or by dictatorial design is certainly a way of doing things – my strongly held belief is that it’s the wrong way. Especially in today’s world, people aren’t typically looking to follow authoritarians. There’s article after article, book after book, that talk about this so I won’t go into why this matters, but I’ll give you some thoughts on how to actually execute on this.
Be a part of the discussion. Too many people don’t bother talking to their broader teams in any way, whether async through tools (happy to suggest some), 1-1, or round tables. Understand the challenges.
Listen to your team and actively help solve challenges that they bring to you. Many leaders listen but then ignore. Follow where the pain is.
Help your team members advance. Whether this is with you at the company (ideal) or even helping them move to another company because yours can’t support their growth, give them opportunities. Follow and push people along.
The TL;DR version of this is: Be there for your team and help them.
#leadership #management #careers #vision
One day, my poll might grow in responses but for the time being, this is a great split. Didn’t get many other thoughts, but when you look at how people focus on things, it’s important to help your team members grow and be part of the discussions. Some of my personal favorite successes are when team members grow beyond what I can offer them at the company. I’ve had people go on to be extremely successful at other companies and I’m proud to see what they can accomplish there. Leaning into your team lets them lead the way and be successful which, when you boil it down, helps ensure your own personal success as well!
December 27th, 2022
“He who has great power should use it lightly.” —Seneca
Whether or not you believe it, if you’re leading a team you wield power. Your team looks to you as a person who controls their fate day in and day out. I’ll just tell a quick story to illustrate. Back in the day, I had a VP who didn’t lead or engender anything but fear. When he didn’t like something, he’d walk out onto the floor of 150 people, find the person that did it wrong, and bellow out the failure at them from 50 feet away . This obviously turned heads – made even worse by the fact that ? these people or more were on the phone with customers or field technicians when he did it. Not a single person reacted positively to it or had great morale – for a little while, performance went great! No one wanted to be yelled at, so they straightened up, but it also turned into higher resignations, less volunteering, and less improvements.
Being a leader means that you spend much less time driving fear and doubt in your teams. It means you should spend more time understanding where their troubles are and helping them on their way – following them to success and encouragement rather than whipping with words or actions. Leading by fear is not using your power lightly – it’s wielding a heavy club that isn’t needed or warranted. Even when making hard decisions such as correcting mistakes or terminating employment for someone can be done without fear of being the driving force behind it.
Lead with empathy, not fear. #leadership #management #careers #vision #withgreatpowercomesgreatresponsibility #empathy
At the time of this writing, this poll is still up and running so take a moment to vote and provide a comment. "When is the last time that you had a toxic work environment? I don’t mean a basic “my job is hard”, but seriously one where there was hard core negativity involved. " I'll share the results in the next newsletter. I figure this will be my "hook" to keep people reading!
Hopefully, all this gave you a little bit to think about during the holidays. I'd love to hear from you on what you like, don't like, etc!
Philippe