Culture and Process - Why One Without The Other Is Obsolete

Mamuna Oladipo, Pamela Mead, Betina Evancha, Marcus Andrews at UXDX USA. Video: https://youtu.be/8GcsOrJBEF4

Readable transcript: edited from the recording's captions for readability (fillers and false starts removed, punctuation and section headings added). Wording is the speaker's own. Timestamps are positions in the video. Names marked [?] could not be verified against the audio.

Why product teams are built for tension

[00:00:01] Marcus: Hey everybody, I'm Marcus Andrews, I'm the director of product marketing at Pendo, and I'm super excited to talk today about culture and process. I personally am excited for this one because in product marketing I sit with the product team a lot. I'm a little bit on the outside, and when I look in, I think I see a lot of, I don't know, chaos sometimes, and tension, and it can be kind of crazy. So I'm excited for this one, because I think culture and process are two things that can really help steady a ship, and it's really exciting for me to learn from our panel today about how they do it and how they think about it.

[00:00:44] Product teams are extremely cross-functional. You have all these competing asks from different teams, be it leadership or engineering or customers, and you have to influence; you don't necessarily have authority. A lot of teams can be chaotic, but it's almost like product teams are built to be chaotic. They're structured, designed for this. And it's really interesting, because when you get it right and that chaos goes well, it can actually be a good thing. It can be a pressure cooker that creates beautiful stuff, and it can also explode, and I've seen both in my time working with product teams. I'm sure our panelists have as well.

[00:01:28] But I don't know how to deal with this. I don't know how to manage this. This is why I'm the moderator, not on the panel, and we have some really smart folks who are going to help us navigate this and who I think we can learn from. We've got a bunch of questions, and I think we're going to have time for audience questions too, so if you hear things while we're talking or areas you want to dive deeper into, save them for the end and we'll get your questions answered.

[00:01:58] I don't know if everybody's been introduced, but we've got Pamela, Betina and Mamuna here. Pamela, I'm going to start with you. When you think about the environment that product teams are in, what I was talking about, this tension or chaos or conflict that exists, is that an accurate description? Is it a bad thing, is it a good thing? How do you feel about this, how do you define it?

[00:02:26] Pamela: It can be, of course, good and bad. As you describe it, it's chaotic, quite frothy. When we talked earlier, I was challenging that it's conflict, or how to think about conflict. I'm not a perennially optimistic person, but I do try to figure out how to turn chaos into something productive. So I think conflict, especially between interdisciplinary teams, can to me be turned into what I call creative tension. I really, really believe that the most amazing innovative solutions, or even the best problem solving, happens in some level of constraint.

[00:03:08] If the teams trust each other, if they really can figure out how to work together from a product, design and engineering perspective, then you can really solve problems magically, and the tension can be turned into something super positive. It doesn't mean it's not stressful, or that it's not exhausting or frustrating, but it doesn't have to be conflict. My common sense when you use the word conflict is always that it has to be some kind of compromise, that it's somehow lesser than if you had it just your way. But I think that's unrealistic. We always have to solve problems within constraints, and I'm very much a believer in the power of constraints to help us create better solutions.

[00:03:48] So I try to turn it into something positive, with SumUp in particular focusing on this message of one team and bringing that back, because I think Rory talked about this waterfall version of agile, and I think it's what I've seen most of the time. So figuring out how we can really work together in something that creates that magic is how I think about it.

[00:04:12] Marcus: Yeah. The cross-functional nature: Rory was talking earlier about how teams are becoming more cross-functional, and maybe that's the future, that you've got these roles that have a foot in lots of different disciplines. Product managers is probably the easiest one to see that, because they have to understand design and business and engineering and marketing. But there's tension there. From my perspective there's always a lot of tension. Well, not always, I actually don't see it too much, but sometimes you can see tension between product managers and product marketers, because the swim lanes aren't defined or it's gray. But ultimately it's good, because it's good creative tension, I think. Betina, Mamuna, anything to add there? Anything that you've seen in a positive way when this conflict or tension happens in cross-functional teams?

[00:05:01] Betina: I want to call out the comment about trust. I think that is so, so important, and it enables that difference between teams that spiral and teams that come together more closely. That's the key, so great comment.

[00:05:19] Mamuna: I second everything. I think it's interesting, because the tension is where the creativity does come up. Oftentimes what I like to see is, when you do have some of those blurred lanes, you have engineers who can act like product, designers that act like product, product that acts like engineers, whatever it may be, but they feel like, "I have the impetus to make that change. I see a thing, I'm going to take ownership." So I love to see that in those moments.

[00:05:51] Marcus: And if it bubbles up into a bad thing in the team, what do you do? It's a good thing, but sure, there's some tension there. So if it does bubble up into a bad thing, how do you address that as a leader of a product team?

[00:06:03] Mamuna: I think it's an honest conversation. As a leader it's important to have trust with your team, so that they know that you mean everything with good intention. So it's not that you're calling them out for doing anything wrong, but there may be a boundary or something they need to be more mindful of, and it's just a teachable moment.

Building trust when the team is remote

[00:06:21] Marcus: Love that. Cool. All right, there are a lot of things in the world right now that are making all this harder too. One of them is a big shift to remote, which we've gone back and forth on. Shopify is totally remote; you don't have offices, right? So how do you build culture and help build an environment of trust and cross-functional relationships when you don't have a physical office, you don't have that mingling? How do you think about that?

[00:06:50] Mamuna: It's an interesting one. At the beginning of COVID I was at Kickstarter, and it was a scramble, because everyone was trying to figure out what tools to use, how do you find visibility, how do you build trust, where does communication take place, what's too much, and all those fun things I'm sure we've all been through the past couple of years. But what I found at Shopify is that sometimes when you let go of trying to control too much, there's a natural pace and cadence that builds up in teams. Of course you have to help support them, but in a lot of instances you'll see teams want to build togetherness.

[00:07:34] So then you start to say, okay, what are some things that we can do to help connect the dots? A lot of it comes down to, foundationally, does a team trust one another? Do they have some cadence of communication? As a leader I could say I want all of my teams to work nine to five, but for a global company that is not logical. So you have to let the teams who have people in EMEA or in Southeast Asia, wherever it may be, understand what works well for them and find their right cadence of work. A lot of it is trusting your team to trust themselves to make good decisions, and when it starts to veer off the rails, you can start to help them in those instances. But I think once you do start to trust them, you get to see the creativity come up a bit more than you would in other instances.

[00:08:28] Marcus: That's kind of counterintuitive, because Shopify is a big company, you've got a lot of employees, and I think a lot of leaders probably think that as the company grows you need to lock down more. But you're letting go more, you're letting more things happen. Is that accurate? And how does leadership feel comfortable with that? It's got to be a little scary.

[00:08:49] Mamuna: Trust. That is accurate, and honestly, once a company scales, I don't think it's realistic to try to control everything, because you don't know all the edge cases, you don't know the different circumstances. But the teams do, and they know what they need. So a lot of times how you're plugged in as a leader to support those teams is the best way. You're more of a supporting role at times. You can come in with guidance and you can come with recommendations, but it's not a highly structured environment that they have to follow.

[00:09:24] Marcus: Yeah. "They know what they need" is a great point. Yes, of course they do know what they need, that makes sense, but it's hard. Anything to add there, Pamela or Betina, about your own experience in remote or scaling a company? Do you agree with that? Have you had to do that in your own jobs and experience as leaders?

[00:09:45] Pamela: Of course we're all remote, and we have always had some level of remoteness, because we are a global company and we have quite a few offices, so there's always somebody remote in some way, shape or form. I think we've adapted quite well to the tools, but we hold quite a strong belief in co-location. Our offices have been open for about a year and a half, very informal, and we've been coming and going as people wanted to. For some people it's essential, because they had moved to Berlin, we had been in lockdown, they were living in really small apartments, and they were really suffering from depression and so on. So having that kind of flexibility has worked really well.

[00:10:29] But we're also discovering, certainly for myself and especially in the product space, that there is a level of creativity, but also expediency, that happens in communication that I have not been able to figure out how to replicate using a Miro board or a Zoom call or yet another Zoom call. So we're going to be encouraging people to come back at least three days a week, just to be able to start to facilitate more of that exchange. I do believe it works faster and more efficiently in some instances. I know it's very conflicting, and maybe not everybody shares that perspective, but certainly for me, Zoom is soul-destroying.

[00:11:20] It's amazing that it works, and I love having options to work from home on the day that I choose. But my extrovert side really craves those really informal meetings. I talk to people in the office that I would never get on a Zoom call or a Slack with, and those exchanges are the most valuable ones.

[00:11:41] Marcus: Yeah, I think we can all agree that we're all Zoomed out, and it is taxing. But what I hear, I think, is flexibility. It's an approach, doing what's right for you, and there's no right answer for any of this. So it's understanding it and then listening to people and doing what's right for your audience.

Psychological safety and failing small

[00:12:01] Pamela, let's stay with you. One thing we're starting to talk about a little bit already is that in the most innovative environments, product teams, any team, people feel safe to fail and try things that don't work, or that sound dumb, whatever it is. You can't have that unless you have psychological safety, unless people feel really comfortable having the ability to mess up and fail. Culturally, or maybe from a system standpoint, how do you help instill that environment or culture, create that safety?

[00:12:39] Pamela: I was prepping a little bit for the questions and trying to remember what I used to call this, but I'm not convinced people really want to fail. I think it is the thing that we talk about, because you do either make mistakes or do things that don't work the way you intended. We do retrospectives quite regularly, not consistently, but we really try to reflect on what worked and what didn't work and adapt. I'm a little bit late to retrospectives, but I've really seen some great opportunities and conversations come up with that.

[00:13:17] SumUp very much believes in open feedback and radical candor. We're not very good at practicing it, but as a leader, reinforcing that, listening and understanding, and encouraging people to look at it from different perspectives, has worked quite well for me in the teams that I've been working with. Because people actually try something for a particular reason, understanding what they were trying to accomplish sometimes provides an opening to also make suggestions, building on what may have ended up not working in a way that becomes much more constructive.

[00:13:58] Marcus: Yeah, and you're talking a little bit about modeling behavior from leadership, which I always think helps a ton. When you see your leader show that it's okay for them to be vulnerable and authentic, or fail, I think that helps people too. Anything to add on to that? Anything that you think helps build that safety and trust?

[00:14:21] Betina: Yes. I think another way to think about it is to reframe it: the option is not to fail or not to fail. It's to fail quickly and in as small a way as you can, or to fail in a big, slow, expensive way. When we think about it as trying to avoid failure or optimize for perfection, we make lots of those big, slow, expensive mistakes, and that's what I've been trying to emphasize with my team.

[00:14:54] Mamuna: I would echo the modeling. That was the big one for me, especially at the beginning of the pandemic, when I personally was moving very quickly trying to fix things for my team and help them get settled. I didn't know what it meant to lead in this remote space and how to support my team through this transition. So I just started being very open with the team: "We're all doing this for the first time, I'm going to make mistakes." I would openly talk about the mistakes I made, my thoughts on them, what I learned from them, how I was going to apply those learnings going forward. And people were like, "Wow, I should do that too." Creating that space where people think, "Well, if she does it, then maybe I can do it," and then it passes down to the next person. So modeling worked really well for me.

[00:15:42] Marcus: Yes. The pandemic helped with that in a way, at least for me too, because I'm on a call with my team and there's my screaming one-year-old because something happened, and it's just, hey, this is how it is. This is real life. I think the pandemic brought real life a little bit more into our work world too.

Using culture to stay focused through external noise

[00:16:03] All right, Betina, you're VP of Product at Peloton. It's been a roller coaster year for everybody, but not everybody has had their product featured in a Sex and the City reboot. Probably not too many products. But in your experience, how does culture help you through that? What works, what doesn't work? How do you keep the team strong and focused and feeling together, with culture as a tool, if that makes sense?

[00:16:39] Betina: Absolutely, and it's a great question. I'm very much working through this now, so extremely topical. The good news at Peloton has been that our culture historically has been pretty strong: a great sense of ownership, focus on the member, collaboration, trust. So we started from a good place. And then you've got all of this external noise coming from the market, coming from, I don't know, your friends at a cocktail party, coming from outside of the company and outside of your team. One of my first approaches as a leader was entirely wrong, which was to say, "Stop paying attention to that, just focus." It's like telling someone to calm down. It doesn't actually work.

[00:17:29] After having realized that this was not a good plan, I brought my team together and we spent some time brainstorming and thinking through this, and where we got to was: how do we create the environment for focus inside of the team, and create the counter to that noise? That means being much more transparent than we had been in the past, and talking a lot about failures, big and small, honestly and openly. Making sure that we were talking about not only our strategy but also our path towards the strategy, so it's not a big bang of zero to strategy. Bringing people along the path, I think, helps build trust and helps them feel like they are part of it.

[00:18:22] And then also really empowering people. When you've got folks who have high ownership, who trust each other, who work really hard, they see a problem, they want to solve it. So how can we help them do that, and pull apart feelings that you start to get at bigger companies naturally, unless you resist them?

[00:18:46] Marcus: I love that. Exactly: your natural reaction when there's all this noise might be, okay, we've got to try and block it out. But sometimes if you address it, you take the wind out of it, you take the power away from it.

[00:18:57] Betina: Exactly. We're going to address it, we're going to talk about it, but we're still going to focus, and recreate this environment for it. And we are not our stock price. No one is their stock price.

[00:19:09] Marcus: Totally. Regardless of what's going on in the world, that's good advice. You have to keep that approach, because we're building generational companies. This couple of years doesn't matter in the big picture. I love that.

Supporting people without losing performance

[00:19:24] All right, a lot of people are stressed out, people are burnt out, we're juggling kids at home and health. How do you create a culture that supports people on your team but is also innovative and meeting its goals, pushing and challenging people? How do you balance those two things? Are they at odds? How do you think about that?

[00:19:45] Mamuna: When I transitioned into Shopify, I was completely burned out. I was done. The awareness there really hit home for me during the pandemic, because I was like, "Yeah, I can do it, I can do it," and I just kept taking things on. So now I can see the signs in people. But the biggest thing for me is awareness. I always tell the team, "Listen, if you're not here, it's not like it can't get done." It doesn't matter how hard you push yourself or how hard you push your team: if they're burned out, you're getting nothing out of them. So it's consistently telling people that they have to find that balance for themselves.

[00:20:28] We talk a lot about work-life balance, but balance is different for everyone. One person can sleep eight hours and another can sleep four hours, and they could both feel the same. It depends on the individual. So it's really about helping your teams take a moment to pause and understand what is the right pace for them. And again, it's the individual teams that are going to understand how they operate and how they work. Sometimes I'll see some of my teams in the Eastern states staying up late to stay with their APAC team, and I'm like, "You're working long hours, do you really want to do that?" But they have a plan in mind: "We're going to work late today, but we're not going to work late another day. We'll end the day early on another day."

[00:21:15] So you have to encourage folks. I have some workaholics on my team, and it's buddying up with them and teaching them to see the signs of burnout and to find those balances. It's constantly communicating it, it's modeling it. I'm juggling being a parent, I'm juggling all the different things that pop up, and it helps people understand that it's okay. It's okay if you have to take that moment. Something happens, don't freak out, let's talk about it. I think psychological safety also plays a part in that, because they trust that you trust them to manage their time as adults. So there's a base foundation of psychological safety, and then you can build on top of that.

[00:21:54] Marcus: One point you made in there, which is really hard, is that you could see some behavior that would be unhealthy for you, but you've got to take your personal hat off and say, okay, maybe they are going to work because they have to finish this project, otherwise it's going to bug them and bother them and make it worse for them. That's just not how you would approach it. It's really hard, but that makes a lot of sense to me. Anybody want to build on that? How to manage high-performing teams versus burnout, and people taking care of themselves? Anything that's worked for you?

[00:22:36] Pamela: We definitely encourage people taking care of themselves. I've seen it go a little bit almost... As a leader, I have to be careful to also watch when it is actually being a bit abused. So there's a bit of a fine line there, which I think just happens naturally with the blending of home life with everything else. For some people, I know I've gone out of my way to really make sure that they don't feel stressed, because in Germany, the Kita is closed, and what do you do? You suddenly have two little kids at home. To your point, we can't put more stress on people, because they can't do anything about that kind of situation.

[00:23:21] So we've been really making sure that teams feel comfortable with that, and I know the high performers will make up for it. I think it's then watching out for who should be a high performer but seems to be sliding a little bit. This is where as leaders we just have to pay attention to it individually, and see how we can support them, or what's missing. Are they frustrated, or are they not clear? What's preventing them from being the high performer?

[00:23:51] Betina: Yeah, I think it's really important to be able to have that individual conversation with people and say, "I saw you in this meeting, you seemed frustrated. Is something happening? How can we work through that?" Maybe you seem burned out, or the opposite: "We're looking for this outcome from you, and it seems like we're not getting there. How can we problem-solve?" That kind of leveraging radical candor, being willing to work with people one-on-one, can really help, at least with your directs. It's hard with the larger team, of course.

[00:24:27] Marcus: That's a great point too. If someone is doing their best and they're struggling, or they need some help, and you as a leader see that and point it out, I think it is very cool as an individual, because you really do feel like someone cares about you. It's like, "Oh, I didn't even say anything, they just noticed."

Rituals that keep teams grounded

[00:24:44] Okay, we are in a world of uncertainty right now in general. It's great, it's so much fun. Pandemic, some economic challenges, whatever we'll deal with next. Do you have rituals? My example is I love our Monday morning stand-up every week with my team. It's just something that we do. Sometimes there's an agenda, sometimes there's not, it's just this ritual that feels good and brings us together. Do you have rituals or systems or processes that you swear by that help keep you grounded in times of uncertainty, or just in general? We can start with you.

[00:25:19] Betina: It's a great question. When we had some of the recent reorganizations, one of the things that we realized was that how we modeled as a cross-functional team, product and engineering and design, was affecting how the teams were treating each other. So one of the things that we started doing was, every week, we all spend time together and we hash out anything that needs hashing out. The improvement there has been so marked, because when we talk to individual teams about strategies or where they're going, there's more alignment and more context. And that helps inspire the folks on the teams to also treat each other with that trust and directness and respect.

[00:26:12] Marcus: How about you, any rituals or processes?

[00:26:17] Mamuna: I am very sporadic. A lot of times you just go through the week and you see when your team needs a little pick-me-up, and so maybe it's, let's have breakfast together, let's have lunch together, getting folks who are available. But because of the time zone differences, it can be hard to do a stand-up at the start of the day, because it's at a random time. So a lot of times it's finding some quick moments: whoever's available, let's hop in and chat for 15 minutes about nothing or about something.

[00:26:52] Shopify also does this concept of bursts, where we travel to locations as a small team or as a big team and work on things together. That puts us in a space together where we can have those creative whiteboarding sessions, and then we can go off and, a couple of weeks later, continue to work off of that. But it varies depending on the team.

[00:27:16] Marcus: Cool, that's interesting, the whiteboarding sessions. I'm remote and was hired into my job remote, during the pandemic too, and I really miss whiteboarding sessions. Mural is cool, but it's just not the same as getting a room with the right people. How about you, any systems or processes you really swear by?

[00:27:36] Pamela: I'm really mixed on regular meetings. Part of keeping the community together globally has been to do some regular check-ins, either with my leads, or we have product things, brand things, research things on a regular basis. They seem to go in waves. I know not doing them causes a problem, but doing them is sometimes also really like pulling teeth. We're just now going through a bit of a refresh of what works and what doesn't work, and finding these moments for people to come together and exchange.

[00:28:14] We've just recently shortened the time for some of these meetings and created a tighter, one-pager, almost stand-up format, and that seems to work really well. People really engage and spend the time; it's just enough of that sharing. But I think for me it's always having to invent something new in order to keep it fresh.

[00:28:37] Marcus: Yeah, refreshing. It's spring cleaning, if you will, of those systems, and that's really important, because you can get in the rhythm of doing something and then it becomes the thing that no one actually likes, the meeting that's just time on the calendar. So it's good to check in with the team on that, obviously. Okay, that's all my questions. I don't know exactly how we do this, but I believe there's a mic that will move around. There it is. Does anybody have any questions for the panel, anything they heard that they want to dig into a little bit? I can't really see, but if you have one, raise your hand and we'll get you the mic. Can we turn the lights up a little bit?

Q&A

[00:29:26] Audience: It's so cool to see all of you, this is amazing. I haven't done a talk in person in so long.

[00:29:34] Marcus: It's great, isn't it? We've all got masks on still, but boy, it's fun.

[00:29:39] Audience: Thank you so much for this panel, I really enjoyed it. One question: even though we're all excited to get back in person and collaborate together, is there any process or any positive tension that this whole pandemic has taught you that you want to carry over into an in-person role, that you don't want to lose? If so, what are those things that you've learned that are new for your team?

[00:30:06] Betina: Wow. I have very strong feelings about this, as an introvert who manages mostly extroverts. I would say there's documentation that open floor plans with a ton of people in them are really overwhelming for a lot of us. One of the good results of everyone having to work from home was that folks who needed to do heads-down work, and worked best that way, found that they had the time and the space and the quiet, in some scenarios. I know this is a mixed experience for everybody.

[00:30:42] One of the things I've been thinking about a lot, as a manager of some folks who work really closely with hardware and need to touch it and watch people exercise, and folks who work with software where there's this move towards remote, is how to help people frame that up for themselves. It is again one of these trust exercises. I want folks who have really high ownership to know how they work best and then go do that. So we've been thinking about how to frame it in terms of guidelines or principles, rather than you have to be in a certain number of days or something like that, in our case.

[00:31:24] Pamela: I would agree with that. Certainly the flexibility feels really different. I've always worked in companies where there's never been a hard rule that you couldn't work from home when you needed to. But now there's a lot more understanding of what it is that you need to do, and it doesn't really change the perception of efficiency or impact. So getting that balance right, between making sure there are enough of us in the office at the same time to benefit from being in the office, versus having the flexibility to adapt to the moment in time or to what you need to be doing, is to me a pretty significant shift that I think we'll preserve as we go forward.

[00:32:11] Mamuna: I guess the thing I'd add is communication, and how you scale communication. Pre-pandemic, we were in offices, and you could have a quick meeting, you'd walk by a desk. My thought now is that even for folks who are going back to the office, you probably won't all be in the office at the same time regularly. So you're going to have to think about how you have some people in meeting rooms and then some on Zoom or some other space. Now we all understand what that feels like: you're in a room, and then maybe you're on the Zoom, and how uncomfortable or challenging it is to hear a person across the room. I think we're going to be more empathetic to that experience and to how we scale our communications across teams.

[00:32:59] Marcus: That was mine too, you took the words out of my mouth. As someone who was hired remote and wants to work remote, at a company with an office there's not always empathy for the remote person on Zoom who can't hear what's going on in the meeting. But now there is, because we've all had to do it. That's a great one. We've probably got time for one more question. Anybody out there have another one for the panel? Be brave. Here we are. You want to wait for the mic so we can all hear it. Thank you.

[00:33:31] Audience: First of all, thank you so much for the great conversation and panel sessions. I have a question about one-on-ones. In the remote situation, how do you communicate with your direct reports and team in the one-on-one?

[00:33:48] Marcus: Can you say the last part again? How do you communicate with the teams in a one-on-one setting when remote? Yeah.

[00:33:58] Mamuna: For me it again comes down to psychological safety and trust. Being remote, you don't see them. You can't see how their hands are sitting or what's going on around them. So the first thing I always do is check in with folks to see what's going on around them, what's going on in their teams, what's top of mind for them. Sometimes it has nothing to do with work, sometimes it's something personal, and it's making space for them to share openly. The more they trust you, I think, the harder a person works, if they trust that the person they're working for believes in them and wants to see them supported. So it's taking the time to address those things first, then diving into the normal stuff, and at the end, for me, it's always saving time to check back in on their goals. How are we tracking against the goals that we've set? How are they feeling about it, what are they excited about, and how can I support them as their manager or leader?

[00:34:53] Marcus: That's a great point, that it might not always be related to work. Oftentimes it isn't. Especially younger millennials or Gen Z, to come back to that earlier conversation, really want to bring their whole self to work, and that's a good thing if they want to. So embracing that and figuring out how to have those conversations in a positive way, I think, is important.

[00:35:17] Betina: I used to dislike chit-chat in the office setting, but it is so important to have room for, not even really small talk, just talk that isn't work-centric, in a remote environment. So agreed, 100%.

[00:35:33] Marcus: Absolutely. We may have time for one more before we get the hook. Anybody else? All right, over here.

[00:35:47] Audience: Thank you. I just had a quick question. You were talking about the importance of sensing when something's off with your direct reports, and I think that's really powerful, showing that you have that emotional intelligence or that observation to know them well enough. My question is, what strategies do you use to allow people to open up and show you when something's off? Obviously you can tell someone's maybe frustrated, but do you have any stories on how you've been able to use that as a tool to get people to be vulnerable with you if they haven't been before?

[00:36:31] Mamuna: I use the one-on-ones as my baseline, so I get a sense of where they are and how they react to things. You can tell what irritates a person or what frustrates a person, if they're constantly blocked on a certain thing, and you can coach them through it. Or if it's a personal thing, maybe they have something going on at home. I had an individual who had a sick spouse, and they didn't want to say it, they just wanted to work through it. Then in our one-on-one I randomly asked what they had planned for the weekend, and it slipped out that they were going to the hospital with their spouse. I was like, "Oh, let's talk about that if you're comfortable," and they just let it all out.

[00:37:10] From there it was small messages like, "Hey, I need 10 minutes to go do this thing," or "I'm going to make it up at this time." And they worked harder in the time that they were present, because they knew that I knew what was going on. They didn't have to hide it, and they felt supported through the process, which made it easier for them.

[00:37:29] Betina: And it really depends on the person and where they are. It sounds like that person maybe took a minute to be ready to talk about it at work. The simpler tool that I use is just asking a question and waiting. Count in your head if they don't come out with it. Just patience.

[00:37:55] Pamela: Being sensitive to what people need at the moment is really important. I will talk about this tomorrow a little bit, but we're very distributed. In these meetings we were just talking about, where once a month we bring the whole design community together, I try to reinforce that anybody can meet with me anytime. And people believe that because, well, I don't interview most of the designers anymore, but I make a point of meeting every designer who joins the company at least once, for 30 minutes, so I can get to know them a little bit.

[00:38:35] So they believe me when I tell them, "If you need to talk to me and you look at my schedule and want to cry, send me a Slack message and I'll always make time." And I always will make time if I can figure that out. I think that's a way in which, because I can't see everything, we are too distributed, we are too big as an organization, I can invite them to come talk to me, and people trust that they can, and find it valuable. So it's reinforcing the messages and creating the easy space for them to come and talk to me about anything.

[00:39:11] Marcus: I would say, to build on all of that, I had a manager who was very cool and collected and would never get frustrated, even when things were extremely frustrating, and it made me feel like I couldn't do that either. Now my manager gets frustrated when things are frustrating, and he keeps it real, and he'll show that emotion, and that gives me the permission to do it too. So I think it's modeling, and knowing that you have the permission to be real and talk about things, that helps too. All right, we are out of time. Let's hear it for the panel. This was really good. Thank you so much.