Category: Mentoring

Great Expectations: Not just a Dicken’s Tale

ben

Disclaimer: What you don’t know, can hurt you.  

My expectation for you, as the reader, is that these guidelines will help you to take a more intentional approach to both setting and clarifying expectations.  

Clarifying expectations – What do I even need to do? 

When I was a new manager, I had an employee who was relatively new to the workforce. I will refer to them as Wally, not their real name. I had the expectation that Wally would be able to deliver on engineering tasks which another team needed done. The previous manager had not stated the person wasn’t meeting expectations as part of the transition. As the project was executing there were clear signals (to me) that this employee wasn’t meeting expectations (e.g. not giving status updates on progress made, not treating the project with urgency). This was clear to me, but not clear to Wally. What was the gap? I hadn’t set clear expectations with Wally (e.g. you need to send updates on your progress to stakeholders daily) and the other team’s lead. A couple weeks in, and I was having an expectations conversation. This is the challenge of expectations. My expectation, which was implicit is that a person should understand the importance of proactive communication and execute as quickly as possible on a project. 

Expectations – they’re everywhere! 

Expectation [ ek-spek-tey-shuhn ] – n. 1. a belief that someone will or should achieve something. 

Each job that you will hold in your life will come with expectations. Some expectations will be written down (explicit), most will not (implicit). Your job as an employee is to understand these expectations, the spirit behind them, how they apply to your role, and meet (and hopefully exceed) these expectations. 

Why are expectations so important? 

Expectations make and break relationships, this includes work relationships. Think back to the last person who consistently didn’t meet your expectations. What happened to that relationship over time when that person consistently didn’t meet expectations? 

As a manager, your role is to provide clear expectations to employees on how to be impactful and grow impact over time. Clear expectations are good, because the context in the expectation helps create enough structure for an employee to understand how to be successful.  

So, how do you hone your expectations: 

  1. Ask your manager –
    • your manager should have clear expectations for your role and level at the company. At larger companies some of these expectations are generalized for your role and level as a leveling guide or career ladder document. Whenever I have a new employee start on my team, I first ask them to read through and evaluate which areas they have demonstrated for their role and level, and identify where they are exceeding, meeting, or not demonstrating areas. This identification of not demonstrating an expectation is not punitive, but rather to illuminate which areas we can focus on demonstrating in the future (I.e. setting up goals). 
  2. Align to written current and next level role expectations
    • Expectations for a more senior engineer may have statements like the following: “autonomously deliver large-scale and ongoing business impact across a team, product capability” 
    • If they have been in their current level for a sufficient period of time, I ask them to look at the next level expectations and do the same identification (exceeding, meeting, not demonstrating). This can then feed into promotion readiness discussions. These role and level expectations merged with business needs should result in a goals-type document.  
    • A couple of clear examples:  
"In order for our team to scale successfully in the next quarter, I will interview 2 candidates a week, providing written feedback which clearly articulates where they are meeting / not meeting the rubric for the role / level" 
"I will execute the XYZ project as the technical lead and launch it by end of Q3, this will involve me working with the profile, search and detail page teams (both mobile and backend), aligning on a design, running status update meetings (to identify risks), and send stakeholder update emails"   
  1. Align to unspoken organization norms
    • observe others who are successful in your role (at your company or in your org) – the hardest expectations to meet are unspoken (unwritten) ones. A company may have a strong set of principles that define behaviors which are rewarded, e.g. Amazon LPs. 
    • These principles though can have different priorities depending on the organization or leader. So, what is defined as a principle for the company may not be the prioritized principle of the organization or leader. Let me give a specific example, as these leadership principles (LP) have some tension built into them that isn’t always apparent. The principles of deliver results and insists on the highest standards can be at tension with each other. If you are in a v1 product team where time is of the essence to launch the product, deliver results (getting it done) may be prioritized over insists on the highest standard. Deliver results then will be rewarded as compared to someone who might demonstrate insisting on the highest standards (with less results delivered). If you are having difficulty these unwritten expectations or what is rewarded in an org, find one of the influencers / strong performers and ask them for what are the most rewarded behaviors. 

How are they used by your manager? 

Expectations are a tool like anything else, to facilitate alignment between your manager and yourself. When you have strong alignment on expectations (and goals) with your manager, and then you execute against those expectations well, trust is built. Notice, I didn’t say that rewards would follow, that doesn’t always happen in the immediate term as the impact of the project might not turn out to be as big as anticipated, etc. (More on that in a later blog post.) However, trust is the lifeline of employee / manager relationships. The converse of not meeting expectations doesn’t necessarily result in performance management and end in termination, but in loss of trust.  

Why is trust so important? 

Many times, as a manager, I need to assign a big project opportunity and more often than not, I give those opportunities to an employee who has earned my trust. So, by not meeting expectations, and therefore not earning my trust, the employee is losing out on the opportunity to own a critical project. A specific example: imagine there is a two week timeline to deliver a feature, should I give the project to someone who I know will own the project and unblock themselves to meet the deadline, or a person who might have equivalent experience, but makes excuses of why things aren’t able to get done (e.g. too hard to do in an unfamiliar code base)? The question seems rhetorical, but the decision making for the above situation is something which managers face all the time.  

How do I build trust in an ambiguous situation?

As a manager, I have learned through the years that my leaders can’t read my mind. So, how do I manage the situation of discerning their expectations? (this applies to most senior level folks as they need to identify the most important problems to solve)

Over communicate. When I have a new manager, I turn up my verbosity level, as I tend naturally more towards terseness. I demonstrate how I think by writing the following: context of the problem, potential solutions and trade-offs, (if I’m not solving it individually) how I am coaching someone else through solving the problem, and when we should have enough information to move forward with executing. I then share that doc with my manager.

Why do I do this? I’m not looking for approval from my new manager, I’m looking to provide my manager with enough context to show them how I am thinking through the problem in order to develop trust. By over communicating in the two to three months after joining a new manager, often I find this develops a strong amount of trust which leads to greater and greater autonomy for me and my team. Additionally, if there is some failure of logic in my thinking or some missing context, they can provide that, and I can learn about those hidden expectations from them.

I liken this approach to showing your steps for math problems in school. Two people can have the same correct answer, but the teacher may grade down one of the students’ homework or test, because they didn’t show the work. They didn’t articulate how they came to the correct answer, so it could have been luck.

What should I do? 

Think about a few of your work or personal relationships. Ponder expectations that you have of the other person, and what expectations they might have of you. If you have a close enough relationship with them, ask them if your expectations assessment is accurate (are you missing any?). The results could be unexpected, and help you grow.  

5 habits of highly successful learners

ben

We live in the information age. The amount of information available through print, audio, and other mediums boggles the mind.  How to deal with this much information is a perplexing problem. It is especially pronounced for the so-called information worker. Being an information worker myself, I realized many years ago that I won’t ever be able to learn everything that I want to know. This conundrum surfaced when I tried reading one book a month, only to find that I wasn’t retaining the information after I finished reading the book. I found myself wondering, “If I’m not retaining what I am reading, what’s the point in reading the book in the first place?”

This started me on a journey of self-reflection in order to discover how effective learning takes place. Since learning usually takes place unconsciously, I had to think of how the largest lessons were learned and the most impactful moments of change happened in my life.

One such memory comes from when I was 9 years old. I was focused on learning a difficult piano piece. I slowly repeated the finger movements, and this repetition seemed to transfer the song to my memory. This technique resulted in me giving a recital of the entire book of songs from memory. Another example from a US History class came to mind. I read the textbook and wrote down key dates and events in a chronological timeline. When the test came, I could visualize the dates and aced the test. Making a visual representation helped the information to organize itself more clearly in my mind and helped me retain it better.

Entire books have been written addressing learning styles. I have read about learning styles, and even read (and retained) erroneous information regarding them. As I was writing this article, I recalled something written about a “cone of learning”, which had percentages of information retained by the activity involved. The cone showed that when reading you would at most retain 10%, as compared to teaching the information, which resulted in retention of up to 90%. Further reading discredited the “cone of learning”; the percentages are fictitious (1 and 2).

I realized since this cone of learning is fictional, I needed to look for non-fiction examples of habits that when followed led to success in learning. So, of the things I found from my observations of other successful learners as well as lessons from my own experiences, these are 5 habits of highly effective learners:

Be receptive to feedback – how willing am I to listen to others?

At the root of the ability to learn is the question, “How teachable am I?” If you believe yourself to be the brightest person in the world, your field, or your workplace, and that no one can teach you a thing, then you’re right: no one will. However, if you’re willing to set aside your ego and embrace a humbler view of your abilities, you will be open to hear what others have to say, and more apt to learn. For example, in one of my groups at work we were having trouble with two teams not coordinating well. As part of a retrospective on the problems the teams were having, one of the senior engineers on the other team pointed to an example of some language which I was using in our status updates to our director. They included phrases like, “We’re blocked by the team X on functionality Y.” He suggested that the word “blocked” was divisive. He felt that the wording made it feel like I was blaming the other team and I should use more inclusive language, such as “we are working with the other team X to address the issue with functionality Y.” My ego was bruised. I could have easily dismissed this feedback as nit-picky. After all, was this really a problem with me, or with how he chose to take the phrasing? In the end, I chose to change my behavior and learned the importance of the words I used. I concluded that it should be relatively straightforward to use collaborative rather than divisive words to describe the situation. I chose to listen to the feedback, incorporated the feedback in my descriptions, and earned trust with the other team by not dismissing them. A person with a humble attitude seeks to learn from others.

Be focused on the end goal – how will this subject change me?

How many times have you read through some business book and realized as you were reading it that it lacks immediate application? In fact, when you are reading a book, how often do you question what your motivation for reading it is to begin with? It is important to identify your motivation for learning before approaching a new subject. Identifying motives for reading a book on a new subject will give you forward momentum while studying.  When I joined Amazon, I wasn’t able to clearly communicate my thinking in writing. The reading culture at Amazon favors written narratives that are shared (and read), as opposed to other workplaces where verbal communication is key. So, I was able to identify a motivation for improving my writing: understanding the cultural requirements for success at Amazon. My boss worked with me to generate better narratives. He would ask questions about context and details and demand that my written communications be crisp (concise, with proper detailed data). I learned from that experience, and became a better writer. As a counter example, I have desired to start my own business. So, I picked up a book on small business development (“The E Myth Revisited” by Michael E. Gerber for those curious). I tried to read through it once… but could not. My motivation for reading the book was poorly matched to its subject matter. I wanted to know: what do I need to know to start a business? The book was for a person who had already started a business, but was struggling and needed guidance. It wasn’t a good fit for my motivation at the time. So, I put the book down … for now. 

Be disciplined – how do I approach learning?

Novice learners can take an undisciplined approach to learning. Before anyone takes offense, I should make clear that I have frequently approached learning in an undisciplined manner. What do I mean by undisciplined? Here are a few anti-patterns I have experienced:

Not considering deeply what you’re learning: You may learn some things by osmosis, like language, but if you’re trying to learn a new mental paradigm you need different structures. Are you expecting that you will learn? Are you reading the book as you read a novel or watching the video as a movie?  Are you taking notes on what you learn? Are you sharing what you have learned with others?

Not having an immediate application: This relates to the earlier point on motivation, but differs in how you apply what you’re learning. I think about learning as a just-in-time activity, meaning that, when I need to learn a skill, I quickly ramp up on that skill. Likewise, when I have learned a new concept, I need to immediately apply it, or I will often forget. Are you applying what you have learned, and in a timely fashion? (More on this in a minute.)

Trying to learn when you’re tired: I find that there are times where I can apply myself to learning, and other times that trying to learn is, in fact, counter-productive. Are you trying to learn when you’re tired? Have you noticed whether you increase your retention by getting some good sleep after trying to absorb new material?

Be courageous – how willing am I to be bad at something new?

In order to learn, you will fail. There’s no tip-toeing around this fact. If you don’t know how to do something, you don’t know how to do it. It’s as simple as that. When you first attempt to do something, you generally will not be good at it. This is where you need a growth mindset in order to learn and blossom. This isn’t just for learning subjects in which you don’t have any experience: e.g. piano, fencing, or archery. It has to do with subjects where you need a paradigm shift in order to learn a new behavior. Examples include how you coach an employee, how to speak more candidly, how to work independently, how to ask for and receive help from others, how to move from an individual contributor role to being a leader, or how to become a better listener.

I had never taken a tennis lesson in my life… until the first Friday of September this year. I took the opportunity to fill in for my son’s friend, who couldn’t make their shared tennis lesson that day. I had played tennis once or twice a year since I was 16. Of course, “played” is an overstatement, since I am very inconsistent with hitting the ball over the net. Because tennis is one of the few open outdoor activities still available during the pandemic, I started to go more often to the courts with my family. However, my inconsistent technique was making the experience painful. This is why I was so happy to have my first lesson. Throughout the lesson, the instructor showed me the ideal technique, and corrected me when old muscle memory would kick in. She observed and corrected multiple problems I had with my form, such as leaning backwards when I hit and swaying side to side with my swing, rather than moving by body low to high. She also showed the mechanics of a good serve. Did that first lesson solve all of my problems? No, it only exposed them. I needed to be willing to be unskilled for a while as I practiced new techniques and listened to the feedback I was receiving. I went back out the next Friday to practice my serve by myself. I was slowly practicing the technique of the serve which I had learned, over about 45 minutes, but of course making mistakes along the way. My wife told me later that, after I left, she overhead the two other guys on the adjacent court joking about me not being a serious tennis player. I had to chuckle, as this is the exact point of this learning habit: in order to learn you will not immediately be good when you’re learning it.

Be patient – how willing am I to slowly repeat a skill?

Practice is important. How you practice, though, can be just as important as whether you practice to begin with. My mom was a pianist, organist, and a teacher. Later in her teaching career, she began to use the humble snail as a teaching aid to her students. To her, the snail represented a proven technique in practicing a skill: slow repetition. For those of you who aren’t musically inclined, when you face a difficult passage in a piece of music, such as with the piano where your fingers don’t want to move quickly enough or get jumbled when playing the passage, the surest way to improve your performance is by slowing the tempo (speed) down and practicing the section slowly … over and over again. In contrast, if you continue to practice something quickly or sloppily, you will engrain the sloppiness into your playing and you won’t improve. I remember, as a child growing up, hearing my mom practice a section from a piece that was giving her difficulty at 30-50% of the desired speed, sometimes for ten or twenty minutes straight. As a family member, this was quite annoying. I know my own family can’t stand it once I have repeated a section of music 5 times or more in a row. However, this technique of slow repetition, aimed at mastery, is effective. Give yourself latitude as you’re learning and, when needed, go about it slowly. Get in the habit of slowing down, especially when it seems you are struggling with a new concept or way of doing things.

Applying the habits

My point is to share habits which have worked for myself and others. By developing these habits, you can approach new subjects and retain the information. If you approach learning with receptiveness to feedback, are both motivated and have the expectation to learn, are willing to be courageous and fail, and patient with yourself as you do, I guarantee that you will succeed in your learning endeavors.