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Always have the end goal in mind and concentrate all the resources into making it happen. Make sure everyone believes in what you are building and that everyone gets the best of it for themselves.

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A vision can be even more compelling if it's clear how your teams vision, along with the vision of other teams will lead to really exciting outcomes for the companies. Look for these opportunities to build shared visions across teams and highlight where you're contributing to an even bigger scope.

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One of my favourite things one of reports said to me around a year ago

'Whenever you ask me to work on something, it's never a thing I know you wouldn't do yourself, this is just my part of pie' which they all know to be true. We're all working towards the same end goal, and growing as we go.

I always also aim to get their buy in and opinion as we're looking at new projects and work, so it's our project.

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Be a cheerleading for your team

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Give the team the trust and confidence that they are able to do a solid job on their own. Give them the space to fail if necessary, it's the best way for them to learn. This is key in helping them develop their skill and confidence.

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Find optimal time to be allocated when dealing time pressure; don't sacrifice deadlines over quality, but have proper balance for this

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When I was an IC and a peer of my current direct reports, I had developed a relationship with someone in marketing who managed external speaking opportunities. As my team expressed interest in building certain competencies - parternships, public speaking, building their brand, doing things outside of normal job description - I surfaced opportunities from marketing, allowing them to build those muscle. This has gone a long way in giving me credit in that bank as I have transitioned into their manager.

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The role that I lead is very outcome focused. From day one I make it very clear what the expectation is, and how we are going to get there! We have data that drives these outcomes and if they follow the process they will be successful. We naturally see a hockey stick of productivity and outputs that will lead to these outcomes. As time evolves we will help to refine individuals to be more successful

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When joining a team from an IC to a People manager role, it helped a lot to first listen to them and what they have to say. Let them tell you what are their struggles and how you can support. Make sure you tell how you understand what they are saying so you are all at the same page. This helped with the trust relationship I have with my team whom used to be my peers

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Break down topics into sets of principles rather than an action plan.

This will allow you to teach fundamentals that your team can apply to multiple scenarios, rather than just the task at hand.

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Find the diamond in the rough to inspire and ignite passion in your work

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Find the diamond in the rough to inspire and ignite passion in your work

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Regardless of the level of interest in the project or subject matter, approach it with curiosity and a growth mindset. Challenge yourself to learn something new, approach problem solving in a new way, and understand how success in your work lends to our overall priorities or objectives! You'll be surprised how interesting and valuable the apparently mundane can be.

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I assigned a mentor from within the team for each of my junior employees, and have a regular sync with the mentors to identify where we can have team-wide discussions

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People learn and act as they see around them so make sure you are the first one in your team to act and do as you would like to see from others.

Aspire to be inspiring to others.

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I try to always be mindful of what this message/change might mean for every person I speak to. As a leader it is my job to make sure I change my style/approach/communication depending on the skill/will of the DR I am speaking with.

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Create a team culture around a growth mindset

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Create a team culture around a growth mindset

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Similar to facilitating development, but by being intentional about making this more of a team-wide culture than just a downward coaching mindset, the team will rally around each other's strengths. A rising tide lifts all boats.

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I run a biweekly newsletter for the team to share my thoughts on things going on and to highlight interesting goings-on from other teams that are difficult to passively find otherwise

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Finding opportunities for 70-20-10 Learning for DR

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Finding opportunities for 70-20-10 Learning for DR

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As a leader I try to find opportunities for my DR to implement a variety of learning into their development. For example 70% (learning on the job) - delegating tasks/projects to them that practically apply the skill they are trying to enhance. 20% (through others) being a coach or a mentor to them to discuss, reflect and sound board their approach to the skill. 10% (formal) some form of formal upskilling from e-learning, a conference, a book, or a training course to help give them the theory of how to improve this skill.

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Always try to have a good understanding of the issue before acting

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Always try to have a good understanding of the issue before acting

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More often than not, when we think of agility we think of fast paced action. However, agility can also be thought of as being able to respond fast when the situation changes and you can only do that effectively when you actually understand the situation clearly.

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Think about the "vitals" or indicators for your team. What are the regular signals you can get a pulse on to know if they are improving, stagnant, or worsening

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Make sure you set a good example for your team. Take PTO and encourage your team to do the same to avoid burnout.

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Sometimes we can over rely on data and metrics. I believe in trusting your instincts and giving yourself the space to sit with an issue or situation when something feels "off". Don't ignore it - trust your spidey sense - and dig into it.

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Make sure you are communicating with your leaders, team, and stakeholders often. This will ensure they are always in the loop on where things stand. This will build a level of credibility and confidence that you are on top of your work.

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Becoming familiar with how people process change can help you when you are building your change strategy. I prefer the ADKAR model https://www.prosci.com/methodology/adkar

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Learn more about ADKAR, a research-based, individual change model that is part of the Prosci change management methodology.

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Connect with people in your network to understand how other companies solve for the same problems

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Connect with people in your network to understand how other companies solve for the same problems

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The challenges we face are often not unique to Braze. Speak with people in the same role to understand how they solve for these challenges. This will spark an idea that you can then use as a jumping off point to come up with a proposal for how we could solve for it at Braze.

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Once you have the vision articulated it is important to consistently reinforce it in every channel within the team - via team meetings, 1:1s, convos with stakeholders and with your chain of command. The more times it is said and re-said, the more it will stick as your team's north star

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Create a project plan with clear ownership early on

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Create a project plan with clear ownership early on

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Clearly define project scope, ownership, due dates and next steps early on, and continue to revisit these to make sure the project is progressing. Check in with owners to understand blockers and communicate with all parties impacted.

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Being able to take a step back and think about the entirety of the problem or situation you are trying to solve fore. It's very easy to get caught up in the minutiae

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Every DKO season we get together as a team and go over our team hygiene. We look at our cadence of meetings, review our team meeting structure, 1:1 structure, and set the schedule for the year in terms of strategy check-ins, OKR planning etc. We find that year after year we consistently make small tweaks to our SOPs. It feels good to know that there is a 'clean-up' session on the books so we don't get stuck doing the same thing, the same way, just because we have always done it that way

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Get to know your team on a personal level

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Get to know your team on a personal level

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Be intentional about doing "fun" things with your team. Doesn't necessarily need to be in-person events if your team is not all in one place. We have done March Madness brackets, scheduled one-off team meetings to discuss fun topics, etc. It makes you feel connected to Braze as a company and to your team.

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Know your team's personalities & what motivates them

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Know your team's personalities & what motivates them

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Do they thrive on interactions, how do they like to receive praise, how do they like to receive feedback, etc. These are all really fundamental questions that help build the foundation of a secure team and relationship that is steeped in trust and respect. And adding to that the ability to share strengths among the team so that they can rely on each other is a great opportunity for all to feel like a leader in their own way.

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I try to set aside time regularly on my calendar for my own self-reflection of what is working and not working. If I don't operationalize the time on my calendar, I can get stuck in the action orientation of constantly delivering results and unable to adapt my style just-in-time.

I also ask for constructive feedback from my DRs regularly (outside of the 2x performance cycles)

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Career conversations are a great way to establish areas of strength/weakness, but also to identify areas to focus on for growth. Use these as a springboard to stretch projects -- either to own or to ride along

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1. Provide constructive feedback to team members, while praising them for what they do best. Maintain a balance of kudos to improvement feedback. Helps build the trust.

2. Identify improvement areas and coach team members for their professional development.

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schedule these meetings and keep them sacred!

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Getting to know your DR is key in helping develop them. Doing exercises with them, or leading them through exercises to identify what their strengths are, what motivates them, what demotivates them can unlock a lot

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Look for your opposite wheel in research

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Look for your opposite wheel in research

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I love drawing inspiration from roles or industries that are the opposite from ours to inform our own vision and strategy. More often than not, we're already on a positive path and with the right components for what we know is in front of us. But a vision needs to look around corners, to a further out horizon etc. What are others doing? What inspiration can we draw from your favorite historical figure? Mentors?

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Understand how and when people like to receive feedback - and be direct when providing it

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Understand how and when people like to receive feedback - and be direct when providing it

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Have initial conversations with your team about how and when feedback is best delivered. Communicate up front to set expectations and establish shared norms about directness in delivering feedback -- in both directions

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In order to communicate with impact, you have to have trust on the team. I love Brene Brown's work on building trust - it is called the BRAVING Trust framework - https://www.mindful.org/brene-brown-on-what-it-really-means-to-trust/

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Trust is a big deal. When people gain our trust or break our trust, it matters. It's also a big word, packing a lot of weight. We say we trust people, or that someone has broken our trust. But what does that mean? What did they do? In an episode of Oprah's SuperSoul Conversations podcast, Brené Brown, a renowned vulnerability, courage, shame, and empathy researcher, breaks down the complexities of trust.

She borrows a definition from leadership and well-being coach Charles Feltman who says that "trust is choosing to make something important to you vulnerable to the actions of someone else." Trust isn't built in grand gestures, Brown says, but in the small moments that people treat what is important to you with care.

BRAVING: An Acronym for Building Trust

To talk about trust, Brown uses the acronym BRAVING which stands for: boundaries, reliability, accountability, the vault, integrity, non-judgment, and generosity. Understanding that these are components of trust and how they work can help us really understand how we do or don't trust others, or ourselves. She says she uses this acronym "because when we trust, we are braving connection with someone."

Trust is choosing to make something important to you vulnerable to the actions of someone else.

Boundaries

To trust someone, Brown says, it's essential that we are clear about our boundaries so they can understand and respect our limits. It's also important that we understand the boundaries of others so trust can flow both ways.

Reliability

Reliability is when someone does what they say they're going to do over and over again. They can't just follow through on their word once, Brown says, reliability builds gradually.

At work, this means that we know our limits and enforce them so we don't bite off more than we can chew. If we commit to more than we can manage, we end up unable to finish it all, or we finish it at a lower level of quality than we could have if we had less on our plate. When we overstep our limits, we can't deliver on our commitments. We can't follow through on our word.

This idea also transfers to personal life. We need to know when we're too busy to commit to more plans with others, or when we just don't want to commit. Brown gives the example of running into an acquaintance at a coffee shop. We might feel compelled to say, "Great to see you. I'll give you a call sometime!" when we actually have no intention of calling. That makes us unreliable. It's okay to just say, "Great to see you."

Accountability

We trust people who own up to their mistakes, apologize, and make amends, she says. But others can only do that if we allow them. If we immediately write someone off when they make a mistake, or stop talking to them, we don't give them a chance to step into their accountability.

This goes both ways in a relationship. When we make mistakes, we need the other person to allow us to acknowledge our mistake, say we're sorry, and try to patch things up.

The Vault

"This one shook me to the core," Brown says when she introduces the topic.

We cannot trust someone if they share our personal information with others without our permission. It needs to be as though that information is in a vault that's only accessible to the folks we purposely told. By the same token, we need to hold the secrets, stories, and information of other people in confidence so they can trust us.

Oftentimes, Brown says, we use gossip as a way to try to quickly find intimacy with someone. We feel like if we can secretly talk about others with them, we have a solid connection. Brown calls this "counterfeit trust." If we are minding our own business and someone tells us confidential information about someone else, we know we can't trust them. Others will think the same of us. Brown boils the vault down to: "You respect my story [and] you respect other people's story."

Integrity

"Integrity," Brown says, "is choosing courage over comfort. It's choosing what's right over what's fun, fast, or easy." Integrity, she says, is more than just naming our values. It's living according to our values.

Integrity is choosing courage over comfort. It's choosing what's right over what's fun, fast, or easy.

Plus, when we live with integrity, we not only build trust with others, we build trust with ourselves.

Non-judgment

Non-judgment is about being vulnerable with someone without being judged by them, while they can be vulnerable and not be judged by us. This is hard, Brown says, because we tend to be better at giving help than asking for help. In fact, we tend to feel better about ourselves when we help someone, but think less of ourselves when we ask for help. "You cannot judge yourself for needing help, but not judge others for needing your help," she points out. That's what makes true reciprocal non-judgment difficult.

Generosity

Brown says, "our relationship is only a trusting relationship if you can assume the most generous thing about my words, intentions and behaviors, and then check in with me." Which means that if we make a mistake, others will be up front about it, but assume we had good intentions.

This might look like someone telling us that they are hurt that we didn't call on an important day, but they assume we just forgot or were busy. This gives us a chance to be accountable. And this goes both ways. It's important that we also check in and leave space for others to be accountable.

How to Trust Yourself

It's important that we understand the complexity of trust and how to break it down so that we can identify why we do or don't trust certain people. Instead of feeling stupid or naive for trusting someone when they turned out to be untrustworthy, we can identify what exactly went wrong.

Knowing this can help us build our self-trust, too. Brown gives the example of making a mistake. She says we can ask ourselves if we respected our boundaries, if we were reliable, if we held ourselves accountable, and if we were generous with ourselves.

"Because if braving relationships with other people is braving connection, self-trust is braving self-love. Self-respect is the wildest adventure we'll ever take in our whole lives," Brown says. If we don't feel like we can trust ourselves, we can't expect others to trust us, because we can't give others what we don't have.

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Brené Brown on What it Really Means to Trust - Mindful

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Trust is a big deal. When people gain our trust or break our trust, it matters. It's also a big word, packing a lot of weight. We say we trust people, or that someone has broken our trust. But what does that mean? What did they do?

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1. Ability to stay focused when under stress

2. Not passing on the stress from "above" to the team members, letting them do what they do best

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I write and re-write messages that I want to be compelling to my team and use the same language over and over again. Example - we are pivoting to skills-based learning as a strategy for Braze employee development. I worked a lot of the exact language I wanted to use to share with the team about this pivot and got it down to a sentence. So every time we talk about it, we have that sentence as our north star - it is consistent and unifies us around

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Avoid anchoring to a specific activity you must do. Instead, consider the outcomes you want to achieve. Challenge yourself to consider several other ways you might accomplish this than just sticking with your instinct.

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I think more folks should be confident in their perspective, and sometimes getting information down on paper to back up your POV makes it less about defending your "perspective" and more about showing the data and the logical conclusion that is drawn from it. The trick here is always knowing how much data you need to validate your conclusion, and testing the data/recommendation on a few stakeholders before presenting to the full group will help iron out possible gaps. That said, there will always be gaps! That's ok. Follow ups aren't a bad thing -- but you can still hold to your conviction on the strategy if you've thought through 90-95% of the possibilities in advance.

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Every December I create a vision board for the next year. I use pictures and words and color to reflect on the next year. I post the vision board in my office to keep me on track and each quarter I do a bit of reflection on what I am on track on and what I need to focus on.

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Seek to understand what matters to your team

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Seek to understand what matters to your team

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Different people have different skills, different needs and different goals. The more we can understand these up front, the more agency we have in crafting the team composition (and things like work projects) to align with areas of strength and growth/opportunity/interest

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While debate is enormously fun for me, I know that's not true for all -- whether you're the person on the other side or the person that wants to challenge the statement/strategy/etc. I've found a more comfortable approach lies in asking it as a question. "Have we considered an approach like...?" can get the same point across without feeling combative

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1. Ability to think multi-threaded, effectively

2. Ability to arrive at a decision logically, even in the absence of all the data

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For me, the key to delivering results is creating and communicating really clear expectations. I never want to leave a meeting or discussion without a clear (and focused!) set of next steps -- if everyone knows what needs to happen, the owner, and by when, it's a lot easier to achieve or even exceed those outcomes.

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Get to know as many people as you can, across varying levels of seniority and tenure