Working With Me

About me

Conditions I like to work in

  • Environments which:
    • are inclusive and diverse
    • are autonomous and empowering
    • are safe, open, transparent and blame-free
    • encourage ideas and suggestions from all, with a culture of trying things out, learning and adapting
  • A healthy balance between meeting time and focus time to "Get Stuff Done"
    • This means I won't always respond immediately
  • Space to work on wider organisation/department initiatives and improvements

How I communicate

  • I favour smaller group discussions (up to ~5 people) when collaborating
  • I value 1:1 time with my manager, my peers and my team members
  • I like to observe in larger group discussions and tend to only speak when I believe I have something valuable to add
    • Don't mistake my silence with a lack of interest or engagement
  • I am fairly blunt and get straight to the point
    • I always aim to be constructive, empathetic and respectful in doing so. If at any point you think I'm not, I appreciate you calling me out on it

How I like to receive feedback

  • I value and appreciate honest, constructive, specific feedback and consider all feedback a learning opportunity
  • I don't like feedack to be sugar-coated and appreciate it when it comes with specific examples
  • I prefer feedback privately - written or verbal is fine but if it's heavily constructive, I'd prefer it written first with an opportunity soon after to discuss
  • I will regularly ask for feedback - both formally and informally. I genuinely want you to help me improve and appreciate your frank and honest feedback

My management style

  • I am a servant-leader and am here to help you and the team achieve your best work
  • I am not a micro-manager and trust team members to make decisions and use their best judgement
    • This means I rely on you to proactively bring to my attention anything that requires my attention, action or a support in making a decision
  • The horizon I'm focusing on is the next 6 months to a year
    • This means I often won't be involved in the day-to-day activities
  • I like to make decisions based on data, but where it is lacking, I prefer to make decisions quickly, learn from them, and adapt accordingly
    • This means I won't always get it right and will need to adapt and course-correct, but it also means we won't be delayed searching for the 'perfect' solution
  • I care deeply about team and individual happiness, health and growth

My working schedule

  • I work 5 days a week with 2 of them being from home (currently Tuesday and Wednesday) and will always keep you informed of any changes to my usual schedule
  • Whilst working from home, you can expect me to be fully available and fully effective
  • I try to keep 1 day a week relatively meeting-free to allow for focus time to work on strategic initiatives
    • If you ever need me urgently on a 'focus' day, the best way to get hold of me is to call me

Things that make me tick

  • Conversations in smaller groups with a purpose
  • 1:1 time
  • Celebrating team success
  • Driving wider cultural and efficiency improvements and initiatives
  • Supporting minority groups and raising awareness
  • Enabling team members to grow and be successful
  • Growing average people managers into awesome people managers
  • Knowledge sharing and collaboration
  • Learning from others
  • Receiving feedback that helps me grow

Things I struggle with

  • Meetings without a purpose, agenda or actionable outcomes
  • Attempts to come up with processes and solutions in large groups on the fly
  • Not feeling empowered to try out efficiency improvements
  • Trying not to be always instantly responsive
    • Which is crucial to ensure I allow myself adequate focus time
  • Being micro-managed

Other things to know about me

  • I have a son who is on the spectrum and surprises and delights me every day
    • He is one of the reasons I am so passionate about raising awareness around disability in the workplace
  • I like to sing, and if money were no object, I'd spend my days doing small-time gigs in local pubs and clubs. For now, my singing is limited to the house and car
  • I am an ESFJ personality type (Myers Briggs Type Indicator) with a heavy 'F' slant
  • My favourite saying comes from my father who sadly passed away a few years ago. I live by it and take any opportunity I can to share it with others:
    • "In life, there is no such thing as making a wrong decision. It only matters that you make one and you make it work for you."

Expectations of Team Members

Communication

  • Over-communicate with me and with each other
  • Keep communication purposeful
  • Leave nothing unsaid but always try to be constructive and respectful
  • Understand that sometimes you will need to disagree and commit
    • I want you to feel safe and comfortable to raise concerns and suggestions, but if the outcome isn't the one you want, and you've received an explanation for a decision, try not to labour it and, rather, accept it, commit to it, and move on
  • Give me the tl;dr version first. By all means go into the detail after
  • Keep an open mind and assume positive intent
  • Be open and transparent
  • There are no stupid questions. If you are unsure about anything, ask. I only worry when you aren't asking questions
  • Don't always expect instant responses

Autonomy

  • I trust you to make good decisions and use your best judgement
    • In doing so, I expect you to seek out advice from appropriate people
  • I expect you to understand the difference between autonomy and working alone
    • There should be nothing only you know about and the majority of what you are working on should align with the goals of your team
  • I want you to feel free to investigate new tools and approaches and ask you to surface any findings after an initial investigation
  • I trust and expect you to focus on the goals of the team and the organisation first and foremost

Collaboration

  • With autonomy, I still expect collaboration and knowledge sharing within and outside of your direct team
    • If doing so ever starts to conflict with the goals of the team, let me know
  • Whist I encourage collaboration as much as possible, I also understand that there are some tasks that are easier and more efficient to work on alone and I support this
    • Just make sure you share knowledge appropriately

Work-life balance

  • I fully support flexibility in people's work schedules
    • All I ask is that your teammates are aware of your schedule and that you let them know if it changes
    • If you want to discuss a change to your working schedule, I'll always be open to investigating what we can do
  • Short of a major production incident or in support of an on-call rotation duty for which you are covering, I don't expect anyone to work out of hours or consistently long hours and want you to work at a sustainable pace
    • Doing so will likely lead to burnout and also prevents underlying issues from being surfaced so that we can identify the root causes and resolve them

Absences

  • I expect you to inform me and your teammates with as much notice as possible of any planned or unplanned out of office time
    • This includes holidays, sickness, medical appointments, training, conference attendance, or anything else that causes you to be unavailable for normal duties
  • If you're feeling unwell, take time out. I will always fully support you taking the time you need to recover
    • We don't need heroes. We need healthy, happy and productive team members

Surfacing issues and concerns

  • I expect you to surface any issues and concerns you have in a timely, constructive and open fashion
    • If there are any circumstances in which you feel unsafe to do so, please let me know so that I can address that
  • If you've made a mistake, tell me about it as soon as possible
    • I strongly encourage a blame-free culture and want to make sure I can support you and help identify what I/we can do to avoid you being in a similar situation
  • Respect the rights of others to surface issues and concerns and listen respectfully, even if you don't agree with them
  • For escalation purposes, please try to bring it to my attention first
    • If you ever feel uncomfortable to do so, please escalate to my manager rather than suffer in silence

Engineering Culture

  • Fail fast
  • Experiment, learn, adapt
  • Avoid always looking for the 'perfect' solution, and, rather, find a 'good' solution, try it, learn and adapt
  • Proactively collaborate and share knowledge
  • Be deeply curious
  • Challenge the status quo
  • Consider what's best for the organisation as well as what's best for the team