#017 - Growth and Vulnerability

Robert Greiner 0:06

I've had this note card on my desk for like two weeks,

Tiffany Lenz 0:08

I think today was going to be about growth areas. But wasn't it also about some of the best feedback we've received?

Robert Greiner 0:16

Yeah, bundled up, you get, at times in your career, we all get feedback as part of review process or whatever. Sometimes solicited are part of a process or unsolicited, where someone comes and says, Hey, here's some feedback for you. And sometimes I gotta tell you, I think in my head, you have no idea what you're talking about, you've missed the mark completely. But outwardly, I just say thank you. And then there's other times where it breaks my perception of reality, like, it's so precious, and so on the note, like on point, and would have taken me years or a decade to figure out on my own. And it's just packaged up based on the wisdom of someone who's observed you in a situation and just has like this almost visceral reaction that manifests into an opinion, that's really helpful to you. And I've had that happen a few times in my career. And I think those are opportunities to take huge leaps. And then once you get feedback, the next sort of three months are a bit of a stage like everyone's watching, to see how you take it, how you behave differently or not, because of it, and then if you start to socialize, hey, here are the things I'm working on as a leader, which takes some vulnerability, there's risk there, but you get a lot of credit for doing that upfront. And then it can help accelerate things as well.

Tiffany Lenz 1:32

Yeah, unsolicited feedback is often some of the hardest to accept, and to take it with, with a modicum of grace and even look, you know, look in it for truth. That doesn't, you know, someone, there was a quote that my friend Ross, who I've introduced you to, he used to say, people are entitled to their own opinions. They're not entitled to their own facts about a particular situation. And I've changed that in later years to say people are entitled to their own opinion, they're not entitled to be right. But there is a responsibility, I think, on my part, to listen to what anybody has to say, and reflect on, even if their feedback is incorrect. Did I Is there something I did to lead them down that path is there Did I give an impression that I needed this feedback, it could just be straight out wrong. But I think it's always worth thinking it through thoroughly. And as in an unbiased fashion as possible, even sharing it with somebody that I respect, who knows me well, to make sure that I'm seeing it is a gift. ubec is a gift, making sure that I'm seeing it from from all possible angles, and treating it with the respect that it's due. And I might learn something about myself, even if it was a feedback related, it might be, oh, a way that I present myself or a way that I came across that led someone to a conclusion I'll be at the conclusion may have been wrong. But so there's always layers, I think, to unpack if one is willing to introspect,

Robert Greiner 2:57

definitely. And it's even more impactful. I think, when people on your team, give you feedback, who report to you, that takes a pretty high degree of trust and courage, because history is filled with people who overreact and retaliate. And all of those things against Yeah, people that have real power over when they were told something they didn't like,

Tiffany Lenz 3:19

it's one of the things I liked the most about our culture is that it's not just feedback at all levels isn't just encouraged. It's just status quo. It's just it's an expected part of the process. And so there's there aren't barriers to entry from that perspective, but it should make people not feel like they're going to be retaliated against. In fact, if they didn't provide any meaningful feedback, they would be more likely to be questioned for why didn't you think this through, I think, I've been part of unhealthy cultures, I was I won't name this particular client that I was at a financial services client that I was at a number of years ago as a consultant, and that it was also part of their culture to give very public feedback, but it was done in a very unhealthy way, like a very aggressive two by four to the face approach and looking for the flaw in the process and or looking for the flaw in the person. And usually, the intent was to find the flaw in the person so that you could work it out. But there's so much damage that can be done in that sort of environment. And even the way it was structured by logging it and having public meetings to discuss someone's mistakes. It was a very, although it was done to their face, which I think is a good practice. That was the only part of it, I thought was a good practice it was otherwise it was pretty, pretty difficult. It didn't really lend people to forming teams, which is unfortunate, but it was a staple in their culture.

Robert Greiner 4:45

Yeah, that sounds pretty exhausting.

Tiffany Lenz 4:48

It was exhausting.

Robert Greiner 4:49

My brain just kind of clicked on it. Do you get the same treatment when you do something well in that environment, like if you make a great investment decision, or you have a really effective meeting and help someone work through a difficult problem if you demonstrate something some excellence, does that get publicly broadcast as well.

Tiffany Lenz 5:08

So it gets publicly broadcast, but there isn't several hour long meetings to dissect the space. And what happened and what led you to make the right decision or what led what were the contributing factors that got you to making a good decision. That doesn't happen. So the positive angle of a retrospective doesn't happen. They only did what they called a drill down, they only did a drill down on something that was negative. That's a good question.

Robert Greiner 5:36

I'll raise my leadership yellow card, and maybe fully acknowledging that you said financial services firms so everyone there, probably their net worth is 10, or 20 times mine, but I'll say it as a Monday morning quarterback, not knowing any of the other details, when we experience moments in our life that are worth living. It is an observation of this is personal professional, in observation of people demonstrating excellence, not mediocrity, not failure, we get a kick out of someone not getting grilled by Mark Cuban on Shark Tank or whatever, like fine. But the the times in life that are people are achieving their fullest potential or have a really masterful performance. It's it's inspiring, it adds flavor to life, all those things. And that's when we succeed at work, when we think about our growth is really achieved when you get the exponential curve, doubling down on strengths. Right? Over time, you have to shore up weaknesses, obviously, when they're detracting when they're so bad, that takes away from undoes all of your strengths and puts you in debt somehow. But most of the time, now all of the goodness in life comes out of these leaps from manifesting strengths. And so that's a little bit disappointing. Like you, I'm fine with you, providing direct public feedback, or whatever about me, but you better give me credit when I do a really good job. And then I can say, Hey, I hit lots of homeruns. And every now and then I strike out, let's put that in perspective. Like we just won the World Series here. Calm down. So man, that's, that's, that's disappointing. I feel like that's a big Miss in the system,

from a bunch of smart people

Tiffany Lenz 7:09

I think it is, I think it is. And it's I had never thought of it before. And that was years ago, probably 10 years ago, I was consulting there. And I, I'm amazed that I never thought of it that way before. Like there isn't the same, clearly not the same emphasis. But somewhere in my brain, I did register the soul goods and Bad's there, because then in some of the other discussions we've had, talking about my own rules of engagement, there are two complimentary ones, they're one around talking to one another, not about one another. That's clearly about feedback. But the other is that we we fail together and succeed together. So you can't really only you can't master just one, and then not the other by not celebrating individual and group successes. So I'd like to say that I intentionally orchestrated that it didn't, I didn't completely though, it must have been something subconscious in me remembering. And then there were never there were never successes celebrated, really other than like, an email that went out. Not even that sometimes something just like log in in a record that then you could go read them.

Robert Greiner 8:18

Yeah, we talk about code smells and delivering software. If you do something like oh, that's an indication I need to dig because that's a that's an anti pattern. That's a worst practice like that. When you do this, bad things happen. So you can just start there. If you want to improve any software system, maybe you just start with the smells, and there are tools that'll get you a head start on that. And so for me, that's an organizational smell, right. And normally, it's the opposite, right? You have organizations where constructive feedback is not given effectively. But I guess we still don't celebrate success as a species. But that's a huge red flag, like in my mind I started to go to this is you're just going to weaponize this system, then, if there's no upside, and there's only downside like, that's a game I really don't want to play. And I'm not sure how much you could pay me to participate in that game, because I'm going to come home miserable, and take it out on my friends and family all the time.

Tiffany Lenz 9:11

Yeah, yeah. There's there is something interesting, and I haven't thought any more deeply about it than just to mention this. But there there is something quite interesting about the the way that agile retrospective processes is regularly applied. And this isn't to say that the process isn't work. It's just to your point as a species. Typically, the way I see teams apply it is they get very quickly they get through the stuff that worked to get to the stuff that went really well in the sprint and then they move right on to the stuff that didn't work and they and it's just like, digging in there, which is good, but often, it's not balanced with are there key things we're doing really well that we need to dig into why how do we replicate them? more of that they're almost stated as just like a bullet. The list.

Robert Greiner: 10:00

Yeah. And it's so funny because everyone has almost unanimously agreed. There's very rarely like disagreement on what went well. Now, that's not a thing. And so everyone unanimously agrees, hey, these things went well, you might only be getting 20% of the benefits. If you put some time and energy or whatever around like the top three things that went well, you could get some outsized returns, I think, versus if you're trying to address something that's gone poorly, it might be out, there might be like an onion to unpeel there, and you may try to address it. And in addressing it make matters worse, like history is filled with examples of that two people try to tweak a system and it just goes haywire. versus if you everybody can agree these things are going well, let's double down on those double down on our strengths. And people only, like watching highlight reels or those kind of things. So I'd much rather have a career filled with memories of team success and that kind of thing. Versus Hey, I really, really stuck it to Tiffany the other day, cuz she messed up and I made sure everyone knew about it. That sounds horrible.

Tiffany Lenz: 11:00

Yeah, okay.

has there been? So a couple of times you can think of when you've been that we're really, really instrumental in bringing you to this point of leadership in your career solicited or unsolicited feedback that still resonates with you?

Robert Greiner: 11:18

Yeah. So did you know Sean, in Dallas is a VP in Dallas? Yeah. Okay. So when Sean joined, the firm, I was the first time I met him, I was we were in these review sessions. So at the time, Dallas was getting so big that we had a lot of people in these sort of semi annual review sessions, which means you you do reviews every quarter, because you have some people, q1, q3, others q2 q4, lots of reviews, every quarter committee type approach. It's very process oriented, but it's like, the investment in my mind, the way we do it, it's worth it. Like some things, you just have to put some effort to scale. But the benefits you get are worth it. There's 20 people, we have so many people in the review sessions that and so many going on at the same time, that there's no room in the office. So we're actually at a hotel, like conference room. And so we finish up, it's all day, and do a little happy hour at the end of the day. So on this sort of rooftop bar, and Shawn comes up to me. We're making small talk, having conversation first, like legit conversation I'm having with the guy. And he goes, Hey, Robert, do you want to know what your problem is? And I go, Yeah, like I do. Sure, tell me, my problem is, and he goes, You have all the right answers. And you don't ever ask any questions. And guys, as you grow your career, you're on this rocket, you're gonna run out of fuel until you can learn to ask the right questions. And I don't remember anything else about the conversation except my response, which was okay, how do I do that? I made sure I asked him a question. But that was, I was thinking man that that took some minis, right? He's totally right. If you've known me long enough, you know that I have some less than effective wiring from early on in my career of always having to have the right answer and fixing the bug and doing the smart thing. It's hard to unwind that later when you get into a leadership position. And so he was he was totally right. And then you fast forward a few years, and we end up working together on the same client. And he came to me and said, hey, you're, I need your help with this presentation. You're really good at slides, I need you to own this thing. And I trust you to do it. It's like a very big deal. We're justifying the big spend that we get every year for this large client, this has to go well, you on the content. And he had built up this trust with me, giving me this positive feedback, positive and negative feedback, but really context rich feedback over time that I was one I'm like, Okay, I'm going to I'll walk over hot coals for you. And two, when you come to me and you say, hey, you're good at this, I believe you. And it makes me want to prove you, right. And so that's situations where I got constructive feedback to build trust. And it was really helpful. And one of those aha moments and then two, when it really mattered later, was affirming and the value that I brought to the team. So that's just one example that popped into my mind when we started the conversation.

Tiffany Lenz: 14:02

It's a good one. That's a really good one. And kudos to him for having the guts and the interest in you to do that. without really knowing you.

Robert Greiner: 14:10

Sean's in my top,

you know, five of people have had the most impact on my career.

Tiffany Lenz: 14:15

That's great.

Robert Greiner: 14:15

Yeah. What about you?

Tiffany Lenz: 14:16

Different I can think of different times throughout my career and not always by people I respected actually, you didn't really know Sean, but even people who might have been like, in leadership over me at the time, and I just didn't, I didn't maybe have respect for how they comported themselves or, or the way that they treated other people. Some people can be great at their job and not be awesome people. But I have I've had to learn how to receive feedback, and compartmentalize there. And I certainly received quite a bit of fits and starts of feedback throughout my career of believing in yourself being confident enough in yourself in And picking my own path was a big one, because I have a psych background and a music background and all these variety of things that actually don't have anything to do with technology. And I don't have an MBA that there were times when people would look at me and say, What are you doing in it? What are you doing on an executive path, even though I was very much enjoying it, and I do remember getting feedback early on, at some different times around, stop trying to pick essentially cdp's like we have here. But in another life, stop trying to pick personal improvements that you think are just a variety of what other people are doing, or what people what you the pieces that you need for your career. There are some basics, but pick, pave your own path, Be true to your own strengths. And look for ways to use those and be of service. It's hard to pinpoint one specific time I do remember one conversation like that, but it was more like that theme would come up from time to time of your find your own way. And don't be embarrassed of the things that make you different. That was one kind of theme. And then another one was something that happens to a lot of very driven people like us are very people who have been rewarded for being outspoken in one way or another. Another one that was very hard to process was learning the art of seeking to understand of just being like being silent, first, asking lots of questions, making no assumptions. And it took me actually getting out of American culture to be able to learn that one, to get into a different culture and find that a lot of the Americanisms of being outspoken and very forward are driven. They weren't always the right way to build a relationship. You could build much more trust by listening, asking lots of questions, observing nuances of the culture around you, and trying to really understand that before bringing ideas and suggestions even just as a consultant, that was probably the most game changing feedback I got in my whole career.

Robert Greiner: 17:17

Excellent. It's funny how sometimes I think these observations that are shared, I know thought is put in to them, you get the benefit of sort of experience and wisdom and those kind of things, but in a third party perspective, but also like the people that give us this feedback that really resonates and hits really hard. I'm not sure that they think about like, right before they give it to this can change their life. You know what I mean? It's so funny. It's, there's no, it's like the collection of these career conversations compounded over time, or where the real growth happens. But every now and then, if there's one that or two that stick out, and you just remember, for decades, it's it's crazy to think about how that works.

Tiffany Lenz: 17:59

Yeah, yeah, the not the sheer number of conversations that one has, and, and what the likelihood would be that there would be something that would really stick out.

Robert Greiner: 18:09

So I wanted to share a hack with you, which I mentioned before, and you seemed interested in it. So I figured we could hash it out on the air here a way to get the team involved in the discussion around growth, and to give you as a leader, a way to share what you're working on and give the team collective permission to hold you accountable to it. And it doesn't always work that way, these little things might give you an edge or increase your batting average here. So we have at our firm that cdps career development plan, or points, right, there's three, two to three, you get on a review I've had for at times, which is I don't think it's a good thing. But every six months, you get three. And here's the three things that you need to work on next. Some of them are forward looking based on your career growth, you need to start getting exposure to this some, some are corrective. So there's the strength, doubling down on your strengths, shoring up your soft spots kind of thing. And one of the people on our team, this was the first time I'd done it organized, a CDP. What are you working on in your career, we all have them a sharing session. So we got an A in on a zoom call. And everyone would go around, take turns if they wanted to, as completely optional reading, show the part of their review where the cdp's are. And Hey there, here's the three things I'm working on. And someone else may say I'm working on the same thing. Mine was worded this way. And it gave me an opportunity to say hey, here's what I'm working on. But here's what that means. And the first time I shared my three cdp's were basically the same thing worded differently three times as it was like, hyper important for that point, which was like, hey, you're at a career transition, you need to manage it really well. Very careful right now. And you need to be careful internally, with your peer group. You need to be careful the people that report to you need to be careful with your clients. It's like those three things the same thing like three different lenses. And so I shared like, Hey, this is the career journey I'm on here, the things I'm working on here. I'm trying to be careful of those types of deals. And so it was a, it was a nice like discussion. And the cool thing is that I did not expect is someone from the team would share a growth area and someone else would chime in with some advice or some thoughts or some color commentary. And by the time the second one rolls around, I'm just sitting back. And it's like this discussion that's happening is really cool to see. And I think that only works though, if your team someone on the team organizes it. And I think this would work anywhere, though. Like, it doesn't have to be our firm where things are so formal from a review standpoint, but I think someone on the team has to organize it. And maybe as a leader, you can nudge the right person, but it's probably not right for you to set up. And then you should probably share yours early, and then sit back and let the goodness happen. And then there's always stuff when people more junior than you were talking about their career growth. There's always something to say. So if things get a little stale or quiet, there's always something to chime in on. But I thought that was like a really great, positive thing. And I'm bummed I haven't known about it for 10 or more years, but it's something that I'm going to work into.

Tiffany Lenz: 21:06

That's great. What was the structure? Was it like your whole development team? Was it a subset of the project team in any way? Or is there any other relationship to that group of people?

Robert Greiner: 21:18

That was you could think of it like, yeah, the development team, so a development team, which we have. So are, we may have a client with 60 people on it. But that's really a dozen projects of small teams. And so this was one of those teams, which I think is right, you wouldn't want to make it too large. And that's like a self sustaining growth thing. And if some teams want to do and some teams don't like it, I definitely think there's benefit but you don't have to make it some formal, large organization wide deal. Like the smallest unit. Besides the individual would be like the team they're on, that's probably the right level. And they're all experiencing life together anyway. So they go cool hack I wish I knew about forever ago.

Tiffany Lenz: 21:55

I like it. I'm trying something that is new to me, here I am set up a meeting with my whole mentor mentee tree. So the people that I mentor directly, and then the people, they mentor on the people, they mentor down every cohort level. And so I'm looking forward to that. I've got it coming up in a few weeks. And I wonder about this idea for that about proposing. Sharing cdp's

Robert Greiner: 22:23

that's,

that's another good way to slice things. Because everybody in the room their review is being written by someone else in the room. And and they're not on the same projects. They're on like different clients nationally, like all sorts, you get a lot of depth in level, and then and breadth in, like the experiences that people have and what they're working on. So that could lead to some really rich discussion.

Tiffany Lenz: 22:46

Yeah, that'd be if you think it would work, that would be fun. And I certainly don't mind letting people know in advance and even sharing my own in advance,

Robert Greiner: 22:54

you probably want to have some people teed up right? If the group is large enough, that's no one's volunteering, like, you're out that kind of thing.

Tiffany Lenz: 23:01

It's just occurred to me, though, that you could not ever I don't think do something like this in an unhealthy culture. Because everything we talk about you and I around trust, goes back to an like fertile soil or bad soil for something like trust to grow. And we do have a very healthy culture here. I'm trying to imagine in places I've worked before, places that I've consulted for a long time, because you get to know those cultures, too many of them didn't even have real career development plans for people of any kind. And even if they did, it was always a very hierarchical thing. Your boss gives you this, this set of things to do and to weigh in on and you don't really get to change them. So weigh in is a little bit of a little bit of a facade. But you're given this these set of things to do. I can't imagine bringing a group of people together and talking openly and safely. Yeah, about here's what I'm working on right now. You might have you might as well send somebody to a group therapy I'm struggling with did I think it wouldn't be safe, it wouldn't make any sense. It wouldn't just guess what I'm trying to say is, I think all these pieces have to they have to enable one another. If you don't have a culture that encourages and a culture that sets one up for safety and trust, then you couldn't even share these kinds of ideas with one another.

Robert Greiner: 24:32

Yeah, I'm thinking about my first job out of college, which was exceptional work. Very interesting, like hardcore engineering. Very cool stuff. culture was terrible. This was like the sort of force rank system, like lots of just bizarre things happening. And I had a group of friends like I consider them more friends than colleagues, because at the time, we'd got to lunch like every day, and we would find ourselves in career in work type. discussions. There's the general like complaining and bantering and all that stuff. But there were like material, hey, I think I'm going for this promotion, or I might transfer to this other group as a very people stayed there a long time, and would move around laterally. And so we would have those discussions just not really formally or intentionally, which, so maybe if you're a leader, you can certainly do this with your team and just keep it at that sort of atomic unit. And if what no matter what position you're in, you have your group of sort of work friends, those are the ones that can make or break your sort of job satisfaction, and that maybe there's a sort of almost like mastermind group or something, you could put together that and just try it out and see, I bet you'd find some takers in any organization. But that may just be my late in the day optimism talking, who knows,

Tiffany Lenz: 25:45

I think you would find some takers in any organization. And it would have to be informal. And then I would wager that if you looked for that same group of people in five years, none of them would be there.

Robert Greiner: 25:58

But then how awesome is that, though? You've all grown together, you forge this bond, there could be Hey, oh, we're looking for a director of infrastructure. I worked with this guy at my last job who was really good, and you can trust him? And so I don't know, like, that seems like a good thing.

Tiffany Lenz: 26:13

It seems like it's certainly a good thing for those individuals in the organization. not such a good thing for that organization

Robert Greiner: 26:18

that's true thing, then like, I'm gonna lose them anyway.

Tiffany Lenz: 26:21

It's funny. Yes. It's funny that you went way back in your career, I did the same, I went to my very first job. I mean, I was thinking like this, that culture would, it would have been a small group of friends, that would have even been comfortable talking like that, and taking a risk on each other, and not a single one of them. still works there.

Robert Greiner: 26:42

Yeah. which is unfortunate for that organization. Yeah. as healthy as our culture is, I have that here, too, where there are three, four people, I would call and talk through, like a tough situation like that. And you get that unfiltered view, and that these things are, they're not quite the same as what we were talking about before. But it could certainly that group can play multiple roles. And I think if you just put some intentionality around it, then you could get almost the same benefit.

Tiffany Lenz: 27:10

Yeah, it's a good one. I think there's also some benefit to getting different kinds of people in a group because you'd get a variety of feedback, and ideas, actually, ideas for working on your own areas of improvement, as opposed to if it was just a set of peers, you might find too many people struggling or needing to improve on the same thing, and not really, anyone knowing how this is

Robert Greiner: 27:39

Yeah. Oh, that's

true. That's true. They get stuck. Yeah. So there you go. Sharing your growth areas as a leader is a positive thing. But it's an act of vulnerability. And so sometimes, sometimes those don't work out well. But I think you got to do it anyway. And there's a way that makes sense for you and your team. And hopefully, this, these thoughts and ideas have helped, it's certainly helpful to talk through them. It's not like we had the idea. I had some notes on my note card. But I think we got a layer deeper than I was expecting, which is always cool.

Tiffany Lenz: 28:09

Yeah, for me, too. This is a, it's also fun for me to reflect back on those, those moments where someone has really said something to me that resonated, even if it hurt to hear it. it resonated deeply with me, and then was very instrumental in in getting me to a very happy place at this point in my career. I think one thing I didn't mention when I was giving you my two kind of pillar examples of pote, pave your own path, and then really learn how to be still and seek to understand and listen, those were directly related to one another, although they were eight or nine years apart. Because had I not been willing to pave my own to actually accept that feedback and pave my own path. And it was a lonely path at times working in an IT company and not having the same background as other people. If I had not been willing to do that. I wouldn't have found myself in another culture in another country in another in that crazy opportunity that allowed me to have this received that other feedback then that became an epiphany and was quite life changing. So there was some connection.

Robert Greiner: 29:15

Yeah, very cool. All right. Let's great chat with you today.

You too. Thanks.

We'll see you next week. Bye.