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Best interview preparation books

• "Cracking the PM Interview: How to Land a Product Manager Job in Technology" by Gayle Laakmann McDowell
• "The Product Manager Interview: 164 Actual Questions and Answers" by Lewis C. Lin
• "Decode and Conquer: Answers to Product Management Interviews" by Lewis C. Lin
• "The Lean Product Playbook: How to Innovate with Minimum Viable Products and Rapid Customer Feedback" by Dan Olsen
• "Swipe to Unlock: The Primer on Technology and Business Strategy" by Parth Detroja
• "In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives" by Steven Levy

Other great books

• Rise above the noise
• Interview math
• Thinkertoys
• Web UI design patterns
• Mobile UI design patterns

Free stuff

• Go to Lewis C. Lin’s website: 90 Product Manager Interview Questions
• Jackie Bavaro’s Quora page: ‘The Art of Product Management’
• Go to Stellar Peers: a community platform that helps you prepare for interviews. They have sample questions and answers on their site.
• Go to thepminterview.com to practice some of the above questions and answers with a timer.
• Interview Preparation

Online Resources

• Lewis Lin Courses
• Cracking the PM interview (video)
• How to ace the software engineering interview (video)
• Quora
• Glassdoor

CV

• “My Personal Formula for a Winning Resume” by Laszlo Bock

Best way to write a cover letter

• The Muse has some “standout” examples that I would not use but you can start to see what grabs attention.

Best advice on how to prepare for questions

• Be ready to talk about your favorite physical/digital product for yourself or for other people and do a proper “product tear-down”. Use the ‘CIRCLES’ method from Lewis Lin, by far the most useful mental model.
• Know the “SAR” (or STAR or SPAR or similar) structure and the “pyramid principle” for organising your thoughts and answers. S, T, P, A, R refer to situation, task (or problem), action, result. Basically: some context, what was the problem, what did you do about it, and what happened? The pyramid principle developed by Barbara Minto, a consultant, refers to grouping your answers into themes that are easier to digest.
• It also helps to know a few frameworks — 3C, 4P, Porter’s 5 forces, Market Entry, etc at the back of your mind.

Interview

PM interview:

• Design
• Strategy
• Estimation
• Behavioral
• Technical

Startegy

Additional Product Strategy Practice Interview Questions

The best way to get better at Product Manager interviews is by actually doing them. You can practice by yourself out loud or even better with someone else. Here are some sample interview questions to get you started:

• How would you increase YouTube’s daily active users ?
• What are some ideas for improving mentorship on the LinkedIn platform?
• What is your favorite product and why?
• Start a new product category for Amazon -- what would you choose and why?
• If you want to launch a new social networking product, what are the primary considerations?

Estimation

• Learn hard facts: I know I said you don’t need to know the answers to the questions, but let me rephrase that. While you don’t need to memorize the answers, it’s crucial to know certain ubiquitous numbers. Let’s say you’re interviewing for Google. What is the market share of Google Search? How much of the pie does Google Cloud Platform have? What was Google’s revenue and profit in 2017? Knowing these numbers, and more, helps more than you’d think. To make your life easier, here is a short (and shabby) fact sheet I created while preparing.

Technical

• Data Structures and Algorithms: GeeksforGeeks was my best friend here. I went through all the sorting algorithms and basic data structures used. Also brush up your CS fundamentals: OOPS concepts, Networking frameworks, how internet works, how WiFi works, what are the different protocols used and so on. Remember, you have to be so well-versed such that you can explain all this even to a 5 year old. To make lives easier, here’s the word doc I used while preparing, use this and keep adding more.

• System Design: Ooh, we've hit bulls eye. Most people either don’t prepare or don’t prepare enough for this. Avoid that mistake, and use this GitHub repo as your Bible or Quran or Bhagavad Gita. Donne has done a brilliant job of breaking down everything needed. But no need to delve too deep; just practice the ten example questions given first.

• Pseudocoding: Leetcode and a brilliant engineer friend of mine were my strongest pillars. I did not spend a lot of time here, as I knew they wouldn’t ask anything too crazy. If you’re well versed with coding, this should not be a hard section. Just make sure to enunciate, brute force first, optimize next and check for edge cases. This YouTube channel by Kevin Naughton is super, super useful.

• How to crack technical questions in PM interviews

Additional Technical Practice Interview Questions

The best way to get better at Product Manager interviews is by actually doing them. You can practice by yourself out loud or even better with someone else. Here are some sample interview questions to get you started:

• You are part of the Google Search web spam team. How would you detect duplicate websites?
• What are some of the technical challenges with building a system to help restaurants receive orders electronically?
• Facebook recently identified that mobile app users in 3rd world countries with significantly lower bandwidth have a poor user experience. How would you reduce bandwidth consumption across Facebook’s mobile app?
• If you were the Product Manager for Gmail, how would you reduce the storage size on Gmail servers?
• How do you monitor performance and measure success of a recently launched product/service ?
• How do you gain credibility from the development / engineering teams as a new product manager?
• What is the importance of engineering and technical teams as stakeholders ? How do you integrate them into the overall product vision?

Behavioral

• There are multiple sites that give you example behavioral questions, but at the least, cover the basics: Why you? Why this company? Why this role? What’s your expectation? What’s your biggest success? What’s your biggest failure? and How do you cope with a bad manager?

Key Takeaways

Consider the following best practices:

1. Clearly define the problem and the objectives
   • Make sure you understand the problem upfront. Candidates will sometimes latch on to a small part of the prompt that they heard and spend a lot of time going down an obscure path.
   • You should restate the problem and your assumptions about that problem in your own words and confirm it with the interviewer.
   • State any key assumptions you are making and ask follow up questions to clarify.
2. Start with user needs
   • No matter the type of problem, keep the needs of your users first.
3. Communicate your approach and provide some structure
   • Think and communicate how you are going to structure the problem before diving into it. The primary goal of case questions is to evaluate your problem solving process and abilities, not to evaluate whether you got to the correct answer. In many cases, there is no single correct answer.
   • Creating some structure around the problem is not only a good way to demonstrate that this is how you approach problems, but it is also a helpful interview tool. If you start by outlining your approach, you are less likely to forget to cover a certain aspect.
4. Have a clear methodology
   • There are many prioritization models out there (e.g. the RICE model). Find one or two that resonate with you and be prepared to use them, since prioritization questions are quite common in Product Manager interviews.
5. At each part of the problem, start broad and then narrow in
   • At each part of the process that you’ve structured, start by brainstorming several different options, and then use some stated criteria to prioritize and narrow in.
   • You want to make sure you consider a wide range of options and show that you can think creatively, but also that you know when to focus on the most promising option. Both are critical parts of the product management process.
6. State your approach at the outset
   • Structure is critical - provide some outline upfront for how you plan to attack the problem.
7. Gain familiarity of common technical solutions
   • It’s valuable to have a basic architectural understanding of some well known products -- for example Google Search and Facebook Newsfeed.
8. Understand the differences between mobile and desktop applications
   • In preparation for your interview, review the key differences and considerations when building an application for mobile vs desktop. This is particularly important if the company you are interviewing with has a mobile product.
9. Study the technology of the company you are interviewing with.
   • Prior to the interview, gain a basic familiarity with the company’s key technology. This preparation will not only help you answer questions you are asked, but can also inspire questions for you to ask the interviewer.

Prioritization

There are many factors that can go into prioritization. Some common ones includes:

1. Engineering Effort
2. Revenue Impact
3. Customer Satisfaction
4. Competitive Advantage
5. Mission Alignment

Also

• Stock options: If you’re in the US, working for a startup, you need to know about how companies are funded and how stock options work. That’s tricky territory not easy to explain in a summary other than to say “get clued up about finance because it’s your money and future we’re talking about.” Regardless of gender, ignorance is not cool. If you’re curious about the employer perspective on stock options for employees, I recommend Fred Wilson’s MBA Mondays posts from back in 2010, particularly the ones on “How Much?”, Vesting, Restricted Stock and RSUs and Options.
• For all other negotiations (money, time, flexibility): I found that Josh Doody had some helpful advice for how to think about negotiations. His newsletters are informative but you can read his book too.
• For women in particular, Anna Marie Clifton wrote a long post about how she negotiated for an additional $15,000 at Yammer. Silence can be a great ally in negotiations, and it’s useful to learn how to wield it.

Read

• Оптимизация ставок: зависимость между ценой клика и установленной ставкой
• Теоретико-информационный подход к анализу воронки продаж в контекстной рекламе
• This blog post that describes the job hunting process of landing an SF-based Product Manager role
• This article written by a Product Manager that had experience interviewing with some of the biggest tech companies in Silicon Valley, including Salesforce, Google, Dropbox, and Facebook
• A HackerNoon post on how to prepare for a Product Manager interview
• This blog post highlights a recommended four-step approach
• Watch another product strategy mock interview with a LinkedIn PM, including a follow up discussion of best practices
• This productboard article that discusses various product prioritization frameworks used in industry
• This article lays out a three-pronged approach to prioritize product features and improvements
• View this article that highlights a recommended three-step approach for questions that involve client-server relationships and back-end structure of algorithms
• Watch another technical mock interview with a Google PM, including a follow up discussion of best practices

Conversion Funnel Analysis:

• Everything You Need to Know About Funnels
• Introduction To Website Funnel Analysis Checklist
• Secrets of the E-Commerce Conversion Funnel: Effective Ways To Boost Conversions and Drive Sales
• Conversion Rate Optimization
• How to Create a Website Conversion Funnel

• Hiring

Advice for someone interested in getting into Product Management:

• Talk to other Product Managers: It's valuable to hear a first hand perspective -- what they enjoy, the biggest challenges, etc.
• Ask yourself why: It's important to do some introspection on your motivations for being a Product Manager and why you believe the role is the right one for you.
• Mentorship is key: When evaluating job opportunities, take into consideration the expected level of mentorship and guidance you can receive from an experienced Product Manager at the company.

The top qualities interviewers look for in Product Manager candidates:

• Passionate: Does the candidate truly care about the users and the problems they are trying to solve? Candidates who are excited and energized about solving hard problems are going to be more successful.
• Problem Solver: A skilled problem solver is comfortable taking a large problem and breaking it down into smaller ones.
• Strong Communicator: A Product Manager has many audiences -- it's critical to know how and what to communicate depending on who you are talking to.
• Self-Starter: A successful Product Manager takes initiative -- one who not only identifies problems but takes the next step of trying to solve it. A Product Manager's role is filled with ambiguity, and it's important for individuals to have the mindset to just figure things out.

Common types of questions you may get in a Product Manager interview:

• Behavior Questions: These are extremely common and intended to assess your skills as a Product Manager based on your prior experiences and background. Know your resume really well so you can speak to any part of it. It's also a good idea to be prepared with a few projects or products you worked on that you are most comfortable talking about.
• Case Study Questions: These can take different forms but are usually Strategy, Design, or Technical or some combination of the three. Practicing example case questions will prepare you to be more comfortable and confident answering these types of open-ended questions. Check out Lessons 2 and 3 from this course to review case study interviews in more detail.

Some tips on how to stand out in a Product Manager interview:

• Use the STAR: When answering a behavioral question, such as describing a problem you solved, consider the STAR Method to structure your answer:
  • Situation : Provide context for the problem
  • Task : Explain what needed to be done
  • Action: Describe specifically what you did
  • Results: Explain the ultimate outcome
• Remember to demonstrate learnings: Often, more important than the ultimate outcome is what you learned along the way that helped you grow as a Product Manager. Make sure to highlight this when discussing your experiences.
• Always break down the problem: Candidates who provide some clarity and structure to open-ended questions will stand out.
• Above and beyond: It's not always practical or appropriate, but to really stand out, consider creating a product related proposal or project that is beneficial to the company and provide this as part of the interview process.

Growth Product Manager

Growth Product Manager is a relatively new role within the Product Management domain. Some aspects of a Growth Product Manager role that are unique and exciting:

• Tinkering is key: Growth Product Managers are constantly trying new experiments, testing new ideas, and doing many of these at once.
• New experiments more than new features: Growth Product Managers focus on how to get more customers to use existing features. A major challenge is identifying and experimenting new ways for customer adoption.
• Quantity, not just quality: Sometimes in Product Management, the focus will be on building a small set of very high quality features to address customer needs. As a Growth Product Manager, quantity is critical -- you need to test a lot of ideas at once.

VP of Product

Examples of her day-to-day role as the VP of Product, including:

• Morning review of emails to identify which need urgent attention
• Looking at product metrics to see the direction her products are headed
• Structuring her day to spend time on day-to-day tactical work as well as long term strategic thinking
• Balancing the various requests that come to her (e.g. production bugs, sales team requests, customers feature requests, etc)

Project Management

Project Management Lifecycle

📃 Articles

• 5 Phases of Project Management – A Complete Breakdown
• 4 Phases of the Project Management Lifecycle Explained

Project Initiation

📃 Articles

• Project initiation: The first step to successful project management
• Project Initiation: A Guide to Starting a Project the Right Way

Technical Manager

📊 Building diagrams, flows and charts

• AWS Architecture Icons - The official AWS icon set for building architecture diagrams

• diagrams.net - Diagram Software and Flowchart Maker

  • Fapp.diagrams.net - Flowchart Maker & Online Diagram Software

• Cloudcraft - Cloudcraft – Draw AWS diagrams

• Creately - AWS Architecture Diagram Tool | Draw AWS Diagrams

• SketchBoard - Draw AWS Architecture Diagrams Online

• SmartDraw - Easy Flowchart Maker | Free Online Flow Chart Creator & Software

• Miro - The Visual Collaboration Platform for Every Team

• Figma - Design, prototype, and gather feedback all in one place with Figma

• Canva | Flowcharts - Free Flowchart Maker - Create Flowcharts Online

Project Management

• Project management for non-project managers

Great Management Books

• Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter by Liz Wiseman
  • https://thewisemangroup.com
  • Accidental Diminisher Quiz
• No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention by Reed Hasting and Erin Meyer
• Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility by Patty McCord
• Think Like a Rocket Scientist: Simple Strategies You Can Use to Make Giant Leaps in Work and Life by Ozan Varol
  • ozanvarol.com

Other good books

• That Will Never Work: The Birth of Netflix and the Amazing Life of an Idea by Marc Randolph

Soft-skills for the Manager

OKRs (Objectives and Key Results)

OKRs (or objectives and key results) can be used to create accountability, transparency, and alignment within their organizations.

As a core component of any performance management plan, goal setting helps businesses overcome the challenges of scaling their workforces. OKRs are a popular goal-setting framework that businesses use to define and measure progress across different levels within the organization. When used effectively, OKRs spark innovation, unite teams, and create a clear path for taking companies to the next level.

While there have been a number of goal-setting frameworks throughout history such as SMART goals, OKRs were first introduced at Intel by management scientist Andy Grove and later popularized by Google in the late 1990s. Today, OKRs power thousands of organizations from Spotify and Amazon to the United States Navy.

How OKRs Drive Business Results

OKRs help businesses manage performance in five core ways:

• Alignment: OKRs get everyone on the same page around what teams are doing, why they’re doing it, and how their work moves the organization forward.
• Prioritization: OKRs bridge the gap between long term goals and the daily work necessary to achieve them. This empowers employees to prioritize day-to-day tasks and long-term initiatives.
• Transparency: OKRs foster transparent company cultures by informing everyone of the impact and priorities of teams and individuals across the organization, top-down from the CEO to the intern.
• Accountability: OKRs create ownership of performance expectations and remove any room for gray areas as to who’s responsible for meeting specific goals.‍
• Empowerment: OKRs show employees the impact of their work and give them a sense of ownership over their progress.

As a proven goal-setting framework for companies of all sizes, OKRs are effective because of their basic structure and practical application.

OKRs divide goals into achievements and the actions that support them. They are structured around two fundamental questions:

💠 Structure

OKRs divide goals into achievements and the actions that support them. They are structured around two fundamental questions:

• Objective: Where do I want to go?

The Objective is the goal of the entire organization, team, or individual. Objectives are typically qualitative and set the direction for what every level of the business wants to achieve in a certain amount of time.

• Key Result: How will I get there?

Key Results (KRs) are the measurable outcomes that need to be achieved in order to meet the objective –– somewhat like a “to-do list” for accomplishing an overall goal. KRs help track progress and are generally metrics-driven, using the team’s key performance indicators.

💠 Application

The main benefits of OKRs are largely based on the way they are put into practice and applied across organizations.

🔹 Organizational levels

Individual and team goals should be connected via measurable key results to high-level company objectives. This interplay of business goals boosts employee engagement and creates overall business alignment.

🔹 Alignment

Every company should aim for OKR alignment between organizational and team levels, but there are two different approaches companies can take to achieving it:

• Strict alignment: In this approach, key results translate directly into the objectives of the level below them.

• Directional alignment: In this more flexible approach, organizations establish objectives that feed into the key results of higher levels but don’t mirror them exactly.

💠 Qualities of a Successful OKR

The OKR methodology distinguishes itself from other frameworks for setting goals with its unique approach to blending both ambition and practicality. It’s also designed to encourage company, team, and individual-level transparency and accountability.

• Objectives should be ambitious; inspirational targets tend to make people at all levels of your organization think bigger, such as stretch goals.
• Key results should be measurable; giving company goals a finite endpoint allows businesses to accurately quantify progress when they reach a milestone.
• OKRs should be transparent; visibility across organizations creates a sense of accountability, and gives teams context to make informed decisions.

💠 A Step-by-Step Guide to Implementing OKRs

1. Designing an OKRs Program

Organizations must identify how they will configure OKRs in their goal-setting system before launching so that they can design a process that suits their needs.

🔹 MISSION, VISION, & STRATEGY

Before implementing an OKR program, companies should clearly define the mission, vision, and business strategy that their OKRs can support. Your OKRs should be translated from your strategy, drive the achievement of your vision, and be in alignment with your overall mission.

🔹 OPERATIONS

A company’s business context should dictate its approach to goal-setting. Before establishing OKRs, companies should evaluate different aspects of their day-to-day operations, such as headcount, organizational structure, legacy processes, project management capabilities, and more.

🔹 SYNCHRONIZATION

If you’re introducing OKRs to your company for the first time, a best practice is to launch without strict alignment and instead focus on directional alignment. Dependencies increase the likelihood of bottlenecks, so we recommend that companies avoid making things complicated.

🔹 OWNERSHIP

When HR teams are the sole driving force behind implementing and managing OKRs, it sends the message to the rest of the organization that OKRs are an administrative process. In order for an OKRs plan rollout to be successful, it needs to have public executive sponsorship.

2. Rolling Out Your OKRs Program

🔹 EMPLOYEE INVOLVEMENT

While it might not be feasible to have every employee involved in every part of the OKR process, employees should be clear on who is responsible for setting and tracking OKRs at each level, what projects and metrics they should prioritize, why the organization is introducing a new goal-setting process, and how their work connects to the business as a whole.

🔹 WORKFORCE TRAINING

Goal setting is a learned rather than innate skill, so organizations need to provide proper guidance to employees on how to set quality OKRs. Team meetings and workshops (for executives, managers, and employees) are a great way to support newcomers to the OKR methodology and, in subsequent cycles, encourage alignment across the organization.

🔹 ORGANIZATION

For companies of all sizes, tracking OKRs can be a challenging process. Organizations like Google have built internal tools. Others use ad hoc methods like spreadsheets, and a growing number of companies are using dedicated OKR software to keep company goals transparent and quantifiable.

3. Administering OKRs

🔹 GRADING OKRs

Grading is the process by which organizations objectively evaluate performance on OKRs. OKRs are graded on a scale between 0.0 to 1.0, as pictured below. Each key result is graded, and the average of the key results is used to create the grade for each corresponding objective.

If you’re getting a perfect score on your OKRs all the time, that’s a sign you should be setting more ambitious goals. Likewise, if you’re consistently scoring below 0.3 on your goals, they’re probably too aspirational. OKRs shouldn’t be moonshots — consistently underperforming means it might be time to readjust your objectives and key results.

🔹 SHARING PROGRESS

OKR recap meetings are essential. At the beginning of every quarter, all levels of your organization should get together and discuss how they measured up to the OKRs set at the beginning of the previous goal cycle. Direct reports and managers should integrate OKRs into their one-on-one meetings.

🔹 INTEGRATING LEARNINGS

While grading is about objective measurement, learning is about contextualizing successes and shortcomings within a given OKR cycle to achieve better results moving forward. Evaluation of OKRs should happen regularly, but each cycle should also be capped by a retrospective conversation on what went well, what didn’t go well, and what learnings can be applied to the next quarter’s roadmap.

❓FAQ

• Should OKRs focus on output or outcomes?

The purpose of OKRs is to redirect focus away from output and towards outcomes. The key difference between these two mindsets is that outcomes focus on what was achieved, whereas output focuses on how things are achieved.

• How should OKRs be used in performance reviews?

Ultimately, this is a personal decision that every leadership team has to make for their own company. But regardless of what you decide, OKRs are not synonymous with employee performance evaluations, and companies who intend to connect OKRs to performance shouldn’t do so in isolation. Rather, they should be integrating OKRs into a full review of all performance management aspects.

💭 Conclusions

The OKRs framework is a powerful management tool for helping businesses define broader goals and the quantifiable actions that support them. Here are some final tips for getting OKRs to work for your company:

• Keep your OKRs flexible. Don’t obsess over alignment between levels.
• Use learnings from old OKRs to iterate and create new OKRs.
• Highlight executive sponsorship when rolling out OKRs plans.
• Set OKRs frequently –– ideally quarterly but at least every six months.
• Ensure OKRs are ambitious, measurable, and transparent.
• Leverage tools that make tracking OKRs easier and top-of-mind.

📰 Articles

• What is an OKR?
• Here’s Everything You Need to Know About OKRs
• 4 Tips for Making Goal Setting Work

Essential Feedback

Feedback is the process of helping others gain self-awareness about their actions and their impact

The focus of feedback should be to help others to thrive. Good feedback speeds up learning and builds collaborative and engaged teams.

Quality feedback speeds up learning, improves collaboration and increases engagement.

A way to think about feedback that avoids this is as 'reinforcing' or 'redirecting'. In this framing, all feedback is positive.

Reinforcing feedback is when your feedback encourages someone to continue a certain behavior.

Alternatively, redirecting feedback encourages someone to adopt a new behavior in favour of an old one.

In both cases, the focus is to help a person to thrive. Criticism on its own is not feedback.

Request a feedback

When requesting feedback, it's important to keep a few things in mind:

• Be specific: Be clear about what you're looking for feedback on. Whether it's your own performance or someone else's, provide specific prompts and questions that will help guide the conversation.

Clearly communicate what area or aspect you would like feedback on. This helps the person providing feedback to focus their response and provide more meaningful insights.

• Provide context: Give some background information about the project, the goals, and any challenges faced. This helps the person providing feedback to understand the context and provide relevant feedback.
• Seek constructive feedback: Request feedback that is actionable and specific. Ask for suggestions on how you can improve or areas where you can grow. This helps you to identify areas of strength and areas that need improvement.
• Be open-minded: Feedback can be difficult to hear, especially if it's critical. However, it's important to approach feedback with an open mind and a willingness to learn and improve.
• Create a safe space: Make sure the person you're requesting feedback from feels comfortable sharing their honest thoughts and opinions. Create a safe and supportive environment where they can provide constructive feedback without fear of repercussions.

Create a safe and non-judgmental environment where the person giving feedback feels comfortable sharing their honest opinions. Avoid becoming defensive or dismissive of the feedback you receive. Remember, feedback is an opportunity for growth and improvement.

• Ask open-ended questions: Encourage detailed and thoughtful responses by asking open-ended questions that require more than a simple "yes" or "no" answer. This allows the person providing feedback to share their thoughts and insights more fully.
• Listen actively: When receiving feedback, actively listen to what the person is saying. Avoid getting defensive or making excuses, and instead focus on understanding their perspective.
• Take action: After receiving feedback, take time to reflect on what you've heard and think about how you can use it to improve. Consider creating an action plan to address any areas of improvement that were identified.
• Say thank you: Finally, remember to thank the person for their feedback. Let them know that their thoughts and opinions are valued and that you appreciate their willingness to share them with you.
• Be grateful and show appreciation: Acknowledge and appreciate the time and effort the person is taking to provide feedback. Express your gratitude for their input, regardless of whether the feedback is positive or critical.
• Follow up: If there are specific actions you plan to take based on the feedback received, consider sharing that with the person who provided the feedback. This demonstrates your commitment to learning and improvement.

Remember, the goal of feedback is to learn and grow, so approach it with an open mind and a willingness to embrace both positive and constructive criticism.

🔸 From Engineering Manager perspective:

1. What did you enjoy most about working on this project?
2. What were the biggest challenges you faced while working on this project, and how did you overcome them?
3. How do you feel about the project overall? Are you proud of the work you did?
4. What did you think of the project timeline? Was it realistic, or did you feel that it was too rushed or too slow?
5. Were there any communication issues during the project? If so, how do you think we could improve communication in the future?
6. What was your favorite feature that you worked on in the project?
7. Is there anything you would have done differently if you had the chance to do the project over again?
8. Did you feel that you had all the resources you needed to complete your tasks successfully?
9. How would you rate the quality of the work you and the team delivered on this project?
10. Finally, do you have any feedback for me as your engineering manager or for the rest of the team?

🔸 For Manager:

1. How would you describe my communication style during this project? Was I clear and effective in communicating expectations and feedback?
2. Did I provide you with the support and resources you needed to complete your tasks effectively? If not, what could I have done better?
3. What do you think were my strengths as a manager during this project?
4. What areas do you think I could improve on as a manager? Do you have any suggestions for how I can improve in those areas?
5. Did you feel comfortable coming to me with any concerns or issues you had during the project?
6. Was I approachable and supportive when you came to me with concerns or issues?
7. Did you feel that I was able to provide you with clear direction and guidance when needed?
8. Did I foster a positive and collaborative team environment? If not, how could I have improved in that area?
9. Did I recognize and appreciate your contributions to the project? If not, how could I have done better?

🔸 For Data Scientist/ML Engineer from Software Engineer:

1. What are some areas where you think I excelled during the project?
2. What are some areas where you think I could improve in my work as a data scientist/machine learning engineer?
3. Were my communication skills effective and clear during our interactions?
4. Were there any times during the project where you felt I could have been more proactive or taken more initiative?
5. Were my deliverables on time and of high quality?
6. Did I work effectively as part of the team, and were there any issues with collaboration or teamwork?
7. Did I provide sufficient documentation for my work?
8. Were there any challenges or obstacles that I encountered during the project, and how did I handle them?
9. Did I show a good understanding of the business context and goals of the project?
10. How would you describe my overall performance as a data scientist/machine learning engineer on this project?

🔸 For Data Scientist/ML Engineer from Software Engineer and from Manager perspective:

1. How effective was the data scientist in providing you with the data and insights you needed to complete your work on the project?
2. Were the data scientist's contributions to the project valuable? If so, can you provide some examples of how their work helped the project succeed?
3. Did the data scientist collaborate well with you and the rest of the team?
4. Were the data scientist's analyses and conclusions well-supported by the data? Were there any issues with their approach to data analysis that you noticed?
5. Were there any challenges you faced as a software engineer that the data scientist was able to help you overcome? If so, how did they help you?
6. Were there any areas where you feel the data scientist could have improved in their work on the project? If so, can you provide some specific feedback on how they could have improved?
7. Did the data scientist communicate effectively with you and the rest of the team? Were there any areas where their communication could have been improved?
8. Did you feel that the data scientist was able to adapt to changing project requirements or priorities as needed?
9. Did the data scientist show a willingness to learn and grow throughout the project?
10. Finally, is there any additional feedback you have for the data scientist that could help them grow and improve as a data scientist?

Tips for positive feedback.

Whether your feedback is reinforcing or redirecting, your focus should be on helping a person to improve. To do that it is important to ask yourself:

• What is my intention in giving this feedback?
• What impact do I want my feedback to have?
• Is my feedback constructive?
• Is my feedback actionable?

Take the 'blur' out of your feedback.

1. Micro-yes: get buy-in and prepare the individual for the conversation. For example, "Can I share feedback with you about X?"
2. Data: provide a specific data point. For example, "I noticed yesterday that you did X."
3. Impact: explain the impact on you or others. For example, "I mention it because as a result, Y happened."

Structure feedback

Giving feedback without thinking it through can result in a confusing mess.

You can give structure to your feedback by using the LifeLabs Learning ‘BIQ method’. BIQ stands for Behavior, Impact and Question. The BIQ method is super useful for both performance reviews and informal feedback conversations.

• Behavior: What did you actually see? Don't make assumptions about intent.
• Impact statement: What was the consequence? Why does it matter and who was affected?
• Question: What question do you want to ask to open the dialog?

Focussing on specific behaviors reduces ambiguity, sharing the impact gives understanding, and asking a question opens the dialog for real change to happen.

So you've planned your feedback and you're ready to share it, but is it the right time for them?

Rule of thumb: When it comes to feedback, especially redirecting feedback, avoid surprises.

The fix: ask permission first.

Asking permission gives others a say in when they receive feedback. This has several benefits:

• Prepares them to be open to your feedback
• Shows your intention is to help
• Ensures enough time and space for a full conversation

When you ask for permission, be specific about what you'd like to share. For example:

• “Can I share some feedback with you about our meeting earlier today?”
• “Do you have 10 minutes today to debrief on the presentation this morning?”
• “I noticed a few things that might improve your presentation. Would you like me to share them with you?”

To avoid making assumptions, focus on behaviors you can observe. For example:

• “In the team meeting yesterday, you were giving short answers.”
• “I noticed that you didn't finish that task on time.”

This makes it much easier for the person to understand what triggered your feedback. It allows them to explain what they were thinking or feeling so you don't have to guess.

Is it possible to give too much feedback?

Feedback is important for your team's growth, but too much too fast can be overwhelming. It's a lot to take in and makes it harder to act on it in a constructive way.

Counteract this by prioritizing your feedback. Focus on what will have the most impact on people’s success.

Focusing on 1 or 2 feedback areas at a time will give them space to absorb it and respond constructively.

If you're unsure about what feedback will be most impactful, just ask! For example, before giving feedback on a document, you might ask: "Are you looking for feedback on the strategic direction? Or more on spelling and grammar?"

💭 Conclusions

• Communicating data-driven feedback to reinforce or redirect behavior
• Separating the person from the problem to increase openness
• Asking questions to generate a genuine conversation
• Seeking to understand feedback rather than responding defensively.

Ideas to improve on Feedback

Deliver effective feedback to your team members that allows them to understand it, reflect on it, and learn from it to make change for the better.

Feedback is the process of helping others gain self-awareness about their actions and their impact

Quality feedback speeds up learning, improves collaboration and increases engagement.

🗺️

Web Sources

• Four-part formula from TED Conferences
• In Praise of Praising Your Employees
• Understanding When to Give Feedback by Harvard Business Review Editors
• Research: Vague Feedback Is Holding Women Back, Harvard Business Review
• The real reason your team won’t give you honest feedback, Atlassian

Strategic Thinking

Strategic thinking is a process that enables you to work with your team on plans to achieve your goals. Strategic thinking is a skill built through experience and observation.

The key thing that great strategic thinkers do differently is that they pause (even if just for a minute) to think about how they are thinking. They pause to define terms, to contemplate what matters most, to create measurables, and to think about context, including asking, "Wait, what do we mean by this term?"

Developing this type of thinking depends on focusing on trends, challenging the norm, provoking different perspective, questioning assumptions and reading between the lines - all aspects that take time and determination to practice.

Develop these skills to make better decisions in the face of uncertainty.

Structuring skills

Structuring skills: the ability to create structure even when something is vague.

▶️ The tool? Gap analysis and scaling questions.

Scaling Questions

Some common scaling questions to get you started:

• Completion: How complete is the project I’m working on, 1-10 scale? What would move it one point?
• Efficiency: How streamlined is xyz currently? Where would I (realistically) like it to be by now? What would move it one point?
• Satisfaction: How happy am I with how things are going?
• Impact: How successful is xyz?
• Skill level: How skilled am I at xyz?

These are just a few sample questions. The key point is to train the brain to think in terms of numbers.

Why practice scaling questions?

Researchers at LifeLabs Learning studied the difference between good and great managers. They saw one key difference between them: the great managers had a habit of helping their teams think in concrete, measurable ways, even when things don't seem measurable. Adding numbers creates both a reality check and a relative progress bar to track change against.

So, teams with great strategic thinking skills have a habit of asking:

• Where things currently are
• Where one would like those things to be by a certain date
• What actions move the needle between those two points.

Gap Analysis

Spread the gap analysis habit to your team.

When managers ask their direct reports gap analysis questions, strategic thinking skills spread. They soon become part of the team’s way of communicating. This starts to happen even when their manager isn’t around. Sounds small, but makes a big difference.

Your mission in the next few days is to find a way to ask your direct reports a gap analysis question. Choose one of these or create your own:

• How are things currently going with [xyz project], 1-10 scale? What would move it one point?
• How satisfied are you with [the amount of feedback you are getting]? What would move it one point?
• How would you rate the usefulness of our 1-on-1s? What would move it one point?
• How clear do you feel about your priorities? What would move it one point?

That’s a wrap on first strategic thinking habit: asking gap analysis or scaling questions.

'Red flags'

Awareness of common red flags means you can avoid strategic mistakes.

Pausing to think about the common mistakes - the red flags - will build awareness of your team’s habits. This creates what researchers call ‘contextual cueing’ for managers. You’ll begin to sense when a team member is about to make a strategic mistake, and can then take action to avoid it.

In 1-on-1s or team meetings this week, begin asking your team questions like those:

• What strategic thinking habits matter most for our team, in your opinion?
• What are the most common strategic thinking mistakes you/we make?
• When don’t we think strategically as a team?
• What conditions create strategic mistakes?

Building awareness about strategic capacity is a great thing for a team.

Research shows that teams who think strategically have a habit of thinking about the whole picture of a problem. They think about a full range of potential factors that may be contributing to it.

In doing so, great strategic thinkers create solutions that last, rather than solutions that are short-sighted.

Contextualizing skills

Contextualizing skills: the ability to look at the full picture before diving into the wrong solution.

▶️ The tool? 3-lens analysis.

‘3-lens analysis’

Here’s how it works. Think about a project that someone is working on now and struggling with.

Now, take 1 minute to look at this problem with different lenses. Flip through each lens (imagine the lenses eye doctors use when testing your vision):

• Lens 1: The person

In what ways (if any) might the individual be contributing to the problem? (Things like their workstyle, lack of skill, motivation, clarity.)

• Lens 2: You

In what ways (if any) might you be contributing to the problem? (Maybe you didn’t provide feedback, didn’t set clear expectations.)

• Lens 3: The team/ organisation

In what ways (if any) might the team/organisation/systems be contributing to the problem? (Things like interdependencies, unclear processes, conflicting priorities.)

This 3 minute exercise of ‘flipping through 3 lenses’ helps train the brain to think through the many potential causes of a problem. This is what psychologists call ‘multivariate thinking'. It means you can fix the problem - strategically - for the long haul.

Find a way to plant 3-lens questions into your 1-on-1s. Common questions you can ask direct reports are:

• Should we look at this from different lenses?
• What other perspectives could we take on this?
• What are some other potential contributing factors we should consider?
• Should we do a quick 3-lens analysis on this before diving in?

Asking your team questions adds structure and context to a problem. With practice, team thinking can change.

Some common questions to try adding to your everyday conversations with your team:

• Let’s put some numbers on this! On a scale from 1-10, where are we at with xyz?
• What’s the gap here - where are we now and where do we want to be?
• What would create a 10% improvement? What would move us one point closer to our goal?
• Let’s pause here before diving in… what lenses should we look at this problem from?
• What else do we need to consider?
• Should we do a 3-lens analysis on it, to make sure we’re working on the right fix?

Prediction skills

Prediction skills: It’s the ability to think forward and anticipate issues before they come up.

UC stands for ‘Unintended Consequences’

Doing a UC check means you see potential problems before they happen.

• Imagine this:

A manager hops in to help direct reports rather than coach them. As an UC, direct reports don’t get to learn how to think more strategically about their own fixes. The manager is constantly needed and busy.

• Picture this:

A direct report cares so much about doing a great job and being a great contributor that they perfect their work before asking for any feedback. As an UC, people feel excluded from the process. Corrective feedback isn’t received on time. And the direct report feels surprised by reactions they didn't expect. The direct report would have been seen as a much more skillful contributor if they’d gotten feedback earlier, even with an imperfect draft. UC alert!

UC checking is the bread and butter of great strategic thinkers.

Try using the words ‘unintended consequences check’ at least once - even if in your own mind. Ask yourself:

• “Should I/we pause to do a quick UC check on that?”
• “Are there any UCs I’m not thinking of?”

Pre-mortem

You may have heard about post-mortems. Post-mortems are done to figure out what caused something to fail. Post-mortems are done after a project is over.

In a pre-mortem, you flip the script. You think about an upcoming project that hasn’t yet happened, but imagine it completely failed. Now, you list reasons for why the project failed. Finally, you come up with mitigations to help reduce the chances of those things happening.

• Project or goal you have (you can also list a life goal).
• Imagine it failed. What caused it to fail? List a few ideas.
• What’s a 10% mitigation you could do to buffer against this happening?

What do pre-mortem questions look like in practice?

Pre-mortem questions aren’t hard and don’t need to be like a formula. The goal is only to have a habit of pausing to ‘think forward’. This means doing a quick check for potential risks and blockers, and then creating mitigations.

Here are some pre-mortem questions you could ask your team.

• Let’s pause for a moment and think forward: what could get in the way of this project going well?
• What might we be overlooking?
• Imagine that this project would fail. What would cause it to fail?
• What lack of information could set us back?
• What are some of the risks or challenges we might not be thinking about but should be?
• What’s one thing we can do to increase the chances of success by 10%?
• What are some mitigations we can do to prevent issues from happening?

With your team, share this: “Ok team, let’s do a quick pre-mortem on this before we dive in. Imagine we are looking into a crystal ball, and this project has failed. It’s a mess. Now, everybody, take 2 minutes and write down all the reasons why you think the project failed.”

Collect the ideas, have the team vote on what they think the biggest risk is from the list. Then, brainstorm a list of mitigations for that top risk.

Improve on Strategic Thinking

Work with your team to develop an agreed approach and plan towards achieving a desired outcome and goals. Build skills in critical thinking, analysis, creativity and innovation.

Strategic thinking is a skill built through experience and observation

Developing this type of thinking depends on focusing on trends, challenging the norm, provoking different perspective, questioning assumptions and reading between the lines - all aspects that take time and determination to practice.

🗺️

Productivity

Knowing how to harness more productive ways of working is essential for all managers.

Manage your own and the team's workload and energy levels to maximize outputs, quality delivery and personal wellbeing.

The most common productivity challenges they face fall into 4 categories:

• Time awareness
• Prioritization
• Organization
• Focus

Understanding these categories will allow you to quickly diagnose and resolve issues for yourself and your team. You’ll make your life easier, and become an even better manager faster.

Time awareness

Great managers communicate time differently.

They model time integrity by being precise with their language. Your time awareness tool #1 is to use time language. Here’s how it’s done.

• Instead of saying: “Shall we move onto the last item on the agenda?”
  • Say: “In our last 10 minutes, shall we move onto the last item on the agenda?”
• Instead of saying: “Can you send me that file ASAP?”
  • Say: “Can you send me that file by 3pm (EST)?”
• Instead of saying: “Do you have 2 seconds to chat about X?”
  • Say: “Do you have 15 minutes to chat about X?”
• Instead of saying: “This needs to be done today.”
  • Say: “This needs to be done by 6pm today.”

Respecting time is as easy as choosing your words carefully.

In these examples the great managers avoided using ‘blurry’ time language. These are things like ‘ASAP’, ‘2 seconds’ or ‘EOD’. Instead they used clear and precise language. Doing so allowed them to get aligned, avoid misunderstanding, and show respect for their team's time.

How will you clearly communicate time?

To make a habit of using precise time language, you can share your commitment to ‘time integrity’. Try saying something like “I want to make an effort to be more precise in my communication around time”.

Or start ‘deblurring’ or clarifying time words. For example, when someone asks you if you have “one moment,” you can say: “I have 5 minutes right now or we can discuss it in our 1-on-1. Which do you prefer?”

If someone asks for a favor and promises that “it will take you no time at all,” you can bring time awareness into the conversation.

Do this by saying, “I want to make sure I can follow through if I say yes. Can I ask some questions to make sure I have enough time to help?”

To make a habit of using precise time language, you can share your commitment to ‘time integrity’. Try saying something like “I want to make an effort to be more precise in my communication around time”.

Or start ‘deblurring’ or clarifying time words. For example, when someone asks you if you have “one moment,” you can say: “I have 5 minutes right now or we can discuss it in our 1-on-1. Which do you prefer?”

If someone asks for a favor and promises that “it will take you no time at all,” you can bring time awareness into the conversation.

Do this by saying, “I want to make sure I can follow through if I say yes. Can I ask some questions to make sure I have enough time to help?”

As you go about your day, take the time to notice how the team is talking about time. When you see unclear time communication:

• Model ‘time integrity’ by catching and ‘de-blurring’ your own time language
• Ask your team a time integrity question (for example, “what does EOW mean to you?”)

One of the most effective things a manager can do to create shared time awareness is to simply make sure meetings run on time.

Starting and stopping meetings on time is your time awareness tool #2.

This behavior has a positive 'domino effect' on the rest of your organization. Doing it yourself spreads the habit. It also sends a signal that time integrity is a normal part of work rather than an occasional pleasant surprise.

How to adopt the habit of running meetings on time.

Before introducing changes into your meeting norms, set the context for your team. To ‘frame’ the conversation, you could say:

“To model time integrity and respect your time, I would like to introduce a new norm of starting and stopping our meetings on time. Here’s what I was thinking [insert suggestion], and I would also love to hear from you and see what other ideas you have.”

Now you have the context for the change, here are some tips to help you make it happen.

• Start on time, even if only a few participants are present
• Ask people to assign time estimates to each agenda item
• Choose a timekeeper and/or use an audible timer to keep everyone on track
• Put a clock in the room or add a countdown on the digital screen
• Lock the door (physically or digitally) when the meeting starts, making it impossible for late participants to join

2 ways to increase your team’s time awareness:

• Using precise time language
• Start/stopping meetings on time

What does a time audit look like?

Track your activities and their impact at 30-minute intervals. Track the time from when you get up to when you go to bed. You could do the audit throughout the day, at different points in the day, or at the end of the day.

You can choose one of the many time audit apps available or use a simple spreadsheet. In your audit you can track:

• The time period
• What you were doing
• If it was planned or reactive
• How it affected your energy levels (energised, neutral or drained)

Knowing exactly how you spend your time has real benefits.

While time audits call for deliberate action, the benefits are much greater than the effort invested. Time audits increase awareness of:

• Where your time goes
• What you’re doing with your time
• What tasks energize or drain you
• When are you most productive

When the team shares their insights with you, it’s a great coaching opportunity around time awareness.

Here’s some questions you could ask. Choose 1 or more of these questions to ask your team at the end of the audit.

• Did anything surprise you?
• Are there activities you should make sure you make time for in the future?
• Are there activities you can batch-process/consolidate to be more efficient?
• Are there certain times of the day you’re more productive than other times?
• Are some of us doing certain tasks much faster or slower?How can we learn from each other or better distribute responsibilities?

Prioritization

'MIT method’ (most important tasks)

The basic idea is to start (or end) your day by writing down the 3 most important tasks you hope to accomplish in the next 24 hours.

How hard is it to say “no”?

One of the great benefits of creating an MIT list is that it allows you not only to prioritize what’s most urgent and important, it also helps you stay disciplined. It becomes easier to say no to requests that are less of a priority.

Spread the habit by asking your team to name their MITs, and do it often.

To really make the most of the tool you can:

• ask about MITs as a coaching question in your 1-on-1s
• start daily team meetings with an MIT review
• use MITs as a tool to align on priorities with your team, manager, and other leaders across the organization.

In the morning, note down your 3 MITs and end your day by checking off your list and ceremoniously putting it in the trash.

Bucket Method

Creating ‘buckets’ of work tasks helps your team make sense of all the things they need to do.

• First, encourage your team members to pick their main ‘bucket’ or area of focus for the quarter. These buckets are their main objectives. (Help them define them if needed.)
• Next, under each bucket have them outline what goals each bucket links to.
• Then, every day, have them fill in the tasks they need to complete to make progress in each bucket.

**For example:**

Bucket 1: Build app

• Goals this quarter: Add 3 new features
• Tasks for today: Interview sales team to understand client needs

Bucket 2: Onboard new hires

• Goals this quarter: 4 weeks to proficiency
• Tasks for today: Create checklist for first week of onboarding

Bucket 3: Develop my team

• Goals this quarter: Engagement score of 90%
• Tasks for today: Give feedback to each team member, announce shadowing program

Coaching around the bucket method helps cement it in the working day.

When you’ve helped your team members create their buckets, get more out of this productivity tool faster by asking coaching questions. Choose 1 of the following example questions to ask your team.

• What are your buckets for this quarter?
• What made you choose these?
• How do you define success for each one?
• What percentage of your time has been going to each bucket?
• What else have you been doing other than work in these three buckets?
• Does it make sense to adjust your buckets or find ways to reduce or remove the other activities
• How can you push back on requests so it’s possible to stick to your priorities?

Organization

‘Consistent Capture System’ or CCS

Encourage your team members to ‘close the loop’.

When it comes to work, most people’s minds are full of ‘open loops’. These are swirling reminders and snippets of information.

The solution to all these open loops is to encourage your team members to create a ‘consistent capture system’ or CCS. This is a concept inspired by author David Allen. A CCS is a reliable, go-to place to record information instead of storing it in memory. The most important CCS types capture:

• To-do items
• Appointments
• Deadlines
• Notes (including key points, ideas, and instructions)

Your mission is to close the loop by committing to using a single CCS and embed the tool in your team.

• First, be sure to keep yourself organized and model good organization habits by having a CCS of your own. Write down and commit to a single tool to capture your to-do items.
• If your team members don’t already have a CCS, encourage them to experiment with options. They should pick the CCS that works best for their brains and stick to it.

Recording information in a single, reliable place may seem like a small thing. But it can have real impact.

The value of creating a great CCS for your team is that you can set their minds free. They’ll be free to:

• solve problems
• detect patterns
• develop relationships
• generate new ideas

Ask ‘who, what, where’ questions and get commitments made.

Having a closed loop culture is especially useful in team meetings. It’s training your team to make a habit of asking closed loop questions like these:

• Who is capturing this?
• Who is owning this?
• Who else needs to be involved?
• What needs to be done?
• When does this need to get done?

Not only does a closed loop culture mean there’s shared accountability, it also saves the entire team time and frustration trying to remember who was responsible for what and when.

Focus

What is self-interruption?

A self-interruption is a turn away from your workflow. This means things like checking email, texts, social media, starting new projects or getting a snack.

The result? Interruptions increase stress, errors and frustration. This leads to wasted time and worse performance.

How can you help your team reduce interruptions?

Co-create ‘if-thens’

One solution to reduce internal and external distractions is to anticipate them in advance and create rules. These rules help you make your best intentions happen and automate your behavior. We call them simply: ‘if-thens’.

Here’s how if-thens work.

1. Think of a distraction you want to avoid (for example, too many emails)
2. Select a behavior to counter it (batch processing emails)
3. Find an ‘environmental prompt’ (an action, time or place) to trigger the desired behavior. For example, if it’s 12pm, then I will batch process my emails for a half hour.

Instead of deciding in that moment how to handle a distraction, use your pre-programmed if-then to guide your actions.

Here’s some examples:

• Distraction: Social media
  • If: Open laptop in the morning
  • Then: Write down my MITs
• Distraction: Someone asks a quick question
  • If: Question is complicated
  • Then: Schedule a later time to discuss
• Distraction: Email notifications
  • If: Need to focus
  • Then: Turn off alert

Pomodoro technique

The tool’s name is the Italian word for tomato, and comes from its creator, Francesco Cirillo. It’s based on a tomato-shaped kitchen timer he used to stay focused on his work as a university student.

The Pomodoro technique means working within strict time limits. Here’s how it works.

• If the Pomodoro starts, then spend 25 minutes focused on a task.
• If 25 minutes pass, then take a mandatory five-minute break.
• If you get interrupted (or interrupt yourself), then you have to start over.

Kanban

This final productivity tool is great for helping your team improve focus, and can also improve time awareness, prioritization, and organization.

It’s a multifaceted tool that takes its name from the Japanese word for ‘sign’ (kanban). The Kanban system comes from the world of Toyota car manufacturing, where managers introduced visual signs to increase production efficiency.

Kanban is a scheduling system that tracks the progress and ownership of tasks by moving cards through a series of columns.

• Each task is represented on a card. Cards start their journey in the ‘backlog’ (or ‘to do’) column.
• When you’re ready to begin working on a task, you move that card to the ‘doing’ column.
• This simple action is at the heart of the Kanban System’s ability to generate focus. It’s an explicit agreement between you and your brain about the task you’ll be working on until you’re ready to move it into the glorious ‘done’ column.

Improve on Productivity

Manage your own and the team's workload and energy levels to maximize outputs, quality delivery and personal wellbeing.

Knowing how to harness more productive ways of working is essential for all managers

Apply tested time management hacks, be aware of your impact on others, learn how to communicate priorities to your team and recognize how to optimize broken processes to strengthen skills in this area.

🗺️

Coaching skills

Articles

• The SOON Funnel: 4 Coaching Questions the Best Managers Ask

Meeting mastery skills

The best managers don’t just run meetings, they design experiences.

Meetings are common and difficult. That’s why knowing how to lead them is one of the most powerful ways you can stand out as a manager.

4P Opener

Meeting Types

The most common meeting types are:

• 🔸 Inform: share information, news, thoughts, and/or feelings or answer questions
• 🔸 Explore: ask questions, generate ideas, spark insights
• 🔸 Narrow: debate, prioritize, vote, decide, work out a plan of action

Agenda

The agenda is a tool to keep focus throughout the meeting.

• Make your agenda visible throughout the meeting
• Check off each item on the agenda as you complete it to spark more dopamine (the chemical released in the brain that makes you feel good)
• Write time estimates for each agenda item, then record how long each item actually took to build time awareness skills.

As well as the agenda, you can also clarify other process points for the meeting. These are things like ground rules and instructions for how to use any technology used in the meeting.

🟠 ‘Inform’ type meeting

🔷 1: Round-robins

A round-robin is a process of going around to hear from each person in the group. Round-robins are efficient because you don’t have to wait around and wonder who will speak next. They also help harness the collective wisdom of your team, instead of letting just a few voices run the show.

Research shows that when people take equal turns in a conversation, this leads to better team performance. This is more important for performance than even collective team member IQ! So, when you do round-robins, be sure to give everyone equal speaking time.

And a final tip from the professionals. Use a timer you can hear so people can track their own talking time, or use a video call plug-in that shows participants how long each person has been speaking.

Get people involved early and change the dynamics of the meeting

A round-robin is a helpful tool whenever you want to hear from everyone in the group, and it’s especially useful at the start of meetings. When you get people’s voices in the room early on, they’ll be more likely to contribute throughout the meeting.

Here are some examples of common round-robin prompts we’ve seen great managers use in their team huddles. Choose one question you could use for your next round-robin.

• What is one win, frustration, or learning from the past week/yesterday?
• What did you get done yesterday?
• What are you working on today / what are your top priorities?
• What are your roadblocks or obstacles?

🔷 2: Rotate roles

For regular meetings to give information, great managers ask team members to take turns leading. That way people don’t get stuck in a position of high power or low power. Common roles to rotate include:

• Facilitating
• Timekeeping
• Note-taking
• Sending minutes

Rotating roles gives everyone an opportunity to be visible and to share in administrative tasks. It teaches people to be better meeting participants by building empathy for all roles. As a bonus, each person brings their own ‘flavor’ to these roles, creating variety in what could otherwise become a monotonous meeting.

🔷 3: Shorter meetings

A fun ‘law’ of meetings is Parkinson's Law which states that work expands to fill the time allotted to it.

If you’re meeting for an hour, experiment by reducing it to 55 or 50 minutes. If you’re meeting for half an hour, reduce it to 25 minutes. Besides giving people more free time (they will love you), shortening the meeting time creates a little bit of extra stress which focuses the mind.

🟠 ‘Explore’ type meeting

We've seen how ‘Inform’ meetings are all about a simple exchange of information. The purpose of ‘Explore’ meetings is to generate new insights and ideas together. Over the years, these types of meetings have become more popular. But sadly, research shows that they are usually less productive than coming up with ideas on your own.

So, how can you avoid the common pitfalls of these meetings and harness their power? First, make sure you set aside time for silent, solo ‘ideation’ (when you come up with ideas), as well as ideation in a pair or whole group.

🔷 1: Defer judgment

The number one rule for ideation is to defer judgment (which is different from ‘no bad ideas’). Deferring judgment simply means you do not judge the merit of an idea during the brainstorming session.

Studies show that when we defer judgment we come up with more ideas and better ideas. Researchers at LifeLabs Learning observed that great managers reminded people to defer judgement. They did this even if they were generating ideas in silence (sometimes we can get in our own way).

And when exploring ideas out loud, they pointed out when participants were critical or even gave excessive praise. Doing this helps avoid switching on the group’s judgment filters.

▶️ Here's a sample of part of a conversation.

Explorer: Oh! Another option we haven’t considered yet is changing our work hours.

Narrower: That would never work. People won’t agree to a different schedule.

Meeting facilitator: Whoops. That sounds like an evaluation of the idea. Can you hang onto that concern until we start narrowing down our options?

🔷 2: Idea quotas

Want an easy shortcut to helping people be less judgy? Assign an idea quota.

For example, set a goal of generating 10 ideas in 10 minutes or have teams compete over who will come up with more ideas. Paradoxically, a focus on quantity leads to higher quality. An idea quota also helps push people beyond boring, surface-level solutions. It keeps people digging even after they think their well of ideas has dried up.

🔷 3: Cross-pollinate

The enemy of exploration and ideation is ‘groupthink’: going along to get along. The best managers recognized the power of bringing people with diverse backgrounds and views together. They made their exploration meetings better, faster, by deliberately cross-pollinating people’s perspectives. Just as cross-pollination gives life to brand new varieties of plants, it also gives life to brand new ideas.

To become a great cross-pollinator faster, get in the habit of asking questions to encourage looking wider.

▶️ Here are some samples.

• Whose perspective might we be missing?
• Do we have enough diversity of people and perspectives in the room?
• What other people, departments, companies, industries, or even species have solved a similar problem?
• What can we learn from them?

🟠 ‘Narrow’ type meeting

🔷 1: Declare the DACI

Many of the great managers LifeLabs Learning studied used some kind of decision-making framework with their teams. They did this both in general and especially during narrowing meetings. One of our favorites is the ‘DACI Model’, which stands for:

• Driver: the person ‘behind the wheel’ of an initiative who is responsible for getting it across the finish line. Just as in a car, there should only be one driver.
• Approver(s): the person or people who make the final decision. Sometimes the Driver and Approver are the same person. If there are many approvers, make the approval process clear. For example: single approver, two approvers and a tie-breaker if needed, consensus (all agree to support the decision), majority vote (51%).
• Consultants: people who give input, suggestions, feedback, or execute components of the work.
• Informed: people who are updated along the way and when the work is done.

Without a clear Approver and Approval Process, debates can go on for some time and the loudest voices typically win out.

The beauty of DACI (and similar models) is that it helps you and your team make implicit (or unexpressed) expectations explicit.

To make an immediate improvement in the quality of your Narrow meetings, declare the DACI and Approval Process from the start.

🔷 2: Impact/Feasibility Map

When everyone is clear on how the decision will be made, it’s time to do the work of moving toward the decision. If you’ve already generated a wide range of ideas, a helpful tool to narrow the list is an Impact or Feasibility Map.

Here’s how it works:

• Write each idea the team generated on a separate physical or digital ‘sticky note’.
• Combine all the ideas.
• Remove any duplicates.
• Plot each idea on the spectrum of ‘impact’ and ‘feasibility’.

Impact is how likely it will be that the idea achieves the desired result. Feasibility is how realistic it will be to act on this idea given existing constraints like time, money, and the team’s skill level.

For example:

In this chart, imagine your team’s goal is to double the number of attendees for the next conference.

• Idea A might be to invite an A-list celebrity. It would probably have a big impact, but it isn’t workable given your budget.
• Idea B might be to rename the conference. It would be easy, but it’s unlikely to have a significant impact.
• Idea C is the sweet spot (high impact and high feasibility), for example letting attendees buy a second ticket for 50% off.

The goal of this exercise isn’t to have complete agreement or even to know for sure how to categorize each idea.

The point is to narrow your list of ideas down to those that are most likely to succeed and to hear people’s reasoning in the process.

While impact and feasibility are the most common criteria, you can also do this exercise with other criteria like:

• speed versus cost
• aesthetics versus functionality
• convenience versus environmental impact

The final tool for improving Narrow meetings keeps any conflicts that come up focussed on the ideas, not the people.

🔷 3: Pros, cons, and mitigations

After your long list dwindles down to a small list of workable, high impact ideas, it’s easy for debate to follow. When conflict is constructive it can be a terrific force for ensuring that decisions are thoughtful and strategic. But conflict can also easily turn personal. One of our favorite tools to keep conflict helpful is spelling out the pros, cons, and mitigations for each idea.

From Me vs You, to Us vs the Problem

The brilliance of this framework is that, instead of having people debate one another, you turn the team’s focus toward the ideas. Here’s how it works, one idea at a time:

• Pros: Going round-robin, each person shares what they see as the idea’s pros, strengths, and advantages.
• Cons: Each person shares what they see as the cons, risks, and disadvantages of the idea.
• Mitigations: Each person proposes mitigation suggestions to amplify the pros and reduce the impact of the cons.

Course-correction formula

Behavior observation + impact statement + process suggestion

For example, if there is little discussion happening, you might say:

“It seems we’re quiet today (behavior observation), which means it’s hard to tell if we’re aligned (impact statement). How about we take five minutes to brainstorm some questions in silence so we can all gather our thoughts, then share (process suggestion)?”

• What would be your observation, impact and process statement if a few people are doing most of the talking?

“I’m noticing we’re not hearing from everyone, so we’re not getting the benefit of different perspectives. Let’s go round-robin (and say “pass” if you prefer not to share).”

• What would be your observation, impact and process statement if people are straying away from the topic?

“Since we only have 10 minutes left and this is our chance to make a decision that impacts all of us, should we go back to the agenda and add the other topic to the parking lot?”

• What would be your observation, impact and process statement if people are shooting down one another ideas?

“It looks like some of us are coming up with ideas and some of us are evaluating them, so we’re not making progress. Let’s defer judgement for this meeting, then we can look at pros and cons of each idea next week.”

1 on 1 meetings

Improve on 1 on 1 meetings

Learn how to have regularly scheduled meetings with your direct report to offer guidance, support, feedback and bounce ideas that contribute to their growth and build a strong working relationship.

1 on 1 meetings are an important part of every managers relationship with their team member

They’re a designated place for you to exercise your most important manager skills, have meaningful conversations and to deepen your connection with your direct reports.

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